Page 32

KLAUS

F or the first time in forever, I wake up feeling at peace.

I’m not covered in sweat. My heart isn’t pounding in my chest. There are no fragments of nightmares in my head.

There’s just peace.

There’s also an angel wrapped around me. Her long hair curls softly on my chest. Her smooth skin is pressed against mine. She feels so right against me that it makes my chest ache.

I reach for a lock of hair and twirl it around my finger.

Early morning sunlight gathers around her, surrounding her like a halo. I don’t know why I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from this girl. I don’t know why I can’t seem to stop touching her.

I sit up in bed.

Even in her sleep, she clings to me. And fuck if it doesn’t do the strangest things to me.

My heart is racing now. Every single muscle in my body protests as I stand, but I barely notice the pain. It doesn’t compare to the bittersweet melancholy that seizes my chest.

A man like me doesn’t deserve a woman like her.

She’s all the things I’m not—pure, sweet, innocent. I’ll only end up tainting her with my darkness if I let her into my world.

As if she can hear my thoughts, she opens her eyes. I’m the first thing she looks at. Her cheeks turn a soft rosy pink as she stares at me.

“It’s so much worse than I thought it would be,” she whispers.

“What?”

“You have bruises on your face,” she says. “They weren’t there last night.”

I glance in the mirror to see that she’s right. My skin is a mosaic of red and purple. One of my eyes is almost swollen shut.

“Does it scare you?” I ask her.

She sits up in bed and clutches the bedsheet to her chest. Her long hair tumbles around her in soft waves. She looks like she holds the answers to everything that’s been haunting me for years.

She shakes her head.

“You don’t scare me,” she says.

“I should,” I say. “You should have run away when you first saw me. You should have never taken the job offer. You should have never looked back.”

The expression on her face doesn’t change as she looks at me.

It’s one of the things about her that scares me the most—how she looks at me like she can see straight through me. Like she knows me better than I know myself.

“I know what it’s like,” she says quietly. “To have an anxious heart. To feel like everything you’re doing is wrong. To feel like nothing will ever be okay again.”

We look at each other for a moment.

This girl is forcing me to look at the ugliest parts of myself. She’s making me confront parts of me that I would rather not think about.

“I never had any peace of mind either,” she says.

“There was always something.Even on my first night here, I received that threatening email. I was so scared then. But when I came out for fresh air, I found you by the pool. You were nothing but rude to me, but still, I was comforted by your presence.”

My chest rises and falls as I stare at her. All I want to do is take her into my arms again. But I’m afraid that if I do that, I’ll never be able to let her go.

“What I’m trying to say is, I’m here for you if you need me,” she says. “You were there for me when I needed someone, and I want to return that favor.”

“I wasn’t doing you a favor,” I say. “I was just thinking about the kids’ safety.”

“If it was just about the kids, you would have gotten a different nanny,” she says.

“Getting a new one was too much work.” I square my shoulders.

We reach a stalemate.

There are no winners or losers in this game. All I need to do now is make sure that what happened last night can never happen again.

“You may leave now,” I say.

She stares at me for a moment.

“Are you really going to be like that?” she asks.

“Last night was a mistake, Emma,” I say. “It was the result of alcohol and a possible head injury.”

She continues staring at me with a blank expression on her face.

“I’ll go wake the kids up,” she says, reaching for her discarded nightgown.

As she slips it over her body, I catch a glimpse of her back. The deep groove of her spine and her creamy skin elicit a pang of desire in me once again. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to act on it.

Without another word, she slips out of the room.

She takes all of the light in the room with her. The glow of last night fades, replaced by cold, hard reality. Even the breath in my lungs feels too cold.

Everything inside me feels so heavy.

Before this emotion can swallow me whole, I call Alaric.

“Dude, it’s the middle of the night,” he groans.

“It’s eight in the morning,” I say.

“What did I say?” he replies.

“Something happened last night,” I say. “I need your help.”

“Hold on,” Alaric says. “Let me get a coffee first. Everything you’re saying sounds like white noise to me right now.”

I drum my fingers against the windowpane as I wait for my friend to properly wake up. I don’t even know how to process the events of last night.

