A/N:
OHMYGOODNESS this is the lengthiest chapter I've written outside of NaNoWriMo and perhaps my summer reading essay. I *promise* this is the maximum length of any chapter I'll write -there's a lot that's happening here and it can't be broken up into two chapters.
As of now, I'm moving to updating once a week on Saturdays because school is already being busy and I have college applications and other fun stuff like that xD
Please review! :)
Danielle had no choice but to walk forward like nothing was wrong - and, strangely, she wasn't afraid. Her imagined version of this scene involved a lot more blood and bruises.
She glanced around at the small shops, scattered here and there between vacant businesses, searching for one that looked open.
Squeezing the empty prescription bottle, she tried to scrape the label off with her nails to hide Alex's name. Maybe she could pretend the medicine was hers.
Suddenly, her phone rang. The chime rang out and echoed off the walls.
The knife dug further into her back. "Don't answer that."
Ignoring her captor, Danielle slowly lifted her phone to her ear. "It's my roommate. She'll worry if I don't."
"If you -"
"You wouldn't dare hurt me," she said, not meeting his eyes. He'd see right through her. "Not with people around."
He gave her a lecherous grin. "We'll be alone soon enough."
Danielle tried to ignore the nausea his remark invoked, and answered her phone on the third ring. "Hello?"
"Danielle!" Tom's voice crackled through the line. "Where are you?"
"Hi, Tris. Something's come up back home, so I'll be leaving for a few days."
"What the hell? This is Tom -"
"I know. Completely unexpected. Please call the vet to take care of Alex - his card's on the kitchen table. And that bookstore you're looking for? It's on the corner of. . ." she dodged around a telephone pole, pretending to stumble, and glanced up at the street sign. "Corner of Kensington Park."
The man gripped her elbow hard enough to leave a bruise. "Hang up."
"Is someone there with you?" Tom asked.
If you were in trouble - you'd tell someone, right?
'What makes you think I'd tell a stranger anything?'
"Kensington Park. You're not a stranger anymore." Please understand me. PleaseOhPleaseOhPlease.
"Oh God. You need help, don't you?"
"Good luck-"
Her captor slapped the phone out of her hand. It fell to the sidewalk with a sickening crunch, cracks laced across the front screen when he flipped it over and, with single-minded intensity, drove the handle of the knife down. He kicked the shattered phone aside, to the gutter, and Danielle felt, for the first time, the overwhelming panic that she'd held off for the last few minutes.
Her stomach clenched, legs gave out, and she fell to her knees. It was happening. After four whole years.
"Get up." he nudged her side with his foot. Danielle winced, sucking a breath, ready to scream -
And pitched forward, vomiting. She pressed her hands to the sidewalk. Her arms trembled and she felt sick, so sick, like something was wrong with the core of her being, something that she could never hope to recover. Sixty-three nights. Days, too, probably.
"I'm sick," she rasped. Her throat stung. "I was getting - medicine -" she swallowed against another wave of bile, shuddering. Her hands patted at her pockets for the bottle, which she tossed onto the sidewalk with the desperate hope that the label was gone.
"Sick, eh? With what?"
What was the medicine called? Ferrous sulfate? Sulfide? Danielle squeezed her eyes shut. Ferrous. . that was iron, right? "Anemia. Please, I need -" she stopped, retching again, and crumpled to the ground, a mess of tangled limbs.
Her head fell back against the wall of the building. No matter what she tried, he would take her.
He always took what he wanted.
She closed her eyes and stopped. She stopped listening to the sounds around her, stopped feeling each breath fill her lungs, just sat and waited for a blow she probably wouldn't feel.
The world spun, but she didn't open her eyes. Her stomach ached, something wet ran down her face - tears? No, too thick: blood.
She tried to think, to wonder why she was bleeding, but it was all too much.
For the barest moment, the space between seconds, it almost sounded like someone was calling her name.
Sirens wailed in the distance, jerking Danielle away from her trance. She shivered but not because of the cold. She always lost control during panic attacks and started shaking. That was the worst part, being unable to stop herself from panicking.
Her face ached.
The man in front of her leered, his teeth yellowed and revolting, and took a step back. He spat on the ground near her feet. "I'm coming back for you. You can't hide from me."
