POV: Roman
It was the ice alone on which the sound in my head had subsided.
Typically the cold served as an opiate. The puff of the air in my lungs, the soreness in my quads, the crack of the puck on the boards, it should have drowned the voice of my father, the demands of the syndicate, the itch I could never place, the itch to be violent.
But this night the ice had been my failure. She was up at the same end like a gorgeous judgmental ghost looking through a piece of glass. Still, I could smell her, as I made my way toward the deep end of the arena, of bergamot, and vanilla, mingling with the sweat on my body. A daintly womanish perfume quite out of place with oil and blood and low-end cigarettes.
I came into the loading place, with my skates on my shoulder. The iron blades have rung together with overlap of every great stride, a monotonous forceful sound that darted back to the walls of the damp concrete. The atmosphere was still, reeking with the exhaust of a stoning refrigerated truck.
Not fascinatingly in time, Roman, how you thank you, growled a voice in darkness.
Volkow entered the yellow light of one wavering lamp. And he was my guy who on and off were enforcers--a fellow who liked the crack of the collarbone a little more. Two other guys of the line stood next to him. Wearing their Briarwood jerseys they were like college-super stars. They were as much what they were, the soldiers in a war without jersey uniforms, in the soft dock light, hands held in the style of a tactical jacket.
I was occupied, I said cool and menacing.
"Busy with the PR bitch?" His words were wet and mean as Volkov spat on the concrete. "The guys are talking, Roman. She is digging where she is not supposed to. She was in the archives today. Oh, she has eyes that see too much. We should handle it. And one fast visit to the lake, the university could have a new consultant on board before morning.
The breath in my lungs became pure liquefied fire. I didn't think; I moved.
I crossed the dock in a blur. I did not strike him - that would be too fast, too soft. I seized the front part of his tactical vest and threw him on the side of the refrigerated truck. The metal moaned at the motion, a hoarse concussion, a hollow bellowing which struck down the crickets on the outside.
I explained to you, I hissed with my face very close to his. I smelled of old-fashioned nicotine he was breathing in and the acrid odor of fear. "She is off-limits. You don't look at her. You don't speak to her. You are not even sharing the air until I give you the fine essentials administered.
A liability, Roman--she is--wheezing in my wrists, Volkov.
I clenched my fist andknuckles against the clothing. I bent low, and whispering to him, I became jagged. Should you even think of handling her, I will take it person to oblige you to never again breathe a word. I shall use what I did to the Petrovs as an opioid Sunday school lesson. Am I clear?"
Volkov opened his eyes and the pupils enlarged until nearly the same black as mine. He had heard me furious, but never rich. He nodded frantically.
I sent him off, kicking him aside like rubbish he was. I heaved my chest and my blood pulsed with a darkness and territorial resentment that I could not check. I hated it. I disliked the fact that a woman with whom I had been acquainted a little bit, forty-eight hours, was already making amendments to my internal code.
The shipment, I told him and turned my back upon him. "Move it."
The two swung the heavy back doors of the truck open. A thundercloud of cold vapour was forthcoming with a smell of dry ice and of something sterile. Hiding behind crates of sporting tape, Gatorade and surrogate jerseys were lead-lined cases. Narcotics of high grade and untested hardware, transported in secrecy through a college athletic competition. It was a perfect system. No one searched the team bus. Nobody ever wondered about the so-called equipments trucks that crossed state borders every weekend.
When I took the first crate I felt a prickle just at the top of my head.
That sensation. The one I had experienced in the locker room. The sensation of being stared at by someone who therefore did not know how to be scared.
I didn't turn around. I did not give her satisfaction. I simply lowered my hold upon my skates and peered up and my eyes swept the dark catwalks thirty feet above the dock floor.
I knew she was up there. I nearly felt the frenzied irregular beat of her heart banging at her ribs as I had done when I jailed her on the glass in the arena. She was hunting. She was stealing the same stones by which she was going to beat me up.