My mind keeps taking me back to Emma’s soft body underneath mine. The way she fit so snugly around me. The way her lips felt so good against mine.

Everything about her feels so right. It’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.

Alaric sighs loudly. I can’t see him, but I know he just had his first sip of coffee.

“Okay, I’m a little more awake now,” he says. “Tell me what happened.”

“I was attacked while driving home last night,” I say.

“You were what?”

“There was a pickup truck coming from the opposite direction. It didn’t have headlights on, so I didn’t see it until it swerved into my lane. It was aiming right for me,” I say.

The details of last night come to me in pieces like a movie.

The totaled car. The ringing in my ears. The shattered glass. The darkness of the night that threatened to swallow me whole.

I thought I was going to die in that collision. But some force made me pull myself out of the wreckage. In that moment when I could barely even breathe, I made myself think of the children. They would be defenseless against the world if I wasn’t there to protect them. They need me.

I tell Alaric the details of the attack.

“I climbed out of the car, and a man was waiting for me. For a moment, I thought he was going to help, but then he started attacking me with a knife. I fought back. He only retreated when he realized I was much stronger than him.”

“You let him get away?” Alaric asks.

“I wasn’t prepared for the attack,” I reply. “He caught me completely off guard.”

“Were you armed?”

“I had a gun in the car, but I didn’t have time to reach for it.”

“Did you recognize him, at least?” Alaric asks.

“No, I’ve never seen that man before in my life,” I say.

“Great. This is great,” he says, sounding more agitated by the second.

“I’m sorry to spring this on you first thing in the morning.”

“I’m mad you didn’t call me when it happened,” he says.

“I...lost track of time,” I say.

My mind takes me back to Emma again. I don’t want to admit it, but it wasn’t until I saw her face that the tension melted from my body. She has a way of making everything better just by existing.

“Did you make it home safe?” he asks.

“Yeah, I had one of my guys pick me up,” I say.

“I still can’t believe you didn’t call me right away,” he says. “Are the injuries bad? Have you seen a doctor yet?”

“I’m perfectly fine, Alaric,” I say. “It was just a few cuts.”

“I’m coming over,” he says.

“Wait, I called because I need your help with something,” I say.

“What do you need help with?”

“So the man who attacked me? I saw his face,” I say. “I saw the mania in his eyes. I don’t know who he was, but he wasn’t just sent by someone. It was personal for him.”

“Personal how?” Alaric asks.

I take a deep breath. “There’s no way for me to know this, but I have a weird hunch that this has to do with Emma.”

“You think he’s her stalker?” Alaric asks.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think right now, man,” I say.

Alaric and I are still investigating Emma’s past. There are no records to follow, so we still don’t know what the stalker looks like. He erased all traces of himself from the internet, so there’s nothing for us to dig up.

But for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that it was he who attacked me.

I recognized the obsession behind his deranged eyes.

"Did you talk to Emma about this?" he asks.

“No, and I don’t plan to.”

“In case you’re forgetting, she’s the only one who knows what this man actually looks like,” Alaric says.

“I know that. I just don’t want to involve her in all this,” I say.

He’s quiet for a moment.

“Did you sleep with her yet?” he asks.

My heart skips a beat. “What?”

“I’ve seen the chemistry between you two,” he says. “Helena and I thought it would only be a matter of time.”

“You and Helena need to find better things to talk about,” I say.

“What can I say? You’re the glue that holds us together, man.”

“Of course.”

“I notice you haven’t answered my question yet. Did you guys do it yet?”

I close my eyes. She’s right there, like she never left. I see her on my bed, with rosy cheeks and parted lips. I was so close to giving in last night. But some voice told me to hold back.

She deserves so much better than I can ever give her.

And even though I never felt this way about a woman before, I know that if I have sex with Emma, I’ll never let her go again.

“I still stand by what I told you before,” he says. “If the attraction is mutual, I think you should sleep with her and get her out of your system, man. Because you’re making this way more complicated than it has to be.”

I ignore his sage advice.

“Can you just look into the stalker?” I ask. “If we dig up anything on him, we might finally get to the bottom of this.”