He glanced over her one last time as the sirens drew nearer, then jogged across the street and disappeared by the time a police car turned the corner.
When the officer stepped out, the back door of his car opened too. Someone else flung themselves out of the car and hurried towards her, falling to their knees.
"Danielle. Listen, you have to try and stand, okay? There's no ambulance."
Tom.
She nodded and quickly grabbed his hand, squeezing tightly, as he gently lifted her to her feet and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, trying to breathe, even as every inhale made her nose ache. The man had punched her there at least once.
"It's not as bad as it looks," she muttered.
Tom laughed, but it was a hollow sound. "You're just like Alex."
She didn't have the chance to ask him what he meant, because then he herded her over to the officer and time began to blur.
Alex woke up with a massive headache. He rolled over to avoid the sunlight from the window, and almost rolled out of bed.
Bed?
What was he doing there?
The last thing he remembered was standing in an empty classroom with Ben, but his mouth tasted like booze. Alex stumbled into his bathroom and, after a few tries, uncapped the mouthwash and upturned the bottle into his mouth.
"You're going to kill yourself if you aren't careful," someone said from the door.
Alex nearly choked, doubling over and spitting the minty stuff into the sink. He leaned forward onto the sink and glanced over.
An all-too-familiar freckled man stood in his doorway: Snake.
Alex hadn't seen the medic from K Unit since his training at Brecon Beacons, but little had changed with the older man, who was barely younger than Ben. Snake's hair was the color of carrots, which Alex was not ready to see at God-knows-when in the morning. He didn't particularly want to see Snake any time, for that matter.
"Why-" he cleared his throat. "Why does everyone keep breaking into my home?"
"Your friend called Ben when you were passed out with a bleeding stab wound and a bruise on your chest right about where you were shot."
"Tom?"
"Yeah, that's his name. He's too busy with the girl out in the living room - ah, could've phrased that better. She's a bloody mess, Alex! I didn't know music was so dangerous."
"Only when you're talking," Alex muttered, unwilling to admit that he'd missed most of what Snake had just said.
The medic just chuckled and left. When his footsteps faded, Alex set about the daunting task of gathering clothes that were clean and taking a shower. It was completely humiliating to feel like such an invalid, but he could barely stand. God, hangovers were awful.
He finally reached a state approaching normal and decided to venture into the kitchen, unless half of MI6 had also materialized inside his flat. I'll have to see about changing the locks.
Blindly groping for coffee, he set that going and drank a large glass of water. His side, which, he'd noticed, now had stitches, ached though the pain was considerably duller than yesterday.
Snake lounged at the table with a newspaper propped up on his knees and a cup of coffee nestled firmly in his hand.
"Make yourself at home, why don't you," Alex muttered.
Snake glanced up. "Thanks for the invitation."
"I revoke it."
"We're setting up today," he said, gesturing absently towards the ceiling. "Tom offered to help you haul stuff to the Royal Academy of Music."
"The Academy."
"Yeah, that too."
"You're moving in today?"
"Not completely. We won't need overnight equipment for a few more months."
"You said Tom was here."
"He stepped out. Something about a class."
Alex sighed. Tom had absolutely no business helping him, not with a full University course load and his own familial issues; last time that subject had come up, Tom's mother was moving to South Africa and his father was happily celebrating the fact. Not an easy situation, even for a university student. Alex didn't understand how Tom could handle all the stress.
At least he has parents.
Through the kitchen, Alex noticed that his couch was also occupied. Danielle, still asleep, was curled up on the far end with a bag next to her feet and a pile of books in various states of use around her. One - a massive textbook with a microscopic photograph of a leaf on the spine - was pinned open beneath the side of her face, her hand trapped between two pages as if she'd fallen asleep in the middle of reading.
Alex approached as quietly as he could and gently slid the book away. Her head softly thunked to the armrest, but she didn't stir.
Black and blue splotches covered her right arm, leading up past her sleeve. Her left hand was wrapped in gauze, and her upper lip looked painfully swollen like someone had decked her in the teeth.
Alex shook his head. What happened yesterday?
"Did you do that?" he asked. Snake's eyes flicked up, and Alex pointed to her hand. "The gauze, I mean."
