Grace Street (A Chapter 8 Novel, #1) (29 page)

Moving behind her, he kissed her neck
tenderly and untied her robe, letting the soft fabric fall and pool
around her feet. The cool air chilled her skin and goosebumps
covered her entire torso. Victor ghosted his fingers over her upper
arms and he ground his shaft into her lower back.

“Are you invested, Ms. Cassidy?”

Her body tensed and she woodenly nodded.

“Are you sure?” he asked in a sing-song
tone.

God, would he just get on with it? How bad
could it be? She immediately bit her bottom lip for thinking such a
thing. The last time she let those words slip into her
subconscious, she ended up having to watch Patrick have sex with
another woman.

Again, she nodded.

Victor pushed her forward toward the window
and stepped away to open the curtains widely, letting in the
light.

“Do not move and do not speak, Ms. Cassidy.
For any reason. Not even if someone comes to the door.”

What kind of wrinkle was this in the game?
Elsa peered over her shoulder as Victor pulled the chair to the
shadows and seated himself to watch the show.

Elsa stood like that for nearly twenty
minutes wondering what kind of punishment this was to simply stand
in front of a window until she saw the first group of people walk
by on the sidewalk that was only a few hundred feet away. Her body
stiffened and her natural response was to cover herself. She
flinched and reached for her robe when she heard a
tsk tsk
behind her. She quickly straightened herself but lowered her
head.

“Eyes forward,” he barked.

She slowly lifted her head to see several
people pointing in her direction with appalled looks on their
faces. Victor had stated he never repeated a punishment twice, but
wasn’t this humiliation again?

Another person walked by, an older, well-put
together woman who stood frozen as her eyes roamed over Elsa’s nude
body. Both of their cheeks flushed simultaneously and Elsa felt the
sudden urge to cry. She swallowed hard and held her ground. The
woman promptly dug into her handbag and retrieved a cell phone.

This wasn’t good. Elsa’s legs suddenly felt
weak. The woman talked feverishly to someone as two other people
approached. Would this never end? She clenched her fists when her
mortification turned to anger. God, she hated Mr. Black.

The group of three people finally dispersed
and Elsa let out a sigh of relief. How much longer was she going to
be put through this? Just as she was feeling better, she saw a
police cruiser pull into the driveway.

Horrified at what was about to play out, she
turned her head to see Victor gone. But she knew he wasn’t really
gone. The cameras were rolling. The loud knock on the door made her
jump but she stood steadfast. Victor’s words came back to her:
this isn’t going to end well.

A louder bang on the door echoed through the
entryway that was followed by a man’s voice.

“Open the door, Ma’am.”

When she didn’t respond, she heard the door
knob jiggle and her mouth became unbearably dry. There were now
several onlookers, some of whom were smiling stupidly at her. Fuck
this. Just as she reached down for her robe, the door swung open
and a tall, built Hispanic police offer came into the living
room.

“Cover yourself and step away from that
window, please,” he stated sternly.

Her body stilled.
Do not speak. Do not
move. Not even if someone comes to the door
. She straightened
herself and kept her eyes lowered. She truly had lost all common
sense and the words ‘sanity’ and ‘dignity’ had been ripped from her
vocabulary.

“Ma’am, did you hear me?” he said louder when
she didn’t move.

Elsa’s bottom lip trembled and her body began
to shake when the officer approached her and reached down to place
the robe around her shoulders.

“Are you the owner of this residence?” he
asked.

She shook her head.

“Where is he?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Listen to me, Ma’am. If you don’t step away
from this window, I’m going to have to haul you in. Do you really
want that?”

She shook her head and her eyes welled up
with tears. But she remained exactly where Mr. Black had told her
to stay and she pulled the robe off.

“This is ridiculous. If you don’t put that
robe on right now and step away from the window, I’m taking you in.
This is your last warning. I got a shit ton of paperwork to do and
I don’t have time for this. Do you understand?” he said even louder
than before.

