Page 4

KLAUS

A woman in red-soled stilettos twirls around the pole. Her long hair trails behind her like a dark halo. Her movements are fluid and graceful, like the laws of gravity don’t apply to her.

I’m looking at her, but I see someone else.

Emma Turner haunts my head like a long-forgotten melody I forgot the lyrics of. She has infiltrated every corner of my mind and taken control of all my senses.

I swear that I can even smell her here.

Cupcakes .

It was a scent that reminded me of childhood. Of a simpler time when I was actually happy.

I don’t know how she did it, but the girl sank her claws into me. She infected me with her poison, and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.

“How are you already in a terrible mood?” A man places his drink down in front of me.

I stand to greet Alaric, my oldest friend. We grew up across the street from each other, and he’s basically like a brother to me.

“What took you so long?” I ask.

“Calm down. I know you got here like nine minutes ago,” he says.

“How do you know that?” I glare at him. That’s an oddly specific number, and he’s not wrong.

“I know everything.” He wiggles his eyebrows. He points at the open bar in the distance. “I was standing over there.”

“Doing what exactly?”

“Arranging a little something special for you,” he replies with a coy smile.

“Alaric—”

“Consider it an early birthday gift,” he says.

“My birthday isn’t until December,” I say.

“Yes, I’m aware. That’s why I said it’s an early birthday gift.”

“It better not be?—”

Out of my peripheral vision, I see a tall woman sauntering toward me. She’s wearing a red pendant, which tells me that she’s open to all levels of BDSM.

“She’s all yours for the night,” Alaric says.

I glare at him. “Seriously?”

“I just worry about you, okay? You’re so tightly wound, and I can tell it’s taking a toll on you.”

“Send her away.”

He sighs in defeat and shakes his head at the girl. She hesitates for a moment before walking away.

I take a slow sip of my drink.

“Besides, if I wanted a woman, I wouldn’t need your help getting one,” I say.

“Dude, be for real.” He scoffs. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even leave your house.”

“And I’m already starting to regret it,” I say, swirling my drink in the tumbler.

Heat crawls around my neck and stays there.

I feel Alaric watching me.

He’s my best friend, but he doesn’t know the half of it. He doesn’t know about the turmoil that exists inside me. He doesn’t know that in my head, the war never really ended. If anything, it’s worse than ever.

“I’m sorry, okay?” he says. “I just thought that it would help. I was on the phone with Helena earlier, and she told me about the nanny situation.”

I exhale slowly.

I don’t know why I thought leaving the house tonight would be a good idea. I thought some fresh air and a change of scenery would help, but I’m feeling more vexed than before.

“It’s complicated,” I say.

“I’m sure I can keep up,” he replies.

“Having a nanny means sharing the roof with a stranger. She’ll be a part of my life, whether I like it or not. And I simply can’t afford to have someone I don’t trust.”

“Trust is something that’s built over time, though,” Alaric counters.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Are you just going to lecture me all night? If so, I’ll just leave now.”

“It’s because of Harper, isn’t it?” he says.

The name makes my blood freeze. Harper was the previous nanny I hired for the kids.

I glance around our surroundings.

“I told you to never bring up her name again,” I snap.

“Right, sorry.”

Alaric’s eyes glimmer with concern. He’s an easygoing guy for the most part, but I know he worries about me. He wants the version of me that he knew before the war. But I don’t think I’ll ever be that person again, even if I wanted.

Something fundamental in me changed over the years. The innocence of youth was replaced by cynicism.

I’ve been rotting from the inside out, and I’m the only one who knows.

I clear my throat. “What were you doing gossiping with Helena anyway?”

“We like to keep in touch,” he says vaguely.

“And what do you two talk about?” I ask.

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Klaus,” he says, watching me from the corner of his eye. “But incidentally, you happen to be our favorite topic of discussion.”

“I knew it,” I mumble.

A girl passes by our table. She’s wearing a light green pendant, indicating she’s into voyeurism. She eyes Alaric as she walks by, but he doesn’t even look at her.

He likes to give me a hard time, but my dear friend is a hypocrite. As far as I know, he’s never been with any of the girls here either.

Many of the regulars at Elysium come here for the girls and the camaraderie. They come to wind down and relax. But Alaric and I come for the privacy.

It’s one of the only places in town where we can have private conversations without worrying about eavesdropping.