"Yeah. It was the only way to get the police off her back."
"The police?"
"Tom found her yesterday outside a bookstore. She was pretty banged up. Seemed fine, though, if a little shaken." Alex heard the concern coloring Snake's voice. "Almost like it's happened before. Tell me, Alex, what do you know about your new colleague?"
Alex returned to the kitchen, dunked some cream and sugar into his coffee, and pulled out a chair. He tried to think back to yesterday.
"Her accounts were frozen, but that's fixed. She was terrified of - going back, I think - but . . . I don't remember much after that."
"Ben told me about your mission."
Alex cursed. "Don't remind me."
"You know, he's been their most active agent these past years. You should ask him why."
"Do you know?"
"It's not my place to tell."
Alex sadly was unable to summon enough energy to have any real animosity towards the man. Even if he would *throttle* Tom later for calling Ben - where'd he even get the number?
Something hit the door with a thump. The knob turned and Alex watched as his front door swung open and Ben appeared, dragging a wheeling cart full of cardboard boxes. "The wiring," he said to Snake. "We'll route it through the ceiling so the fourteen's electricity bill won't seem abnormally high." Ben's gaze flicked to Alex. "You're a bloody idiot. Can't believe you've survived alone for two years - remind me to ask you why that is, exactly - but anyways, come on. We're moving all your stuff."
"Don't tell me what to do." Alex said the first thing that came to his mind and immediately felt rather stupid. What was he, twelve?
"Look, I don't know what's going on with you, but your friend was nearly killed yesterday because she was trying to get medicine for your stab wound, which you neglected to mention, so the least you can do is help her move her stuff." Ben looked supremely irritated as the cart jostled over the threshold into the kitchen.
Alex, slightly dazed, looked from Ben to Snake, unsure of who to question first. He was saved from deciding by Danielle, who sat up and seemed surprised to see him.
The look in her eyes sucked the air from his lungs. She looked awful, like all the hope had been drained out of her, like a husk of the girl he'd met - was it only two days ago?
"I didn't think you'd be awake," she said, standing with a wince. "You were almost in a coma yesterday." Her hand drifted up to her mouth, gingerly touching her swollen lip. Suddenly her eyes widened. "Oh - are you okay? Were you really stabbed yesterday? You were bleeding -"
"I'm fine now," Alex said slowly, giving her a suspicious look. "You, on the other hand, look like roadkill."
"Quite a way with words you have there," Snake muttered, and returned Alex's glare with an innocent smile.
"Thank you," Danielle said to Snake. She held up her bandaged hand. "It was the piano."
"I'm not a medic for nothing. Did the piano try to eat the rest of you, too?"
"Is Snake a nickname, or did your parents particularly hate you?" Danielle seemed genuinely curious, but Alex saw the hollowness in her eyes because, dammit, she had almost been killed. Was that why Ben looked like he was about to have a heart attack? Alex had never seen him so riled before.
"I can help you pack your music," Danielle offered, and it took Alex a second to realize she was talking to him.
"Oh. Uh, I've got it. Thanks, though."
"Are you sure you don't need help? You have an entire library, besides, Clara won't be here to help me with the piano until eleven, so-"
"I can move the piano for you," Alex muttered, feeling something twist uncomfortably behind his chest that had nothing to do with the scars there.
"I'm sure," she said with a small smile. "Don't worry about it. She's done this a million times - her dad makes them, see - and it'll go straight to room 300."
It's not the piano I'm worried about, he wanted to say, but refrained. Whoa Alex. Morning. Filter your thoughts. He ran his hands through his hair - he was tired, and his body had been through the ringer in the past twelve hours.
"I'm going out," he said. "Pharmacy."
Alex rubbed his eyes as he stepped out through the door - which Ben hadn't bothered to close behind him because it wasn't like this was his house or anything- and pounded his fist against the doorframe. He was such an idiot - going off, getting drunk on one single pint of beer, and now Danielle was hurt and it was all his fault because whatever happened to her sucked the life out of her eyes and he should have stopped it.
Especially because she'd been trying to get something for him.
Someone was coming for him - and if they couldn't get him, they would take Danielle, or Tom, or one of his colleagues.
