Page 75 of Tempt Me

Why did he look like he was going to puke?

“Miss? You were saying…” I blinked, looking back to the jabbering rookie in front of me.“That you were walking in the cemetery, you heard a noise, and…”

Framing Pharaoh for the nutcase he’d been was the correct choice, right? After tonight, it was clear he belonged in the asylum. Plus, I was sure it had something to do with a cover-up job about the asylum—how quickly it fell to the ground and how quickly a ‘2.0’ version popped up after it burned down.

My conviction would be enough to put him away again, and the report credit for the story of unmasking a killer would make the money I needed to break myself of the fucked up contract my family had with Ferdinand.

I would be free. I would be—

Pharaoh fell to his knees, the cop beside him leaning down to hold him in a manly embrace.

He was crying, his body shaking with a pain I couldn’t comprehend. I took off running, my feet seeming to move on their own accord to the insane man on the other side of the lot.

The police officer was yelling at me, but I didn’t care. Let him be confused. Let them think I was guilty right now because I ran away from giving a statement regarding a murder.

I was choosing not to stop.

I got to the giant on the ground, but his words were a stream of nonsensical sentences.

“It wasn’t him. He was right,” he said, body wracked with deep, gut-wrenching sobs.

The blond-haired detective tried his best to console him, but Pharaoh couldn’t see past his pain and whatever hell was running through his mind. Just because it was invisible to everyone else didn’t mean it didn’t exist. I knew that all too well. I lived a life of cushiony bullshit, but in reality, I was just as insane as…him.

I was a hypocrite.

I got to my knees, holding my professor’s face in my hands like I had done before, trying to break through the barrier of his pain.

“I’m here, Pharaoh. See me? I am here. I’ve got you.”

The detective gawked over at me. His expression was one of curiosity and awe. I didn’t have time to explain to the nice cop what the fuck I even was to my professor. I just knew he needed me.

“I’m here, Pharaoh. It’s okay. It’s going to be all right, baby.”

The heavily tattooed seven-foot-something man looked into my eyes. His crystalline green eyes were filled with so much torment that it broke my heart.

“I’m not strong enough,” he said softly. “He was right. I failed her. I failed Xenia.”

I frowned, looking over to the detective for some kind of clarity.

“I don’t understand,” I told the cop. “Who is Xenia?”

The blue-eyed man looked down, his face falling. “His daughter, Miss. She is buried here, along with her mother.”

I gasped. Pharaoh was visiting his…family.

“Oh god,” I said, my mind reeling.

I was so awful to him, blinded by my pain. I never dreamed a man on the ground was mourning, too.

Why didn’t I?

He was in a fucking cemetery. I just couldn’t see past his goddamn beauty and his blunt, dangerous edge. It was why I figured out he was part of the asylum in the first place. You can leave the walls of a prison, but the prison doesn’t leave you.

It was clear by the mammoth of a man in front of me on his knees having a panic attack that he still lived in those walls. His mind was still a part of those echoes. I pulled his head to my chest, cushioning his cheek onto my breasts, leaning down to sit and cradle him on the ground.

He cried harder the tighter I held him, his tears rolling down his blank face. He barely even blinked. I smoothed his hair.

“Detective, there is a girl in one of the graves who was killed! The killer cut the baby out of her. She was nine months pregnant. And he shot her. We heard the gunshots. She dropped into the hole, and the killer ran away.”