I don’t wait for her to answer before I rub my thumb along her collarbone.
Sure enough, her brown makeup transfers onto the pad of my thumb and reveals a nasty purple scrape that’s still healing. Another injury from her attack. One that must’ve been concealed by the hoodie she’d been wearing the day I’d gone over to her apartment.
But that’s not all—as I grab her by the hips to move her off my lap, I notice something else that’s been hidden away. Last time by the yoga pants she wore and tonight by the cocktail dress.
Her knees are scrapped up and bruised. Even now, they’re still healing.
Once again, my expertise on injuries comes into play. I’ve inflicted and sustained enough in my lifetime to know what’s what. This level of bruising on her knees tells me she was badly injured on a rough, sharp surface, like gravel. She was on her knees long enough for that rough surface to dig into her skin and create such deep bruises.
“Phi, what the fuck is this?” I growl, my hand pushing up the hem of her dress and exposing her legs. My gaze turns deadly, darkening with the bloodlust that’s simmering in my veins at any given time.
Now I know she’s been lying to me. She said some guy hit her and tried to run off with her purse at the subway station on Fifth and Warring. She’d never mentioned anything about a fall, or any big scrape on her collarbone. Where did these injuries come from?
On top of the ones she’d had on her face.
She shifts to get off my lap, but I hold her in place. “Jon, I told you. The guy hit me at the station and ran off. I fell. Bruises happen when you do.”
Bullshit.
She’s unraveling before me even as she tries to lie. Her voice goes quiet and her eyes grow watery. Her brows knit together and she worries her bottom lip, like she’s trying so hard to keep whatever it is inside.
I give her a shake. “Phi, I know when you’re lying. You weren’t mugged at the station, were you?”
Slowly, she shakes her head, her breathing shallow again. “I was just trying to get home after work. I was just a couple buildings away, but there was this guy on a stoop. He followed me and he… he…”
A coldness blows through my lungs. I know what it is before she even utters the words.
My worst fucking nightmare realized.
9. salvatore
We sneakout of the Fuel the Child charity dinner and go straight to Delphine’s apartment. Stitches and the rest of the men I have with me wait outside at different security points around her building while I wander her living room and avoid the accusatory stare of her cats.
The only noise in the apartment comes from the heavy stream of water in the bathroom. As soon as we made it to her place, Delphine said she was going to shower and change. I suspect she wants to use the time to recover from her drunken revelation.
She hasn’t looked me in the eye since. We sat in silence the entire drive from the Northam City Bank building to her high-rise apartment.
Probably because she hates me for showing up in her life. She didn’t want me anywhere near her, yet I’ve reappeared anyway. In her view, I’m an inconvenience. A stain on her otherwise perfect life.
Even worse, not only have I shown up again, I’ve learned a secret she clearly wanted to keep hidden.
I play it cool as I listen to the shower’s heavy stream. I walk around her apartment admiring the books on her wall shelves and making note of other personal touches like the soy candles that smell of lavender and the cat posts situated at strategic spots in the room. An old DVD copy ofCarmen Jonesrests on top of her blue-ray player.
Her vintage cinema favorites haven’t changed. Funny, fifteen-year-old her and thirty-year-old her agree on them.
But try as I might to distract myself with the little knickknacks of her personal space, I’m unsuccessful. I’m barely able to concentrate on anything except how badly I want to find the degenerate piece of shit who hurt her.
Delphine’s been a target in criminal circles for some time now. As the daughter of hardass District Attorney Ernest Adams, she was already an enemy in the eyes of many, even before she took up a job as an ADA.
Once she started locking away guys off the street? It’s been a constant.
My reach is far and wide. I’ve risen up the Mancino ranks over the last decade, earning enough pull to look after her even from South Valley where my operation was. It’s gotten a lot harder in recent months to field the threats and security risks.
I didn’t blackmail Lucius for a transfer back to Northam for nothing. I wanted to keep a closer eye on Delphine (among other reasons like my next move to destroy him). Yet the moment there was an oversight and her security was gone, she was attacked.
This tells me it’s so much worse than even I thought.
Northam is no stranger to crime. Homicides, rapes, and robberies happen every day and night to countless innocent citizens around the city. Little has been done about it by city officials except the few good ones like Delphine. But while her attacker could be some random trash off the street, it feels more like a calculated move by a crime family or street gang.