Alex left his building without a jacket. The cold air bit into his skin with the kind of chill that settled deep inside his bones.
"Hey - Alex!"
He wrenched his head around. Wolf and someone else - was that Eagle? Of course. - were each carrying a massive suitcase towards the door.
Wolf began to put his down, but before he could Alex turned and slipped into the crowd of people streaming down the streets. He broke in a jog, which turned into a sprint, and soon his lungs exhaled white puffs of air into the viscous air and he ran as fast as he could in any direction that was away, away, away. As long as he was gone, no one else would get hurt.
Danielle nearly fell off the couch in her haste to lie down when yet another soldier - two, actually, like night and day - stormed through the door with a massive suitcase.
"Cub's gone," said the first one in. She recognized him as one of the men who had been in Alex's flat two days ago, the opposite of his fair-haired companion, who had the faintly mischievous look of someone hated by all grade school teachers. "Saw him running downtown."
Neither seemed to notice her as Snake stood and folded up his newspaper. "Don't tell Ben. I'll go look for him."
Danielle bit down on her lower lip and tried to stay as still as possible, her eyes fixed on the buildings outside the window. Maybe they wouldn't notice her. She didn't want to talk to anyone after what happened yesterday. A pang of guilt struck her when she remembered lying to Tom - no, she didn't know the man who assaulted her. She knew the officer hadn't been fooled, but Tom had pulled off a glare so menacing that he allowed her to go home.
Tom had suggested a psychological evaluation, which she steadfastly refused - because you're afraid of what they'll find out- and finally, to get him to shut up for one bloody moment, she'd confessed. It was in a moment of horrible weakness, and afterwards, humiliation clawed its way through her from the inside out.
He insufferably hovered around her for the next hour and a half until she told him in no uncertain terms that she would throttle him if he didn't leave her in peace. ( 'Like you could,' he'd replied, but did retreat to the other side of the living room.)
Her face hurt every time she tried to smile, speak, or eat. The pain stung in her lip, fanning out into a dull throb in the sides of her face. She felt like her head had been shoved into a meat grinder.
Luckily her shirt had long sleeves, which hid the bruises from the man's fingers and scrapes from cracked cement on the sidewalk.
Snake shrugged on a tan zip up and tried to smooth his hair down - not a successful endeavor - as he maneuvered around the suitcases towards the door. The first soldier - Luke , that was his name - followed Snake out, while the other one strode through the kitchen and poked his head into the hall.
"Ben? You back here?"
An answering shout came from one of the back rooms and he disappeared down the corridor. Danielle swung her legs off the couch - ow - and staggered to her feet, walking as fast as she could towards the door. Stumbling around the suitcases hurt her legs and feet, which probably ached from being so tense. So much adrenaline had flooded her bloodstream that she hadn't slept a wink, not that she would have otherwise. Who could sleep after being assaulted?
She wedged the door open enough to slip out, sharply inhaling when the knob hit a sore spot on her stomach. The aches and pains were familiar enough and so was hiding them, but she wasn't used to waking up in a flat full of soldiers. Why were they even there?
Danielle glanced to either side - towards the lift, and farther down the hall. No one was there. Wrapping her arms around herself, she strode to the flat and jabbed the button.
It opened to Luke, who almost ran into her.
She froze.
His eyebrows lifted. "You're here."
The best course of action seemed to be a smile, but she couldn't make her face obey her. All she could think of was running into someone else - his arms trapping her like a vice, the rancid stench of his breath.
"What happened to your face?"
Her shoulders jerked up in a shrug. "Accident." She hated her voice for trembling and sounding so - so false. He was a soldier, of course he'd see right through her lies.
He snorted. "Right. Does this have anything to do with why Cu -Alex - just left?"
Truthfully, she didn't know. Alex acted weird earlier, but she'd chalked it up to his injury and hangover. So, not knowing, she stayed silent.
That seemed to be the wrong thing to do, because Luke's face clouded with suspicion and he stepped forwards.
Danielle jerked away from him.
Surprise flashed across his face but he backed off and gave her a wide berth.
"Please," she said tightly. "Don't ask. It wasn't Alex."
Luke snorted. "You don't say. He wouldn't have been so sloppy."
"What?"