Idiotic, gallant little kid, I said, a black jagged fire in my stomach.
I got one and hooked a crowbar and pushed the lid of the box off with a vehement protest of squealing wood. I desired her to find, to feel occasionally what sort of monster she was attempting to keep in confinement. In the event that she desired the verity I would provide her with enough of it to perish in. I withdrew a vacuum-packed cylinder of white powder, which I held in such a manner that the light flitting about shot off the surface of the plastic.
See they seal it up, I shouted at the guys, hole in a roof. I would prefer everything was told in before the boss received the manifest.
I had been laboring like a machine, hard, quick, pitting the crates and hurling out the orders, and my senses stayed alert to all that was going on overhead. I pictured her there, holding her breath, and probably her phone aimed at us, her hand shaking as the photo she needed to pass the evidence that would send me straight down into a cage and serve life.
The consideration ought to have caused me to desire to kill her. Rather it made me desire to ascend those rusted stairways, to press her against the railing till the veil pierces through into her back and to demonstrate her what becomes of spies who pander into the nest of the Devil. I wanted to see if she'd scream. I wanted to see if she'd beg. Or even do as she did, and simply stare at me with that same, beautiful, defiant hate.
We are clear, Roman, we are clear, Volkov gave his voice one shake. The truck was loaded.
I nodded, as I could see the taillights of the car lose sight in the darkness. The dock was still again still, the only noise came as the transformer hummed and dripped water at a great distance.
My eyes were raised up and to the corner of the catwalk where the darkness was the most. I didn't say a word. I went and reached in my pocket and took out a matte black lighter and flicked it.
It was the small orange, which was lightening my face, and which projected long demoniac shadows on the concrete above me. I counted the second too much of a silent recognition. "I see you, Sloane. I know exactly what you are."
And then I blew it, and out went haste we both In stifling drownings got caught in.
POV: Sloane
My lungs were burning.
It had never occurred to me that I was holding my breath until my lighter went off, and I was standing in the dark. I leaned back against the chilled brick wall of the catwalk and my heart was so hard that I could easily imagine that the men were below and could hear it.
My hands shook when I inserted my phone into my pocket. I had it—everything. The boxes, the drugs, the faces of the gamblers, and Roman Thorne in the middle as a dark king. Choking out the whole program, enough to sentence Roman to twenty years.
Why then did I think that I had been caught myself?
He knowingly the way he had looked up. He'd known the entire time. He had never concealed the drugs he had flaunted. He had asked me to watch and it was a mute proposition which made my skin look like it was too tight to the skin inside.
I crept quietly back as much as possible on the fire exit. Even the creaks of the rusted steel at my heels like a scream. I reached the door, slipped into the staircase, and did not turn back running until I reached my car in the extreme end of the lot.
I closed the doors and felt my chest going wild and the smell of the arena lingering at the back of my clothes. I had to get home, post this film to the safe server and as far as I could be off Roman Thorne.
But when I left the parking lot I stared at the rearview mirror.
At the exit two blacked-out headlights were idling. They didn't follow me. They simply looked they were some sort of warning or invitation.
The adrenaline had dissipated into cold bone-deep weariness before I got to my apartment. I went round the elevator, took the stairs to the third floor, with keys in hand. I only needed a shower and some drink.
I touched the door and opened it, going into the dark entry. I stopped halfway in reaching the light switch.
The smell, bergamot, vanilla, darkness, the dark stuff, sharp and terrifying.
Sloane, you are late, the guttural voice of the blackness of my living room grumbled.
My heart stopped. I didn't scream; I couldn't. I was standing there with my legs in the air as a giant, huge shadow separated himself off my velvet armchair.
Roman Thorne was sitting in my house in the darkness and he looked as though he had been waiting my whole life.
He is in her house, he is aware of her, and the door is locked. To what extent will the Devil go in order to take back what he believes is his?