She nodded. Yes, she understood what he was
saying, but she also understood that Mr. Black’s punishment would
be far worse. She pushed her chin out, ready to prove her
investment when the man grabbed her robe once again, wrapped it
around her shoulders and dragged her to the car. She no sooner got
placed into the back seat when her body began to tremble. She
hadn’t been to jail as an adult and she promised herself after the
last time she was in juvie that she would change her ways. She had
even promised her mother.
Oh, God… her mom
. Elsa hid her
face in her hands, but held her tears.

Where the hell was Victor? Why hadn’t he come
to her rescue? Because he was no knight in shining armor, she
reminded herself. He was a soulless, lightless sadist… No. That’s
what he wanted her to believe and this was all part of his game. He
wanted this. He wanted her to doubt her judgment about him, but she
would prove to him that she still believed in him…

When they arrived at the station all her
memories of her time being booked when she was a teenager were
brought back. It was all the same. The same paperwork, the same
assholes asking the same questions. She tried twice to call
Victor’s cell phone only to be sent to voice mail. This was
insane.

Dressed in an awful, blue jumper that was at
least two sizes too big, she was placed into a cell all by herself.
Thankfully. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to be next to
real criminals.

Where was Victor? Why the hell wasn’t he here
to explain everything and get her out? Didn’t he realize she could
lose her job over something like this? Is that what he wanted?

Three hours passed and she was losing hope
that he would show up. Several times she was asked if she wanted to
call anyone, but who would she call? She had no one near who could
help. She considered calling Vivien, but she was too embarrassed
and didn’t want to try and justify her actions of why she had been
standing nude in front of a window for all of Richmond to see her.
She didn’t want to explain that she had signed some stupid, fake
contract that wasn’t even legal and that she was being held to
ridiculous standards. And she sure as hell didn’t want to try and
rationalize herself by saying it was all because she thought she
could break through some sadistic asshole’s walls.

Finally after four hours, she was released
and simply given an indecent exposure ticket and warned to keep her
naked ass under wraps. They gave her some second-hand clothes to
wear and she caught a bus with a voucher back to Grace Street. When
she arrived, it was almost 10:00 p.m. She found the door unlocked
and Victor waiting at the table eating as if nothing had happened
and she hadn’t just spent the worst four hours of her adult life in
a jail cell.

Too irate and hurt to speak because of his
casualness, she went straight to the master suite to shower and
wash the filth of the jail cell off her body. She felt miserable
and alone and for the first time, she regretted having moved to
Richmond. This wasn’t the life she had planned for herself. This
wasn’t what she wanted. She just wanted to be cared for, cherished,
and loved. All she wanted was a fresh start. But Mr. Black had
stripped all that away. She crawled under her comforter and rolled
onto her side and closed her eyes. She just wanted to sleep and
forget about the fucking her investment.

She heard Victor walk in but she kept her
eyes closed, pretending to sleep. The bed dipped next to her and
his hand push the hair from her eyes, but she remained
motionless.

“I have some food for you downstairs. Come
and eat.”

She remained still.

“I know you’re not sleeping, Elsa. Come
downstairs and let’s talk.”

Her eyes flew open and she glared at him.
What the hell was there to talk about? He stood and tugged her
hand, but she resisted. When she did, he reached down and brought
her up into his arms and carried her down the stairs. She hid her
face in his neck, not wanting to look into his beautifully
deceiving and pitiless eyes. His smell was so intoxicating and his
warm, strong body was so firm... Why hadn’t he come to that jail
cell and taken her into his arms then?

He seated her at the table and pushed a plate
of warm food in front of her. She didn’t want to give in but she
was so hungry. Picking up her flatware, she brought a forkful of
potatoes to her mouth. When she finally had the nerve to look up,
Victor was watching her keenly and waiting for her response. She
could only guess that he was expecting her to lash out like she had
before, but she just didn’t have it in her.