“Fine,” Alaric sighs.

I say goodbye and hang up before he can give me another lecture.

There’s a soft knock on my door.

I stare at the door. My heart thrashes wildly in my chest as I think about her standing on the other side.

Alaric has a point. The best thing to do in this situation is to try to talk to her about what happened last night.

“Come in,” I say.

I try to hide my disappointment when I see that it’s Helena. She looks as pale as a ghost.

“What’s wrong?” I ask immediately.

“Klaus, I’m only going to ask you this once, so please be honest with me,” she says. “What happened last night?”

“It doesn’t matter, Helena,” I say. “I’m okay now.”

She still looks pained as she watches me. Tears rush to her eyes.

“Someone called early in the morning,” she says.“It sounded like a prank call at first, because the man’s voice was distorted.”

“What did he say?” I ask through gritted teeth.

Helena takes a deep breath. Seeing her in this frazzled state also puts me on edge.

“He said that he’s going to finish what he started. And that you should watch your back,” she says.

“Anything else?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Thank you for informing me, Helena,” I say.

“Who was it?” she asks me.

“I don’t know yet,” I answer truthfully. “But Alaric and I are looking into it, so please don’t worry.”

She looks like she has more to say about this, but doesn’t. It’s not the first time I returned home bruised and bloodied, but it’s the first time Helena is questioning me about it.

I clear my throat. “Until we deal with the situation, it’s best if the kids arehomeschooled for a couple of days.”

She nods and leaves the room. The corridor isn’t empty, though. Emma stands there, looking like she heard every word of our conversation.

“Fantastic,” I say.

“Who called the house this morning?” she questions.

I try not to notice all these little things about her—like how luminous her skin looks in the sunlight or how the scent of cupcakes lingers playfully in the air.

“I don’t know,” I say.

She narrows her eyes at me. “But you have a suspicion about who it is.”

She’s always had an uncanny ability to see right through me.

Alaric’s words play in my head. It’s the last thing I want to do right now, but it’s better if we get this conversation over with.

“Actually, I need to have a word with you,” I say.

Because I cannot be trusted to be alone in a room with this girl, I meet her in the corridor and close my bedroom door behind me.

She stares up at me with those big doe eyes.

All of the words dry up in my mouth. Just looking at her makes me lose track of all thought.

“What did you want to talk about?” Her husky voice and cupcake scent only makes me want to pull her closer. It makes me think about the way my come was leaking out of her pretty little pussy last night.

I glance down the corridor. It’s empty, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to talk here.

The walls have ears.

I can’t ask her about her stalker. Not yet.

“The kids will be homeschooled for the next few days,” I say. “I’ve already arranged for the tutors to come here. I wanted to let you know about that.”

“Um, yeah, I heard you telling Helena,” she says.

“Also, the kids shouldn’t be allowed to leave the premises under any circumstances.”

Her eyes widen. “But today is Halloween.”

“And?”

“The kids have been looking forward to this day for weeks,” she says. “I told them they could go trick or treating in the neighborhood.”

“Tell them that there’s been a change of plan,” I say.

“It’s going to break their hearts. They have their costumes ready and everything,” she says.

She looks genuinely distraught by the news.

“They’ve had greater disappointments in life. They’ll get over it,” I say.

“How can you say that?” she remarks.

“It’s just a silly holiday,” I say. “It doesn’t mean anything in the long run.”

“I disagree,” she says, shaking her head. “These small things are what the kids look forward to the most. It’s what they’ll remember most about their childhood.”

My heart starts to beat harder. I think it’s sweet that she’slooking out for the kids like this. All of the staff members I have under my payroll take care of the kids’ basic needs and protection, but I don’t remember the last time they did something just to make the kids happy.

“It’s not my problem,” I say. “Figure out something else. I don’t care what it is as long as it’s done within the premises.”

She purses her lips and nods.

“And don’t eavesdrop on private conversations,” I add. “My personal life is none of your business."

“Okay,” she says, glancing down at the floor.

It’s better that she hates me. It’s better if there’s distance between us that can’t ever be bridged.

I just need to make sure that it stays this way.