Page 14 of Violent Little Thing

Happy Birthday

ADONIS

“ W ere you allowed to develop a personality or is this as good as it gets?”

Victor’s amused cough can be heard all the way from the kitchen and there’s pride in the tilt of Delilah’s lips.

“I didn’t realize I needed to entertain you, Ms. Rose. My apologies.”

“I’m just saying if you’re gonna force me to have dinner with you every night, it would be nice if you were interesting.” She drops her fork with a loud clatter before shoving her hair away from her face. “Titus is more enticing than you and he sleeps more than three quarters of his days away.”

After a week of the silent treatment from her, I can’t tell which is worse: the silence or the way she antagonizes me every time she opens her damn mouth .

“Do you sit around all day and think of what insults you’re going to say when I get home?”

She cocks her head, a feigned confusion settling over her features. “Of course not. No brainstorming required. The words just flow naturally whenever I look at you.”

My eyes slide over her plate. The herbed turkey and Parmesan meatballs and gravy is untouched although half of her sides are gone. “Eat your food, Ms. Rose.”

“I’m done.” She pushes the plate away from her. “I don’t like wet food.”

“You could have told Agnes to make you something else before she left for the day.”

“It’s ok. I’m satisfied.” Lie number one.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask Victor to find her something else to eat, but I force the command back down.

If she’s hungry, she can speak up like the adult she is. Since when do I anticipate anybody’s needs outside of my own?

Delilah’s exhale kisses the quiet between us, pulling my eyes from her wine glass to the fingers now rubbing softly at her temple.

“Are you an only child?” she wants to know.

Nodding, I cock my head. “Yes. Why?”

“I can tell,” Delilah rebuts on a whisper, her voice far off. She isn’t here. Not really. And all I want to do is crawl inside her head and understand where she went.

She doesn’t look up from the stem of her wine glass, twirling her fingertips round and round until I fill the silence with a question.

“What did you do today?”

I know she spent six hours on her phone, taking G.E.D practice tests and not much else. But I want to hear her version of it .

And I still want to know why she has a headache every day.

The first few days after she woke up, I thought it was normal.

But every time I check the cameras around the house, I find her in one frame or another, holding a cold glass to her temple or rubbing mindlessly at her forehead.

Like the pain is a part of her daily routine.

“Just watched YouTube,” she finally answers my question with a shrug. The lie claims her lips so easily I would have believed it if I didn’t know the truth.

Lie number two.

Keeping the frown off my face, I drop my fork to study her.

Her short hair is curled in loose ringlets, tucked strategically behind her ears and gifting me with the view of her soft features.

The subtle swell at the apple of her cheeks. The slender column of her neck. The wide bridge of her nose. Pierced lobes without any jewelry adorning them.

Full lips that only part in my presence to rebuke me.

She…is…insufferably beautiful.

Magnificent.

Defiant.

Uninterested.

Delilah is everything I should hate. And I would. If I could stop thinking about the fire blazing in her gaze. The menacingly maniacal energy she embodies with me just to turn around and be soft with my staff. And my fucking dog.

Titus would be at her feet right now if he wasn’t tearing down the homemade dinner Ms. Aggie left for him in the other room.

“What are you looking at?”

The rice clumps on my tongue at the intensity of her gaze .

She’s not being arrogant; her curiosity is palpable. From the tilt of her head to the way she leans forward in her chair, awaiting my answer.

And in five seconds flat, I ruin the moment. I have to.

“Why did you ask me for a hundred dollars the first time we met?”

A frown is quickly followed up by a hitch of her brow. Confused laughter tumbles out of her before she sits up straight and says, “I’ve never asked you for money, Adonis. What are you talking about?”

“You did. You asked me for a hundred dollars and when I asked you how you were going to pay me back you told me you never said you would.”

“Huh?”

“Stop fucking playing with me, Delilah. You’ve been playing me since we met in that graveyard.”

Be careful.

Her brother’s warning tone won’t leave my head. It was all I could think about when I went back to work after the hospital. And it’s all I can think about now that I’m sitting here with the person he warned me about.

“What are you talking about? I meet lots of people. It’s not my fault you don’t stand out. People usually aren’t as special as they think they are.”

