The warmth of the house is anything but calming. It’s too eerie. Too quiet. I barely hold onto the banister as I fly up the stairs, terrified I’ve played into this fucker’s hand. That he outsmarted me. That he came back for her. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know how he got in here. All I know is that he was here, and he was going to kill her.
I don’t stop moving until I’m upstairs. I just need her here, I need her to be safe.
“Jules!” I cry out before I shove the bedroom door open.
“Mason,” she whimpers. She’s worried and terrified, but she runs straight to me, burying her head in my chest and clinging to me.
“Thank fuck,” I whisper into her hair, holding on to her just as tight. Her chest meets mine and she’s pressed against me like she can’t get close enough. I stroke her damp hair with my cheek, leaving soft kisses and rubbing her back over and over.
She’s okay. Thank fuck she’s here. I close my eyes, but the moment I do, the fucker’s face flashes into my mind.
Who is he? And why the fuck was he here?
The answers come easily, making my grip on Jules tighten.
A hitman. Here to kill. Because he was hired to do just that.
“My father is a dead man.” It’s all I can say. “I’ll kill him for this.” My throat scratches with a rawness of pain that touches the very marrow of my bones. Jules pulls away from me, sniffling and looking up at me with a look I can’t make out in her eyes.
She doesn’t answer for the longest time, just staring back at me as I slowly catch my breath. I’m so sorry, Jules. The apology is trapped at the back of my throat.
“He had this.” Jules breaks the moment with her weakly spoken words. She holds out what she found and a chill sweeps over me. A syringe. “It fell on the floor when,” she says and pauses, clearing her throat, then tucks her hair behind her ears, looking past me to the last bedroom. She swallows, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and taking a step away before finishing her statement. “When you were on him.”
She doesn’t look at me, she continues to back away, moving farther into the master bedroom and I follow until the back of her knees hit the bed and she sits on the edge. Is she angry with me? I miss her warmth immediately, my knuckles pulsing with pain at the memory of beating the piss out of the man who would have killed her.
“I had to, Jules.”
Her eyes rip away from the ground and she stares into my own. “I know,” she whispers, but the pain and sadness in her eyes won’t go away. My chest rises with a heavy breath. I don’t understand her reaction.
I close my fist around the syringe as I take a step closer to her. She doesn’t pull away, not even when I cup her chin in my hand. “Are you okay?” I ask, staring deep into her eyes.
She nods her head and pushes her cheek into my palm. My worry leaves me when she leans into me, covering my hand with her own and closing her eyes.
“Mason,” she whispers in a pained voice and it breaks my heart.
I bend down to hold her, to embrace her and tell her that everything’s going to be all right. It’ll never happen again.
As I get closer to her, my cell phone goes off in my back pocket.
She bites down on her lip as I rest my forehead against hers, hating that I’m being pulled away from her. I take it out from my back pocket only to silence it, to give her my full attention and make sure she knows she’s safe, but I see it’s my father.
“Stay here,” I tell her softly.
“Where are you going?” she asks as she reaches out for me, grabbing my hand as if I’m leaving her alone in hell.
“Just downstairs,” I say, letting go of her hand but not before kissing her knuckles. They’re soft and undamaged, unlike my own. I look over my shoulder at her as I answer the phone and pass through the bedroom door.
“Hello,” I say coldly as I shut the door and take each step of the stairs carefully. The thuds of my feet are in time with the beating of my heart, slow and meticulous.
“Mason, I have the numbers and it’s going to be rough,” my father says and doesn’t wait for me to reply. He’s in full-on business mode. As if I would buy that and this isn’t damage control.
The click is loud as I lock the front door. I’m barely listening to the man ramble on the other end. He’s an idiot if he thinks for one moment this call will fool me.
Dragging out the chair at the head of my dining room table, I stare at the front door, my eyes focused on the lock before flicking over to the stairs.
I can’t fucking calm down being so far away from her.
She’s safe, I tell myself repeatedly.
“Stop,” I say into the phone, halting my father midsentence. “Do you think I don’t know it was you?” My tone is menacing.
“What was me? Are you still on about the… incident?”
Rage pushes down the accusations.
“You have something and I have something. I’ll be damned if you’re going to screw me on this deal, Mason. Think with your fucking head for once!” He scolds me like he used to, his anger on full display. “I thought we had a deal after I let her walk out with you. Was the understanding not clear?” There’s silence after the unspoken threat.
“Attempting to have her murdered is a part of your deal?” I ask him evenly, although my pulse betrays any calmness I attempt to maintain.
“Jesus Christ, Mason! Why won’t you get over it?”
“So you wouldn’t hurt her? You wouldn’t threaten her life?” The recent events play in my vision as the syringe in my hand taps back and forth on the table.
He snuck in. He had a syringe. He had a gun but didn’t use it.
“I meant to scare her. But I…” he trails off and the strength leaves my father’s voice. “I made a mistake before and maybe I am a little heavy handed, but whatever she was going to say, she didn’t. You can’t be angry with me for that.”
“The hell I can’t. And if you ever hurt her, I’ll kill you.” I don’t bother mincing my words; we’re well past thinly veiled threats. “If anything happens to her,” I say as my blood runs cold as I swallow thickly before continuing, “I’ll kill you myself.”
All I can hear on the other line is a long exhale. “You control her, Mason,” my father says and continues with business. He carries on like this conversation didn’t include a threat to his life. All the while, I stare at the sharp silver needle of the syringe.
If my father didn’t do this, who did?
“Something happened.” My throat dries up and I lean forward, hating that I’m relying on him. Hating that I’m in such deep shit I can’t get out myself. I take in a heavy breath before saying, “Someone came here.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Where’s here? Your home?”
“Yes, someone broke in; I don’t know how. Someone with a gun and he tried—”
“Are you all right?” my father asks, not letting me finish, and he sounds genuinely concerned.
“I’ll be all right when he’s dead,” I answer him coldly, and it’s the truth. “And if I find out you had anything to do with it—”