Page 37 of Carved Obsession (The Sanctum Syndicate #4)

“Y-you would do that? For me?” She’s taken aback, gaze wide and starry-eyed.

I nod, the words somehow too heavy to be spoken. Admission of my possessiveness over her is too difficult. But it’s here, scratching beneath the surface, begging to crowd her against the wall completely and fuck her yet again.

“He’s not worth the muscle strain. Once the divorce is done, he’ll be out of my life,” she says. “Then he can live happily ever after with my former best friend while I mind my own business far away from them.”

“He fucked your best friend?” That is low.

She nods, a hint of sadness clouding her gaze.

“He didn’t just fuck her. He had an affair. Someone like me doesn’t make friends easily. But she and I clicked long ago, when we were teenagers. Anyway, it’s all dust in the wind now.”

It isn’t, though. The hurt still brims in her eyes, her emotions a pain-filled shield she’s throwing around her.

“Why isn’t he granting you the divorce?” I ask.

Rolling her eyes, she sighs. “He’s blackmailing me.”

“All the more reason for me to kill him. What is he blackmailing you with?”

“Jewels.”

I frown, but something clicks into place. “This has to do with your business, doesn’t it? Like whatever you were doing tonight.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you normally steal? Why your stepmother owns a jewelry store?”

“Normally, but not always,” she says.

“You didn’t steal jewelry tonight,” I acknowledge, already knowing the answer.

That mad grin returns to her soft lips, eyes narrowing in mischief as she shakes her head.

“Is it in that briefcase you insisted on taking out of your car?” I ask, intrigued to see the famous dagger.

“No. And thank you for reminding me of my lovely Agatha. My poor, precious girl.”

I cock an eyebrow. “Agatha?”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl—my car. God, I’m gonna miss her.”

She’s so fucking strange. And I want her even more for it. But sadness taints her eyes, and there’s something fascinatingly tragic about it. It makes me want to fix everything for her and make sure that wretched emotion never shares the same atmosphere as her.

“What did you do with the dagger, then?” I’m intrigued, but I also want to distract her from the car she’s clearly very sad about.

“Donated it to a museum,” she says with a wide, proud grin. “Slid it into their mailbox with a note. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Wayne not only finds out his precious conquest was taken from him, but that it magically appeared in a museum and he can’t do anything about it.”

Soft wrinkles crease the skin around her eyes, alongside the pure joy shining in them, and I’m...enthralled.

“Impressive.”

That timid smile returns, and I can’t help but wonder if, in this growing darkness, I’m missing flushed cheeks too.

“What’s in the briefcase, then?”

“My laptop.” She shrugs.

“Wait. Is it satellite?”

She shakes her head. “We wouldn’t be here if it was. Just a standard laptop, I’m afraid, but I do some of my best coding work on it and I don’t want to lose it.”

Fair enough. I should be disappointed, but I think I’d be pissed if anyone dared to save us right now.

“How did you hone these skills?” I ask. “I’m not saying coding and hacking are difficult, but still. I have a feeling it’s not a skill passed on from your father.”

“You’d be surprised by the things he’s passed on to me. I joined his business, not the other way around.”

Clever way of avoiding a straight answer. But I have time, and it seems that nothing excites me more now than discovering this woman.

With the tips of my fingers, I draw lazy circles over the velvety skin of her back as she carries on telling me her life story, filled with intentional gaps she carefully skirts around. Enough time passes as we talk that I have to add wood to the fire.

I thought we would be dead asleep by now, but I can’t stop asking questions and she’s had no issue answering them.

I’ve learned that she’s been doing this for about eight years, but she trained long before that. Jewelry is officially their primary business. The unofficial endeavor revolves around stealing art, contraband being her favorite, with its poetic justice.

I also found out that after she broke into my car, she went up a building via the fire escape, walked over the connected roofs of a couple other buildings, then went inside and disappeared via a ride she booked. Finally, an answer to that mystery.

Her father has been at this for the better part of three decades, and the fact that he’s still here, having never seen the inside of a cell, is fascinating.

“We’re not perfect, Carter. Yes, we’ve never been caught or found, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t come close.” She shrugs. “I think the worst was when we were claiming a Dubois painting a couple of years back. A small portrait called ‘Daydreams in G Minor’ of—”

“His wife playing the violin.” I finish the sentence, wide eyed. “I can’t believe that was you.”

“You heard of the heist.”

“Heard of it? Love, you stole it before I had a chance to buy it off of Grange.”

She bursts out laughing. A loud, full-belly cackle that shows zero remorse.

“Now that’s irony,” she says, snickering. “I heard he had a buyer, so I decided to move in before the transaction. Didn’t know it was you. Apologies, dear sir. Did you want it for yourself?”

“I’m a collector.” I nod, refusing to reveal more. Like my frustration over that painting.

“Oh, I know you are. Been to your place. Remember?” she teases.

And it works. I’m thoroughly teased and willing for more.

“It’s not fair, though,” she continues. “You know so much about me, yet you haven’t revealed anything about you.”

“Fair? Kitten, you should know plenty. You’ve been watching me for a while. Actually, for how long have you known it was me in the alley?”

“Pretty much since I saw you, but I confirmed it the next day. I knew already you were part of The Sanctum, but you’re certainly the only one who dresses dapper, and with such attention to detail. You weren’t hard to pinpoint.”

Fuck, it’s even worse than I thought. She’s known the entire time, and I’ve been thoroughly in the dark.

“Then you’ve had plenty of time to do your research,” I argue.

Scarlet scoffs, smirking as she shakes her head. “You and I both know that you are more than capable of controlling the information present online. I only saw what you wanted people to see. Yes, fair enough, I got into Metamorphosis and...saw plenty in there.”