She shot him a withering glance. “How could
you leave me there knowing what I’ve been through?”

Silence.

“That was harsh, Victor.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You were
late.”

Elsa sighed and shook her head in disgust
with his coldness. “You should know that the reason I was late was
because I was in a car accident,” she whispered. His eyes squinted
critically. “You don’t believe me? Go outside and look at my rear
bumper,” she answered before he spoke.

Victor’s mercurial, green eyes sharpened as
he sat forward. His mouth parted and a pained sigh fluttered past
his lips. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he clenched his
teeth.

“Would the reason have mattered?”

Her question went unanswered and he sat back
and sunk into the chair. There was an almost imperceptible note of
remorse on his face as he reached a hand out to her.

“Now you know I’m invested, Mr. Black, and
I’m not going anywhere.”

While Victor lay next to Elsa with his chest
to her back, the names of his Chapters kept slipping through his
thoughts, and the undeniable and dreadful facts of everything he
had done to them all in the name of helping them. His recent
ceaseless inward questions were maddening and eating away at the
protective outer shell he had carefully created over the years. He
thought by getting closer to knowing who the Cambridge Killer was,
these thoughts would dissipate, but they only seemed to
intensify.

Unwanted guilt weighed heavily on his heart
for having allowed Elsa to go to jail. Of course he would take care
of everything and have the charges dropped, but it wouldn’t take
away the betrayal she was feeling. He was simply trying to make her
see the danger in falling for him. Hell, he never expected her to
really go through with it. He had never met anyone so fucking
resilient to his methods. He was convinced that his punishment was
exactly what she needed to see that he was a hopeless case, but
what he hadn’t anticipated was the look of desolation on her face
or the admission that there was a legitimate reason for her having
been late.

When he observed her standing in front of the
window, he
found it admirable to watch her
struggle. It was a redeeming quality for her to continue fighting
against her own will and commonsense to accept his sentence even
while knowing triumph was all but a fleeting memory. Her
stubbornness and admission that she was still invested in the game
was
a shocking testimony of the depths of her loyalty for
him and he began to wonder just what outcome she expected between
the two of them. As he lay in the dark room pondering what it was
she saw him, he was simultaneously lost and found in her as his
breathing slowly matched hers.

Elsa wasn’t sleeping but wasn’t speaking
either. She was waiting for something, but he had no idea what. She
was hurt and angry, and could he blame her? She had proven herself
worthy of his time and effort, but was he worthy of her?
Fuck,
no, he wasn’t
. What did she think she was accomplishing by
staying ‘invested’? It was infuriating that he couldn’t figure her
out. The others were so easily readable.
God damn her and her
light.

Slowly she rose from the bed and began
dressing.

Feeling rebuffed, Victor sat up on the edge
of bed. “I haven’t dismissed you.”

“It’s after midnight. It’s Monday. I have to
work,” she stated without emotion as she seated herself on the edge
of the bed to put her shoes on.

Holding onto her shoulders, he turned her
body toward him so he could see her eyes. Damn if they weren’t the
most stunning ones to ever look back him… Sadness flickered in her
chestnut irises and only a hint of the light she spoke about.

“Your light is diminishing,” he said quietly,
knowing full well he was the reason why.

A momentary look of discomfort crossed her
face before she stood again and pulled her coat on. “I’m sorry
you’ve been hurt, Victor, but nothing you ever do is going to
change who I am and no amount of malice you show me is going to
douse my light.”

He sat stunned as she stared at him. How the
hell did she know he had been hurt? Was he the one that was easily
readable? He flashed back to his three-word confession:
yes,
I’ve loved
. That statement in and of itself was enough to let
onto his pain and he was pissed at himself for having said it. He
fucking knew better than to do something so ignorant.

“What do you see when you look at me?” she
asked as she seated herself next to him.

He said the first thing that came to his
mind. “You’re beautiful.”