Page 172 of Under Your Scars

“No,” he deadpans. “Violence is what I do best. It’s why you fell in love with me.”

I scrape a nail across the thigh of his slacks. “I fell in love with you because of the diamonds, actually,” I tease, flashing my left hand and wrist to show off my wedding ring and the first piece of jewelry he gave me—the diamond tennis bracelet.

I wear it every day, and instead of making me wear that ugly panic alarm he gave me as the Silencer, Christian replaced one of the diamonds with a stone that functions the same way.

It's a blood red ruby.

His way of saying the Silencer will always be with me, and a subtle way of letting his alter ego claim me.

Christian pulls me up to a standing position by my jaw and sucks a small mark onto the curve of my neck. I moan softly, but our moment is interrupted by my office phone ringing. It’s the receptionist. I click the answer button and put the phone on speaker.

“Yes?” I ask, Christian still kissing my neck in the way that makes my legs feel like jelly.

“Mrs. Reeves, sorry to disturb you. I have a young woman insisting she has an appointment with you, but I can’t find her on your calendar. She’s being rather…abrasive. Her name is Kate McGinnis. Shall I have security remove her from the premises?”

“No!” I answer, before Christian has a chance to protest. “She’s right, my mistake for not putting her on the calendar, please send her up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The phone goes dead, and Christian looks absolutely enraged that I’d allow her into our space, but I know Kate, and I don’t think she’d insist on seeing me here at work unless it was for something important.

Even so, the look on Christian’s face makes me defensive.

“I didn’t call her.”

“Then why are you letting her up here?” he asks through gritted teeth.

“Because she’s my friend,” I snap back. “Christian, I don’t want to fight about this. Just let me see what she has to say.”

He bites the inside of his cheek in a way that tells me he has a lot to say but is holding his tongue. The elevator door opens, and Kate timidly steps in, looking around the office in awe.

We make eye contact, and she gives me a soft smile. “Hey pipsqueak.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

Kate swallows in the kind of way that guilty people do when they don’t want to admit the truth. “Valenti is still in the city,” she admits. “On the East Side.”

“How do you know this?” Christian asks, the lines of his body now tight and on edge.

She looks down in shame. “Because I still work for him.” I take a big step away from her, recoiling from shock and bitter betrayal. “I’m sorry! I came here to try and make it right,” she whimpers, looking between Christian and I.

That’s when I notice the large purple bruise on the side of her face that she’s tried to hide with makeup.

“Look…I started working for him when I was nineteen, almost ten years ago. He had just opened the Hellfire Lounge, and no one knew about the bidding house underneath the club, or that he was the island’s drug lord. My sister and I started working there together.”

I do remember her telling me that she had a sister that used to work at the Lounge with her, but that she didn’t last long.

“My sister wasn’t pretty enough by Valenti’s standards. She had really bad cystic acne and she got a lot of complaints from the men there. Valenti was going to kill her as punishment for costing him money, but I got on my hands and knees andbeggedfor him to keep her alive. I told him I would do anything.” Kate’s face twists painfully. “I let him have sex with me whenever he wanted and promised I’d help him get his club off the ground so long as he kept my sister alive. I would flirt with the patrons to keep them coming in until he established his clientele. I would spread my legs, suck his dick, bang his friends. Anything he wanted, I did it without question.” She faces Christian now. “I’ll tell you where he is, but only if you make me a promise. My sister means everything to me. You have to protect her. Please. I swear, it’s theonlyreason I’m still working for him.”

“Done,” Christian says. “If you help me take Valenti down, I promise that your sister will be safe.”

Kate looks up at him from under her lashes and takes a deep breath. “There is a shipping port on the East Side of the island. It’s got hundreds of shipping containers that move in and out of the place weekly. Valenti has a safehouse there. You’ll know it by three blue containers in the dead center of the port.” She takes another heavy breath. “It’s not heavily guarded. Maybe a dozen men at the most. He hasn’t left the safehouse since you burnt down the Lounge.”

My heart begins to thud erratically at the thought of all of this being over. Valenti could be deadtonight,and months of fearing when he’d show up will die with him. I stare at Christian with hope in my eyes, but he looks distant. I reach for his hand and squeeze. He squeezes back.

“Thank you, Kate. You can leave now,” Christian says, his tone leaving no room for argument. I don’t fight him on this, but only because I begin to shake. Kate leaves, and I step towards one of the windows and stare out over the city. Christian wraps his arms around me in a way that says, ‘I’mhere’.

“I’m going to say something, and you’re not going to like it.”