"Anyways. Going up?"
"Yes." Danielle almost asked what he meant about Alex, but shook her head. She didn't want to know.
"Tell Alex," he said, hefting a duffle bag into his arms, but managed to make a suggestion sound more like an order.
"About what?" she asked innocently.
He gave her a knowing look as he toted the bag away.
Her stomach twisted.
She wanted to tell Alex - she desperately did, just to tell someone - but she dreaded the look in his eyes, that he would see her as something vile and disgusting for what she had done and what she would soon be forced to do.
Alex didn't blame Snake for being angry even if the elder's irritation was merely expressed in sighs and stiff, carefully controlled movements instead of words. He'd been at Regents park for probably three hours before Snake had found him with nothing but, 'There you are. Come on.'
He was getting cold. Wearing t-shirts out in the middle of February wasn't a good idea even if the rest of the world was enjoying spring.
When Alex returned, he hoped K Unit was gone, but no such luck. There was a tangle of wires running through a hole in the ceiling - oh, his landlord was going to love that - connecting to several hard drives piled up behind his TV. Eagle stood on a foldout ladder, trying to fix a fraying strand, while Ben and Wolf sat on the floor with a stack of pizza boxes. Alex tried to slip by unnoticed, but Wolf cleared his throat.
"Yes?" Alex swung around to face him, hands jammed in his pockets.
Wolf raised a single eyebrow. "You need to talk to Danielle."
Something slid into place between his mind and brain and Alex sighed, long and low. "Later."
"Now."
"Why?"
"Because whoever knocked her around could be coming back, and that means danger for you too. I don't think she'll talk to any of us."
"I don't blame her."
He scowled. "Cub."
"What happened to her was probably my fault-"
"It wasn't, Alex." Snake said. "From what she told Tom, the incident had nothing to do with your . . .career."
"All possible threats must be neutralized," Wolf added, and Alex was tempted to tell him that was the most cliche thing he'd ever heard from a soldier. "We are attempting to run an operation out of this place."
"I don't think she's here," Alex said in a last-ditch attempt to get out of this very awkward and unprecedented situation.
Eagle scoffed. "Please," he said, his voice strained from concentrating on the wire. "She's practicing. Can't you hear?"
Alex heard quiet music seeping through his ceiling, but it didn't sound like a piano.
It was a violin.
"Have they been up there yet?" Alex's question was directed to Ben, who shook his head, so he turned and retraced his steps to the studio.
Danielle could play the violin.
Alex saw this as soon as he entered his studio, because she was standing next to the piano with his violin on her shoulder and his bow in her hand. He recognized the piece she was playing, saw the score flash behind his eyes from where it should have stayed hidden beneath the books and folders hidden under the bench's lid.
Her shifts were edging on sloppy, definitely unpracticed, and her vibrato was tentative, like she was petting a wild dog.
But she played beautifully. Not like she played the piano, with her eyes shut and the notes seeping out of her soul into the air, but like violin music was something secret, something sacred.
That was exactly what this piece was. Alex knew - he'd written it himself, four years ago, three weeks after Jack's death. It was an idea, nothing more than that, and he didn't want it to be anything else besides marks on a page. He didn't want it to be real.
She did, though. He could tell. She wanted music to be more than notes on a staff, and she played it with enough ease that he knew the swirling current of grief and helplessness that breathed beneath the notes was familiar to her.
She wanted it to be real. As if she had no other choice.
It was that, more than anything else, that made Alex's blood run cold and his heartbeat stutter and shy away.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" He hadn't meant to yell but the words tore through his throat like razors.
She jerked to life. The bow scratched across the strings in a cringeworthy screech, and she almost threw the instrument to the ground in her haste to shove it back into his case.
He snatched the score off music stand and hissed, "This is *private*. Who the hell do you think you are? "
"I'm sorry. I didn't see you - I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have without asking, but it was right there and you were gone, it's been so long-"
"I don't bloody care! I do not care. You do not touch my music. Ever." he felt like the word had been yanked out from under his feet.
She reached towards his case and, without thinking, he lashed out and grabbed her arm.
Danielle screamed.
Alex, startled, let go. She looked at him with pure terror in her eyes, like she thought he was going to kill her.
