"Will do," I said, jotting a note regarding the tasks into the planner. The call ended. I shut my laptop and leaned back in my office chair.
I glanced at the phone again, then spun and stared at the brand-new couch across the room that had been delivered two days ago.
After Seven had left my apartment that morning, he'd apologized again for the mess. A few hours later, I'd received a text from him stating that replacements for everything that had been dirtied in my place would arrive soon.
I'd thought it was a joke. But the following day I'd received a call from the delivery company. They'd brought in the couch, some pillows, throw blankets, and a carpet. They'd taken away the old furniture. Even a new welcome mat was included.
I was shocked and amused at the same time.
This man was as strange and as endearing as they came.
I'd sent him a thank you text.
And he'd texted me back stating that he'd pick up his jacket soon.
But the days dragged on and he wasn't contacting me, which worried me a little. But then again, he was up against the Valmont empire.
I kept telling myself that I wouldn't be a distraction and would only reach out to him if I was on the verge of dying. However, distinguishing between what truly constituted a life-or-death scenario was becoming increasingly difficult. But each day, my anxiety had been mounting.
No juicy scandals about Caius Valmont emerged in the media or on the Internet. Instead, he flaunted his wife publicly and received accolades that the wealthy invented for themselves.
The memory of the night Seven had spent on my couch was a permanent gouge in my brain. The smell of blood and vodka, the sight of him stapling his wound with almost zero emotion. Even in agony, he'd spoken with the same flat certainty he always did.
The way he'd said my name from behind the door as he promised to serve justice.
I felt goosebumps riddling my arms at the thought of him doing my bidding.
I shook it off. I spent too much time thinking about a man whose real face I'd never seen and probably never would.
My regular phone buzzed, the notification strip shoving its way to the top of the lock screen.
Margaret.
I accepted the call.
"Hi, Mom. I'm working. Can I?—"
Her voice was not her own. It came out thin and jagged, vibrating with a fear I'd never heard in her before. "Kimmy, I've been in an accident, dear," she said.
Everything in my body stopped. The world shrank to the pitch and wobble of her voice, and it took me a second to realize this wasn't a memory of me when I was thirteen.
"Mom? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, I think—I mean, I hit the airbag, and my glasses are somewhere, but the police are saying strange thi?—"
I heard a male voice interrupting her. I couldn't make out what was said because I was already in panic mode. Not the quiet, background noise I'd lived with since I'd lost my parents, but something massive, tectonic.
"Mom!" I called. "I'm coming right now. Where are you?"
She rattled off an intersection, which I looked up on my phone. It wasn't too far from here.
"I'll be there in ten," I promised, and hung up.
I fumbled with the car keys and the shoes. I ran to the elevator, slamming the button until the doors banged open.
I barely braked before the crosswalk, the engine of my Honda making a last, high scream as I twisted the wheel into the curb. My hands left wet prints on the steering wheel.
Two police cruisers blocked most of the intersection. Their lights pulse-throbbed against the low clouds. A tow truck idled by the side of the road, hazards on, already threading its winch under the nose of my mother's crumpled sedan.