She shrugs, but I can see the wheels spinning in her head. Her eyes flitting all over the place while she tries to connect the dots only to repeatedly come up empty.

Distress enters her expression. The same features that were playful and curious a minute ago are hopeless and…sad?

She’s not lying.

There’s a question in her eyes that she isn’t asking. But I want her to. Why do I want her to ?

The answer is simple.

I need to understand this draw I’ve had to her since the night we met and why it won’t go away.

Instead of asking me anything, she shutters her gaze, leaving me with the same distant look as before.

Those eyes.

The same color as sand along the shoreline.

Murky but somehow beautiful, enchanting and bright.

My gaze doesn’t leave on its own. I have to tug it away. Back to something safe. Something boring. Something not her .

“I’m going upstairs.” Her chair drags over the floor, punctuating her departure.

Not even a second later, a hard thud precedes a low “Ow.”

I glance up from my plate to see Delilah face to face with the wall, rubbing her forehead and down to her arm.

Did she just walk into the fucking wall?

Taking a stuttering step back, she stops short when Victor rounds the corner.

“Oh, hi, Victor.”

“Are you alright, Ms. Rose?”

A self-deprecating laugh.

A nervous rake of her fingers through her hair. And then, “Yeah, just lost my balance for a second. I’m okay.”

She scrambles to walk around his wide frame and vanishes around the corner.

“Sir.” Victor crowds the place she was. “I left some files on your desk. The original will and the one he drew up six weeks before he died.”

“It wasn’t forged?”

“No, sir.”

“No Delilah? ”

“No, sir. Alonzo is still working on the video footage.”

Pushing back from the table, I nod. “Okay.”

When I’m standing with my half-full plate, he looks at me expectantly. “Go home, Victor. You’re already here too late.”

“Right.” He inclines his head, sidestepping me so I can walk to the kitchen from the dining room. “And sir?”

“Hmm?”

“Happy birthday.”

I’m six steps away from my office door when I notice something is off.

Five steps away when I realize this part of the hallway smells too much like vanilla.

Four steps away when I notice my office door is open instead of closed.

Three steps away when I hear papers rustling and the sound of my desk drawers rolling over their tracks in quick succession.

Open.

Shut.

Open.

Shut.

The last two steps are automatic, and I freeze inside the cracked door, watching Delilah in action.

The folder Victor promised me is in the center and seemingly untouched as she rifles through everything else.

Titus rests under the guest chair, his droopy eyes pinned on her.

“This isn’t upstairs.”

Delilah can’t mask her sharp gasp .

Enticed by the way she flinches away from my desk like it’s on fire, I close the distance between us and close in on her.

“Why are you in my office, Ms. Rose?”

Her throat moves in an anxious swallow. “I was coming to say good night to Titus.”

An inch away from her now, I knot my fingers in the hair at her nape and tug until her wild eyes are on me and only me.

“Ow,” she whimpers, the usual fight in her missing in action.

“I don’t like liars, Ms. Rose, and that’s the third one you’ve told me tonight.”

Seconds tick by until she clears her throat. “I wanted to know what you do for a living.”

A wince rearranges her appearance when my fingers tighten around her strands. The electricity between us zaps through me, short circuiting my brain. But I don’t break our point of connection. I can’t. I like invading her space too much.

“So, ask.”

“What?”

“Ask me what I do for a living, Delilah.”

Warm brown orbs jump over my face, lighting my cells on fire. I don’t know how I have any energy left after everything that happened today, but I do. And it pulses through me with enough momentum to make my heart beat double time.

“Go ahead, menace. I’m waiting.”

“What do you do for a living?” she whispers.

“Private aviation.”

Disbelief.

A frown .

More skepticism than she can contain behind those lips. “What else?”

“How do you know there’s something else?”

“There has to be. Why can you kidnap me without consequences?”

I scoff. Right now, the consequence is staring me in the eye.

Caging those words and a string of others I want to say to her, I free my hand from her silky strands and shove her toward the door.

I need her out of my space. Out from under my skin. I can’t breathe when she’s this close. Can’t think.

It’s maddening.

Infuriating.

Intoxicating.

“Get out, Ms. Rose.”