Page 95 of Executing Malice

I start from the moment he smacked my car with his door and played stupid. I accidentally forget to mention where I stabbed his tires and skip right over to him confronting me about them because there’s a good chance he will tell Reed and I won’t get in trouble for hiding anything.

“Did you?” Reed cuts me off with his cop face.

I pluck up the flowers and chuck them into the bin. Then, I take an unnecessary amount of time dabbing the damp stains with a tissue.

“Of course not,” I grumble. “How would I even do something like that?”

Reed is watching me when I hazard a glance in his direction. “Leila.”

I spear my hips with both fists. “Reed?” I shoot back.

“Fuck me,” he groans, rubbing a palm over his face. “What’s wrong with you?”

I’m a bit offended by his lack of trust. His immediate assumption that I’m to blame.

“Are you ignoring the part where he purposefully slammed his door—”

“Then you come to me and I deal with him. Do you realize how hard you made this on yourself?”

“He can’t prove anything.”

Reed sighs and shakes his head. “Stay away from him.”

The unnecessary statement has me staring at him, dumbfounded. “I’m not the one who keeps showing up at his job, Reed.”

He simply shakes his head, the end of his pen adding to his disappointment with every rap on his pad.

After what feels like a million years, he exhales and looks away. “Just stay away from him. I’ll fix this.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him again that I didn’t do anything, but he’s already stalking from the bank and I’m left standing here feeling like a chastised child.

It hurts.

His disbelief. His refusal to believe me. Yes, I may have been the one to escalate the situation, but he started it. Maybe Reed is right and I should have gone to him instead of retaliating, but I wasn’t thinking in the moment. I let my temper get the better of me and that’s on me.

But none of that matters.

Dante is still missing and Reed is too pissed at me to listen. Plus, Dante isn’t a child. He would need to be missing for twenty-four hours before Reed can even do anything. Most likely, I’ll be told he probably got what he wanted and left me, which I know isn’t true. If Dante doesn’t come back, it’s because the Lady’s Tea Garden did something to him.

I’ll kill them.

It’s not even a question.

If they hurt him, or scared him off, I will hunt each of them down one at a time. I’ll peel their skin off with a potato peeler, fry each strip and feed it to them. I’ll keep them alive and make them cut pieces off each other until there’s nothing left but chunks of severed meat. They think they can keep doing this,hurting people to maintain some prehistoric belief, well, they picked the wrong man.

I pace to the windows and stand watching the road, thumb nail caught between my teeth. All moments from earlier have left my mind like I wasn’t held temporarily hostage at the bank by a lunatic with a God complex. In my mind, he means less than getting bitten by a mosquito. Irritating, but forgettable. Only thing that matters now is finding Dante.

I’m ready to grab my bag, get into my car and drive all over Jefferson until I find a man on a bike when I hear it. The faint growl of machine. The shriek of tires on asphalt.

My heart is in my throat before I even wrench open the door and tumble out onto the sidewalk. It cracks against my ribs, a persistent hammering of excitement that only increases when I spot him turning down Church Avenue. Big and dark, and beautifully in one piece.

I don’t wait for him to cut the engine.

I don’t check for incoming cars.

I’m not worried about leaving the bank open and unattended as I sprint the distance like I’ve known this man my entire life. Like it’s perfectly normal to be this scared over a complete stranger.

He barely gets his helmet off when I throw my arms around him.