Inked by the Devil

Chapter 9 -- More Than a Deal

He was outside because he'd never left.

That was the part I kept coming back to, in the hours after. He'd watched me pack a bag and take a cab to my studio, and instead of going back to his life — which was what the arrangement allowed for, which was what made sense — he'd followed at a distance and parked on the street and waited.

He didn't explain this. When I asked, later, he said: "I had a feeling." As if that were a complete answer.

I decided not to press it.

***

The man in the doorway had a knife and an agenda and exactly thirty seconds before Damien came through the back entrance with two Iron Cross members behind him.

I had a gash on my forearm — not deep, not dangerous, the kind that looked worse than it was in the immediate bloody aftermath and better than expected once it was cleaned. I'd caught the edge of the blade moving backward in the dark. The man hadn't meant for me specifically. I gathered that much from the fragments of conversation I caught in the following chaos.

I gathered the rest from Damien's face.

I'd never seen him afraid before. Not like this. The controlled stillness that was his default had cracked open and underneath it was something raw — a man who had not been in time, not quite, and knew it.

He sat on the workbench beside me while one of his people dressed the wound and he didn't speak and he didn't look away from me once. His jaw was set. His hands, resting on his knees, were still — but the kind of still that was fighting very hard to be still.

"I'm fine," I said.

"I know."

"It's a surface cut."

"I know."

"Damien."

He looked at me.

"Stop looking at me like I died."

Something moved through his face. He looked down. Looked back up.

"They were sent as a message," he said. "To me. You were — collateral. The people who are watching me know about the arrangement. They thought—" He stopped. "They miscalculated what you were to me."

The room went very quiet.

I held his gaze for a moment. Then I looked at my arm, at the clean white bandage, at my own hands which were steady in the way hands only are when adrenaline finishes burning.

***

"The contract is three months," I said.

"I know."

"We have six weeks left."

"I know."

A long silence. The Iron Cross people had moved away, giving us space, or giving themselves an excuse to stop witnessing.

"I'm going to fix this," he said. "The people who sent him — it's a matter I can resolve."

"That's not what I was going to say."

He looked at me.

"Six weeks," I said. "And then what?"

The question landed in the space between us and sat there. He didn't answer immediately. He looked at me with an expression I'd been trying to name for weeks — something that had started as careful neutrality and somewhere along the way had become something else entirely.

"What do you mean?" he said. His voice was very quiet.

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

Because the truth was I didn't know what I meant. Or rather — I knew exactly what I meant, and saying it out loud would make it real, and I wasn't ready for it to be real yet.

So I looked at my bandaged arm instead, and I said:

"Never mind. It's late."

He didn't push. He never pushed — I'd noticed that about him early, the way he waited rather than pressed, gave space rather than filled it. It was either very patient or very wise or both.

I lay down on the studio couch at four in the morning and stared at the ceiling and thought about a question I'd asked and then taken back.

I thought about what his answer might have been.

I thought about it for a very long time.

#Vote#