Page 13

Such an essential part of us, the glue, if you will, had been stripped away overnight, and even with the warning beforehand, we weren’t ready. I don’t think anyone can ever truly be ready to lose someone. Especially when it comes to the person who did everything. And I don’t mean grocery shopping and cleaning the house. I mean the person who called in the middle of the night because they had a feeling I’d had a long day and needed to vent. The one who created a shared family calendar with reminders of our dentist appointments and our Great Aunt Tanya’s birthday. The one who would tell us for the umpteenth time how we took our steaks because I always seemed to forget the difference between medium and medium well.

She was the one we all couldn’t do without, and she left. Was stolen.

So for a long while, despite the family surrounding us, life was dark, boring, and lonely. And that’s how it remained.

Until Alexi.

It was my first year as a forensic psychologist, and I was asked to study his behavior and serve as an expert witness on his trial for killing a driver. Somewhere in between the long hours of studying his profile and learning everything there was to know about the alleged crime boss, I found myself fascinated. I wanted to learnmore. The stuff the bureau didn’t have a record of. The dark and gritty. I wanted the bigger picture and the minute details. The man who ruled under his own law. No rules and no consequences.

Something about him made me feel as if I were able to put together his puzzle, I’d achieve professional success. Or, if I’m being completely honest, it might have been that my blooming obsession made mefeelsomething at all for the first time since Mom died.

Either way, that’s when I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Against my better judgment, lost under the intoxication of his psychological profile, I went to one of his clubs. I had a few drinks, started dancing, and my grief began to slip away under the strobe of glowing lights. It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes before a strange heat fell over me, and I let my eyes flicker to the VIP section.

There he was. Alexi Babin.

There, in the middle of the section, women danced around him, guys laughed at his side as if their lives depended on it, while so many other people stood between us. There should have been no way he could see me. But, he did. In fact, despite all the amazingly tempting things happening around him, he only had eyes for me.

Maybe he recognized me from the trial, or he just thought I was hot in a skirt that stopped an inch below my ass, but a thrill ran through me, regardless.

I was there for information. To learn more about the man who everyone feared, including a jury that acquitted him of murder because his fancy lawyer gave a decent speech. But the lines blurred as he beckoned me with the smallest nod of his head.

Something changed when I walked across the club and found myself face to face with the fallen angel. The man with the long dark waves, tattoos that covered more skin than not, and the fucking suspenders that held up an unbuttoned shirt that exposed all the places I wanted to explore with my tongue.

He was terrifying and commanding, and I could smell the danger before the two huge guards parted at his nod.

Looking back, maybe what I truly wanted was to break the rules that I had lived by despite how much I hated them.

Or perhaps I just wanted something more than soft touches and sweet kisses. Someone to drive me to the brink of existence. To take me so far away from the one thing in this world I hadn’t been able to let go of. Even if it was just for a little while, I’d let it be him.

One night.

Just one.

Only that’s not what happened.

Alexi was exactly who I’d thought he’d be and more, and in the best, most depraved, ways.

In the two weeks after, the fire between us burned angry and loud. It was all-consuming and addictive. My days and nights were nothing but him. Him and sex. Mind-blowing, life-altering sex.

And while I never caught feelings for the borderline psychotic narcissist, I did, however, really like, or perhaps the word is appreciate, the way he made me experience somethingbesidesperpetual sadness. With him, I wasn’t drowning in it.

But then he did the inevitable and dropped my ass like a sack of potatoes.

I wouldn’t have even cared if he wasn’t such a fucking asshole about it. It was so bad, actually, that I’d be lying if I didn’t say part of my reason for wanting to put him behind bars isn’t somewhat vindictive.

Nevertheless, the next week, after my anger subsided, I was able to fall back into work. In fact, he gave me a reason to stay off my depression carousel, and that drive came from the desire to put his ass behind bars. It’s been a mission I’ve been on ever since and, for the first time since meeting him, might actually become a possibility.

Glancing at my phone one more time, I check the GPS. The manufacturer is about a thirty-minute drive, so I can easily go during an extended lunch to do a little recon. No one would be the wiser, and if they were, I can always say I caught a bug and had to go home a little early.

Mind made up, I grab my bag and head out of the office. There’s a pep in my step as I leap down the short station stairs, saying hello to the local tabby perched on the railing.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Molly.”

She stops licking her paw for a moment to blink slowly at me.

“I’ll take that as a?—”