The door slammed open and the entire K Unit stormed in, Wolf in the lead. Alex backed away from Danielle, who pressed up against the piano, her hands clutching at the keys but not making any noise.
He tried to say something, anything, but the words died in his throat. She was - she was petrified. Of him.
"Alex." Ben shouldered past Wolf and shoved Alex backwards until his legs hit the piano bench and he fell onto it, not making any effort to remain standing. He stared at the carpet through blurry eyes. What - what had he become?
Monster, the helpful voice in his head chimed in again. Monster, monster, monster. That's all you are. That's what they made you.
He tried to breathe without choking on the lump in his throat.
"What's going on?" Eagle asked, shooting Alex a suspicious look.
Alex didn't bother defending himself. There wasn't any point in doing so.
Danielle took a shaky breath and slowly pushed herself away from the piano, standing with her arms stiffly at her sides.
"I can explain," she said softly, the dread in her eyes like someone walking up the gallows.
"Yesterday, Tom asked me to get medicine from the pharmacy. Someone followed me and I - I was - I didn't-" she trailed off, gesturing absently off to the side, at a loss for words.
"He hurt you," Alex filled in the blank, his voice low.
She nodded, reaching up to twirl a piece of her hair around her fingers like that could ground her here.
"I thought so," Snake muttered. "You don't get injuries like that from 'tripping on the sidewalk'." He stared at her accusingly, and she wilted under his gaze.
"I owe him," she whispered. "But I ran away."
Wolf's eyebrows hit the ceiling. "You're a druggie?"
Ben scowled at him.
"My mother was," Danielle said. "She made me take her payments and - and she ran out of money. I tried to work. But." she sighed. "It was never enough. He always wanted more. And I couldn't pay, so he made me swear, on my life, that when I was eighteen-" her voice cracked.
"I think we get it," Ben said, jumping in as he saw her face fracture and shatter. "You have to repay him. Even though it wasn't your fault," he said the last part with another dark look to Wolf.
"Not with money."
Alex sucked in a breath.
Danielle looked stricken. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned away from him and K Unit, staring out the window. "One night." Barely audible, each word trembling on its breath. "For each buy. If I stopped paying or ran away, he swore he'd kill me."
"So he tracked you down yesterday." Eagle did a poor job of hiding the revulsion in his voice. "Son of a bi-"
"My flat was completely sacked."
"You should have told me," Alex said flatly. He couldn't inject life into his voice. He could barely think without his mind spinning out of control.
She gave him a distrustful frown. "Why?"
"I could have helped you."
"Alex-" Ben began, warningly.
"Sod off," Alex sighed. Wolf cuffed him in the head. Ouch.
"I didn't want you to think that . . ." she blinked rapidly and sat down next to him, tucking one leg beneath the other to fit on the end. He saw her pupils dilated with fear at being in any sort of close proximity to him. "That I wasn't a serious musician, because I am, or that I was a whore, or that I wanted you for - oh, dear Lord." Her face flushed bright red and Alex, after his mind processed what she was trying to say -in front of K Unit, which was pretty brave- felt his face heat up too.
"I wouldn't have," he muttered.
She humphed and wiped her eyes, giving him a shaky smile. "I'm sorry - I panicked and-"
"God, no," he said. "It's not your fault, Danielle. No." I should have been there. "I - I'm sorry," he forced himself to glance at her even as humiliating tears blurred his sight. She bit her lip. "I shouldn't have blown up like that." I hate that you're scared of me. At least she didn't know about everything else he'd done. If that scared her, than he could never tell her the truth, which, admittedly, he had considered. He couldn't force another burden into her life.
"Are you guys still in that awkward teen angst phase?" Eagle asked. "Because I think I've walked in on less painful arguments between my sister and her boyfriend."
"Not funny," Danielle muttered, glaring at him. "I don't know who you are, but shut up. Aren't soldiers supposed to be even remotely mature?"
"That's really all you need to know about him," Snake offered. "He isn't."
She shook her head, but her lips curled with a look of faint amusement.
Alex managed to refrain from saying something very unflattering about the K Unit and instead got to his feet, almost falling when he realized that his foot had fallen asleep with a painful prickling sensation. He steadied himself and - his studio was a wreck. Moving everything out would take hours, and that was optimistic.