“There was a meeting earlier today,” Alaric says, his voice dropping to a whisper.

The music drowns out his words as soon as they leave his mouth. The only reason I even hear him is because I’m sitting right next to him.

“There’s a new case.” His eyes dart around our surroundings, cataloging everyone in sight. “It’s about elephants.”

I narrow my eyes at him, sure that I misheard him.

“Did you just say elephants?” I ask.

He nods, looking dead serious.

I wait for him to elaborate because that must be code for something.

“Poaching,” he explains. “There’s a new syndicate that’s poaching elephants in various countries for ivory.”

“Oh wow, it actually is about elephants,” I say.

“Yes, I just told you,” he says. “Are you not listening?”

I clear my throat. “It…sounds different from the usual cases.”

Alaric is part of the Resistance. As one of the brothers in the Resistance, he tackles global issues that even top government organizations turn a blind eye to. I’m not officially a part of their group, but I work with them as a consultant.

“The mass killing of elephants has disastrous complications on the entire ecosystem,” he says. “These actions add up over time, man.”

Alaric is a good person. He’s a much better man than I will ever be.He cares about things like wildlife conservation and climate change.

And I can tell from the look on his face that this has rattled him.

“How does this syndicate operate?” I ask.

“They’re recruiting local poachers in Africa and Asia. The syndicate itself hasn’t left a trace, but there have been a lot of hit-and-run kills over the past few weeks. They kill as many elephants as possible in a short amount of time and collect the tusks before evading the crime scene.”

“Aren’t there laws in place to protect the wildlife?” I ask.

“There are, but this is a meticulously organized plan.”

“Do we know who’s behind it?”

“We suspect that it’s the Yakuza,” he says.

“There’s a small Japanese family called the Tatsunami.

They accumulated sudden wealth and power in the past few years.

The drugs and weapons trade is saturated in their region, so they turned to other venues instead.

And if they continue with this, it will wreak complete havoc on the ecosystem. ”

“What’s the plan of action?” I ask.

“Right now, the only thing we can do is wait and see,” he says. “We suspect there will be another strike soon, so we’re watching the territories.”

I take a deep breath. Many of the cases that the Resistance take up don’t have simple solutions. If it were that simple, the governments would have done something about it.

That was why the Resistance was born.

They believe in taking an eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life.

Like the criminals who think they can get away with anything, the members of the Resistance don’t shy away from getting blood on their hands. Their justice system doesn’t shy away from violence.

I look at Alaric.

There’s a reason animal conservation is so close to his heart. And it’s not just because he has more empathy than me.

“Hey,” I say.

He glances over at me.

“If anyone can put an end to this, it’s you,” I say.

“It’s just such a helpless feeling. Like I’m just waiting for something to happen,” he says.

“Tell me about it.”

Alaric’s eyes widen. “Man, I didn’t mean?—”

“I know,” I reply quietly.

There’s one more case that the Resistance is looking into—the car accident that involved my sister and brother-in-law. The one that turned my life into a living nightmare.

We still don’t know who was behind it.

All we know is that it wasn’t an accident.

The two of us sit in heavy silence for a while, lost in our thoughts. Thinking too hard about the past or the future is suffocating, but it’s always a little earlier for me to breathe when I have Alaric beside me.

“I met a girl today,” I tell him.

He raises his eyebrows.

“Her name is Emma Turner,” I say. “She was one of the candidates for the nanny position. She was perfect for the job.”

“You turned her down?” he asks even though he already knows the answer.

“There was something about her,” I say. “I don’t know what it was, but I’ve never felt this way about another person. I just knew that there was no way I could let her live under the same roof as me.”

“I have so many things to say right now, but I know that every one of them is going to piss you off,” he says.

“But you’re going to say it all anyway, aren’t you?” I mutter.

“Today, I’ll let you live,” he replies.

“How kind of you.”

“But I’ll just say that in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you bring up a girl by name,” he says. “Whoever this girl was, she must have really left a mark on you.”

If I told him the extent of it, he’d think I was insane.

“It’s not a big deal,” I say.

He gives me a look that tells me that this isn’t over.

Behind him, I spot a girl in the crowd. She has her back to me. She’s wearing the same corset all the other girls are wearing, but something about her stands out. Maybe it’s the gentle curve of her neck. Maybe it’s the way her hair arranges itself in soft waves.

As I look at her, a familiar scent wafts through the air.

Cupcakes .