I recoil slightly. Plenty? What the fuck does that mean?

“I have indeed researched deeper, and my skills allowed me better access, but...I haven’t scratched the surface. And I would like to carve right into it and learn just who you are. Give me something good. Personal. Vulnerable. ”

Her request lands like a challenge. She knows by now I don’t do personal.

I certainly don’t do vulnerable. But she holds my gaze in a vise that tightens somewhere behind my ribs, prying open all those things the creature that lives there chews on every single day of my life.

She wants them out, and I can’t think of anything worse.

She’ll run away.

She’ll hide from me.

And I’ll lose her before I truly figure out how I can have her. Protect her from me. Keep her.

“The violin you stole from me is called ‘The Crimson Violin.’ It’s the most precious thing I own. I would kill for it.”

She narrows her eyes, expression falling gently from amusement to slight worry.

“Does that mean that you still want to kill me?” she murmurs.

The answers spill inside my mind before her sentence is finished. Voicing it wouldn’t scare her—but it scares me. Because I wouldn’t kill her. I would kill for her .

It’s too soon.

Too fast.

Too much.

Strains grip my chest, deep beneath my ribs, twisting and churning, fluttering lower around muscles, sinews, and hollow parts of my abdomen. A peculiar physical reaction to a sensation that has been blooming viciously in the intangible parts of me.

“I expect you haven’t damaged it, and you will return it to me. So, no. I do not want to kill you anymore, Scarlet.”

Her gaze brightens, and the quirk of a smile softens her features and relaxes her.

“If it’s so precious, how come you don’t display it in a case? Keep it safer?”

“The true crime would be to own but not play her. I couldn’t do it to her. Not after what she’s been through.”

“She . . .” Scarlet whispers.

“You’ve never heard of it, have you?”

She shakes her head slowly.

“It is said her owner was a masterful violinist. Back in a time when women were considered inept for such artistic endeavors, and limited to singing, she prevailed. Society tried endlessly to reject her, but she didn’t care.

She continued to play for herself and whoever came to hear her song.

Her husband adored her. Cherished every part of her and encouraged her talent.

But as with every old story, or legend, tragedy strikes.

Their house was broken into, the violinist was attacked and murdered, and her husband was powerless to stop it.

Her blood was spilled all over her precious violin.

Filled with pain and fresh grief, he began wiping it off, only the well-used instrument had lost so much of its lacquer that bare wood covered much of it. ”

“Oh my god . . .” Scarlet whispers, transfixed.

“Yes. It’s stained with her blood. He added more when his morbid inspiration struck. Rubbed it in until most of the violin turned crimson. He even sanded the remaining lacquered areas and stained it there too.”

“That’s why it looks almost patchy. Weathered.”

“And that’s why I and many others refer to her as a ‘she.’ She’s not the best Stradivarius out there, nor the most famous, but she is the most tragic. And not playing it would be even worse.”

Scarlet nods, sadness brimming in her eyes as she looks down, drifting thoughts likely taking her to that love so tragically lost.

“What happened to him? To the husband?” she asks.

“He fell deep into his own art afterward. His style changed and twisted. Became raw and dark. From realistic, vivid, and soft paintings, he fell into the clutches of the morbid chiaroscuro.”

“Wait a damn minute!”

I smirk, seeing the understanding in her widening gaze.

“Holy fuck.” She rises to sit, blankets falling off her naked body now bathed in the warm hues of the fire.

I can’t help myself. I reach over and drag a finger from the base of her neck, following a slow path between her breasts, and stop right above her navel.

“Yes, kitten.” I confirm her loud thoughts. “ She is Veralin Dubois. The painter’s wife.”

“Oh, god.” She crashes back to the bed, and I cover her with the blankets as the sadness takes full control of her beautiful features. She curls into me, naked body flush against mine as she grieves their story. “I can’t fathom such raw loss. The agony he must have felt. The violin...”

“I know.” I pinch her chin between my thumb and finger and bring her attention to me, peppering kisses over her soft lips. “But he immortalized her into the centuries. Carried her memory well beyond their deaths.”

Scarlet smiles gently, making her look much younger, softer, so much more delicate and in need of protection. My protection.

“Now tell me, kitten. What’s one of the most precious things you own?” I attempt distraction, and it seems to work as she giggles.

“An almost complete triceratops skeleton.”

My mouth falls open, eyes straining as I wait for her to tell me she’s fucking with me.

But it never comes.

“You’re serious,” I whisper.

“Yup!”

A ray of fucking sunshine stares back at me.

“It’s a beautiful specimen.” She shifts and settles on her back. “My pride and joy, standing at just over eight feet tall. I bought her a couple years back, and she’s currently in storage until I get my own place, fit for her.”

“It does sound like she should be displayed,” I agree.

Though, when I see her like this, starry-eyed, daydreaming of things she loves, I would agree with my own murder just to keep her in this state.

I’m so thoroughly fucked, my world is spinning.

“It would look mighty pretty in the center of that great big church of yours, stained-glass sunshine raining down on it,” Scarlet says, laughing.

The whimsical sound shoots straight to my cock.

“I didn’t mean—” She covers her mouth, eyes widening in horror.

“I didn’t suggest living there or...I know this is only one night and—oh god.

” She pulls the blanket over her head in clear mortification.

But the surprise she sees in my eyes is not what she thinks it is. Because that might not have been what she was suggesting, but fuck if Scarlet wouldn’t look mighty pretty in that great big church of mine.

For the first time, the solitude I’ve always thrived in doesn’t feel as attractive anymore.