"We should move this stuff out of the way," Ben said, splaying his hands towards the plethora of music, instrument parts, music stands, and sparse furniture occupying the studio.
"This stuff is my entire career, so whoever breaks something is replacing it out of their own salary. Except the piano. That's Danielle's. So you pay double if you break that because she doesn't know how utterly incompetent you are."
"Wait," Danielle said. "The piano is -"
"Yours."
"But-"
"Still yours. You should be furious at me, by the way. This isn't a peace offering."
"No, I wouldn't dream of forgiving you."
You really shouldn't. "Good."
She stared at him for a long moment. Her eyes - they were golden, almost, ringed with hazel. Then she grinned.
"Um - is this the right floor?" a soft female voice spoke up. Wolf glanced behind him - then had to look down as a petite girl with silky black hair and olive-toned skin stood on tiptoe to see over his shoulders through the open door. Alex could barely see her eyes beyond the massive members of his unit - his unit, what an incredibly disturbing thought.
"Clara!" Danielle sprang to her feet and pushed past K Unit to grab her friend by the wrist and dragging her over towards the piano. "Yes! Some of the SAS have to use this flat. That's why we're moving. Thanks for coming!"
Clara won't be here to help me with the piano until eleven.
It certainly didn't feel like four hours had passed, but Danielle seemed all too happy to ignore K Unit and Alex in favor of dragging her friend over to the piano.
"I'm Clara," the girl said with a small wave to Alex. "You do great work."
"Thanks," Alex replied after his brain stalled out. Something about her - he knew he'd seen her before. "You're Clara Li. Were you at the Haydn festival last summer?"
She grinned. "Yes!" After dropping her purse onto the carpet, she knelt down and peered under the piano at the supports for the legs. "It's best if we remove the pedals. Otherwise they'll whack into literally everything. Trust me."
Danielle nodded, pursing her lips. "Was that like the time-"
"With the wine? Yeah."
ALex slowly edged over to K Unit, pointing towards the door. "We can set up downstairs."
"How much do you know about her, Alex?" Ben asked, opting to take the stairs instead of the lift. His face was unreadable. Alex followed him into the stairwell.
"More than I did yesterday."
"Huh."
"What are you on about?"
Ben's gaze darkened. "What she said - it reminded me of an inconclusive case from a few years ago. There was never enough evidence to move on the suspects."
Alex gave Ben an incredulous look. "Since when do you care about evidence?"
"Since Parliament is involved."
"That must've been a totally different case."
"You should talk to her about it."
Alex snorted. "Yes. That's a completely normal thing to bring up in conversation - oh, by the way Danielle, any word from the twisted freak who thinks he owns you? I'll leave that to you."
"She's your friend."
"I barely know her. She's my coworker."
Ben gave him a pitying glance that only irked him further. "What are you afraid of?"
"I can't help her!" Alex growled. "Every time someone gets involved in what I do, they end up hurt. Tom was shot. Ian died." The unspoken words hung in the air between them: Jack was killed. "And the bloody Prime Minister is going to follow if we don't get started on this, so can you just set up the junk in my flat?"
"Alex-"
"No. I am not talking about this anymore, especially not with you."
Ben jogged down the last few stairs and held the door for Alex, the gold band on his ring finger glinting in the light.
"The man from the case," he said right before Alex crossed the threshold. "He has a brand."
"What is it?" Alex found himself morbidly curious despite his firm mantra to not get involved, not get involved, not get involved.
"An X."
Thanks for reading!
Fun fact: The 'time with the wine' mentioned is a reference to an incident that happened when my cousins and I tried to push a grand piano across the basement of my uncle's house.
Review Replies:
Op-Fan - ah, the struggles of replying from your phone. I've sent half-finished texts by mistake so many times it's not even funny. Thank you! School's going to be interesting this year, if what happened in French is any indication (long story involving cheese, an overhead projector, and my male classmates)
Spiritsong - I'm so glad you like this! Thank you!
Peek-A-Bloody-Boo - aww, thank you!
Nrynmrth - Sadly this is only like 1/4th of the actual reveal but otherwise I'd be looking at a 10,000 word wall of chapter.