With a toss, the phone landed between my hands meant to catch it and my chest, clamped between. Scrolling to the bottom of his contacts before I agreed, I needed to see how many names there were: 30 contacts.
I couldn’t decide if that seemed normal for a guy like him. Scrolling up, there was a name for every letter of the alphabet, plus the boys and his mom. It was peculiar.
“DTC?” I asked, unamused and still recovering, not sure I wanted to know as we stood amongst the rubble.
“Down to cook. I’m thinking of burritos.”
“There’s literally a girl’s name for every letter, no duplicates, 26 girls.”
He walked backwards until his calves hit the leather chair and crashed down onto it. “Don’t judge me, Abigail. I have ADHD. Find me someone to make burritos.”
As I moved toward the door, I felt better, certainly less stiff, and I knew he was to blame, or thank, depending on how you looked at it, when he spoke again. He spoke four times as much as Vic and Grimm put together, so I wasn’t going to voice a complaint. “Word of advice? Don’t take it personally. I’m sure it has nothing to do with his fingers. We don’t have a choice in who we are. Now scamper along, young maiden! I have some role playing to prep for.”
I couldn’t help the sneaky grin I never expected to crawl up to my mouth. Khaos was nothing but fun, and that shit was contagious.
Strutting over to Jus’s welcome desk, I hit call on the first girl’s contact and held it to my ear, waiting for an answer. Jus sat up, intrigued by the phone to my ear. I let it ring three times before hanging up, because I wasn’t a savage. Moving on to the next girl, I put it on speaker and set it down on the surface while I leaned in toward her.
“Do you wanna go out tonight? Drink? Don’t say no.”
Going out after work wasn’t something we did, let alone drinking. We were both home bodies with no issues with drinking at home to reruns of our favorite shows.
Her eyebrow shot up, “Like with people?”
No answer from girl number two. Hanging up, I moved on to the next girl.
“Yes, at a bar with people. Come on! It’ll be fun.”
I watched her tense up and play with the end of her pink braid, which was for breast cancer awareness month. “Can I think about it?”
“Nope. I’ll see you in an hour.”
I was no longer giving people choices or the ability to damper my control. With a pep in my step, I almost skipped down the row of open desks in the bullpen as I hit end and called another girl.
I was on H for Heidi right now when someone finally answered. Well, this is gonna be awkward.
After explaining to Heidi I wasn’t a side piece or random girl a few times, she relaxed. She even asked my name and put two and two together when she asked what happened to the other girl with an A name. I would say he’s in over his head, but I knew he wasn’t. This was him thriving.
Dropping his phone in his lap, I found him sleeping. He woke up abruptly, already throwing up defensive fists. I flinched and leaned away, just in case he was going to follow through with some automatic defense. “All done. Heidi is gonna cook your burritos.”
I heard the word catch before I saw him toss the pink Starburst, and I successfully caught it this time. I leaned into his mess, and I didn’t combust.
“Not bad, kid…” He was scrolling through messages when he said it, making it seem less valid.
“Was that a compliment?” I stopped at the door’s threshold, waiting only for a second for him to agree, even though I knew better.
“It’s a ‘you didn’t suck’. Take that how you want.”
“Compliment in true elitist form. Didn’t you guys go to prep school?”
Khaos looked up from his phone at me in an odd way that cleared the small smile off my face instantaneously. “How did you know that?” He even pushed himself to the edge of his seat while his eyebrows dropped in a harsh look.
“Vic has photos and stupid awards in his office. Servants of something.”
“That’s enough. You’re released. Playing dumb is better for your health, Abigail. You don’t want to know us.”
The whole exchange pushed me out of the room in a haze of confusion. Was I not supposed to know they went to a prep school? They certainly didn’t go to public with those last names; that much was obvious.
Still reeling from his change in personality at the mention of the school they went to had me wondering if Jus was right. Not about them being Illuminati, but something bigger than us—something we weren’t privileged in knowing—and all the pieces we collected were turning the scales in our direction.
Mafia?
Criminals?
Secret societies?
Illuminati?
There weren't many options when I grabbed my bag and headed for Jus.
ABIGAIL
I couldn’t tell you which drink I swallowed down that had me hellbent on getting the truth to ease my aching mind.
My head pounded, trying to make sense of everything I blissfully ignored for so long. There was no reset button on this kind of stuff. Once the seed was planted, there was no stopping the growth.
I was drunk on theories by my third cocktail as I sat at the bar with Jus by my side. Her chair was swiveled away from me as some handsome guy chatted her up. He was her type, and that wasn’t easy to find. He screamed rock and roll, long hair, and a bad boy with a pretty face and an ugly past.
Toxic city.
Every ex she had that I knew about was flaky and pretentious, and a downright bum—the kind where their “art” mattered more than paying their rent.
It was certainly a very specific type.
Ordering another cocktail, I decided this was controlled damage; the way Khaos had taught me. This drink was the bat and gulping it down was the shattering that my body craved without the spiraling.
My body was buzzing right along with my mind when my mind drifted back to what had me running from home full speed the second I turned 18.
The smothering of religion down my throat from a young age only ramped up when my dad owed money to the wrong people. He thought God would pity him and somehow make money appear, but I knew better. No pity came without a price, and we didn’t have two pennies to rub together for that kind of payment.
One day, a strange man with the same malicious energy came to my school to pick me up in middle school, and I thought my parents were busy or caught up at the restaurant. It wasn’t until later that I learned my life was being used as a threat.
That was the moment in my life I learned what a mask was, how to wear it, how to hide all the feelings, and how important control truly was. To survive that kind of trauma, you had to grow some bad habits—ones that erased the uncomfortable feeling, because now you were armed with defenses.
The memory bounced around in my head and turned my smile upside down, even with the drink in my hand. I knew the ins and outs of that time of my life. I knew exactly how I ended up a control freak. The only thing in my life bullying me for answers was all the secrecy hanging in the air around Grimm.
I never had this kind of desperate need for answers when I worked for Vic. He was just as controlling as I was, and maybe I found some kind of comfort in that, enough to not ask questions. With Grimm, I was taken captive and had nothing but time to sort out how much I didn’t know.