Outside, someone shouted, and Dig promptly slunk to the window and pulled back a blind. The person must have left as his shoulders fell, losing their tension.
“It’s your brother.”
My chest burst with happiness. “Magnus is here?”
“Huh? No.” He let the blind close. “It’s your brother who’s paying these cracks to come after me.” He crossed his arms and leaned against his mapped wall.
The entire arena sat upon Dig Graves’s shoulders. A heavy layer of death splaying out as if he had grown wings. Seven years this creature had somehow survived and had the memory of every step he had taken in here.
“This is the first year I’ve had this many people try to hunt me down.” He gritted his teeth. “Usually, they’re too scared. The only thing to cure scared is stupid. Which means they’ve been offered stupid money and the only person I know with stupid money is Magnus De Astor.”
“I have no idea who that is.”
“You and your brother are a real cute couple.”
“I don’t have a brother.”
He lunged for me.
I jolted with healthy fear and squeezed my eyes closed expecting a slap, a punch a hair pull, anything.
Peeling my eyes open slowly I came face-to-face with Dig Graves.
The sunlight willowed in from the window above, stretching its deep glimmers over the smoulder of his mouth. In the cavern of his black hood, I found the structure of his face. A sturdy jaw with a neat chin. High cheek bones and a ski-slope nose. That scar over his lower lip was healing. His red heart-shaped sunglasses had scratches. A faded emblem told me they were polarised. Sun smart. I liked that.
“Can I touch your chest?” He asked.
I blinked twice as fast. “Excuse me?”
“Can I touch your chest?”
“Uh, fine.”
He pressed his palm over my heart. His expression fixed with curiosity and then, concern, like that of a doctor examining a patient. He stayed fixed with his hand across my chest, and I looked down at it. A large, strong hand with bruised knuckles and seven years’ worth of scars. Against the smooth skin of my chest, it was a stark difference to see how we had been living very different lives.
Through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, I tried to find his eyes. Just a faint outline of lashes fluttered inside the murky black glass.
“What the fuck?” he whispered. I think he was speaking to himself, not to me, but I answered anyway.
“No, I am still afraid.” I blew out air. “I am just exceptionally good at controlling my heartbeat. My feelings don’t succumb to me as others do. I find it annoying and impractical. But I can assure you, I am very concerned about my being here with you. If you’d like to begin torture, you may, however I must tell you now, if your objective is to make me cry, I will be more than contented to assist you as I’ve been trying to cry for years.”
He wasn’t listening to my words.
Only my heartbeat.
Another noise emitted from outside and he checked the window again. When he decided the passerby had gone, he dug into a suitcase on the shelf, bringing out a pair of women’s boots and set them next to my feet.
My brows sprung up in delight. “Did you get those from the paedophiles?”
“Yes.” He picked up one of my bloody feet and grimaced.
“Trade?”
“Kill.”
“All of them?”
“They scattered like fucking cockroaches I couldn’t get all of them.”
