Toxic: A Dark Romance

A screech tears free, and I lunge forward to staunch the bleeding, but there’s too much, and it’s coming too fast. Asleep as he is, Salvatore doesn’t so much as twitch as Gracin rips the scissors away and his life slowly slips through my fingers. Seconds tick by before Salvatore jerks once and then goes still again, significantly still.

With dark red smears of blood covering my hands and seeping into my scrubs, I stumble backward. All I know is that I need to get away. Away from what just happened, away from Vic, this place, Gracin. Just away.

I spin, intending to do just that when Gracin comes up behind me and braces me against his chest. “Not so fast,” he says into my ear, and I shiver against him, feeling both too cold and too hot at the same time. “We’re not done yet.”

“Please don’t kill me,” I say. I guess Vic hasn’t beaten all the begging out of me after all. “Please, just let me go. I won’t say anything.”

“Oh, I know you won’t.” His hands cinch down around my arms. “You’re gonna stay real quiet-like while I take care of our man here. If anyone comes in, you tell them you’ve got it handled, just like you did before. Can you do that, little mouse?”

My insides turn colder than the ass-crack of a Michigan winter morning.

“You bastard,” I seethe.

“Awe, now, don’t be so upset. Just do as I ask, and no one else will get hurt.”

If I had something in my hands, I would have thrown it at his carefully blank face. My thirst for revenge quiets when I hear the squeak of sneakers against the tile floors and all the blood drains from my face. Someone’s coming. I shove my feelings aside and try to figure out how the hell I’m going to get out of this mess.

“Hey, Tessa, are you okay?” Annie’s voice calls from down the hallway.

My shoulders are tight and I blink rapidly as my mind races for an exit strategy. As if he can sense the direction of my thoughts, Gracin’s arms tighten.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he says. “Get me out of here, and I won’t have to hurt anyone else.”

“Out of here?” I say around a gasp.

“Blackthorne. Get me out of Blackthorne, and I won’t hurt her. Get me out without tipping off the guards or getting us caught, and I won’t tell your husband what you did with me. How you wanted to scream for me.”

“Fuck you.” I try to buck away from him, but his arms band tighter around me.

The sound of footsteps is just outside the door when he says, “Make up your mind, little mouse, or this all ends here.”

“If I do this, you won’t hurt her.” I don’t trust him, but I can’t take the chance he’ll kill anyone else, especially someone like Annie, who doesn’t deserve it.

“I won’t. But you’ll need to get rid of her before she suspects anything, or I’ll have to take care of it.”

I don’t want to know what “take care of it” means, so I shove out of his arms, and this time, he lets me go. Before Annie can round the corner and enter the room, I throw another blanket over Salvatore’s still body and hope it will cover most of the blood on his body. There is nothing I can do about the floor, so I can only hope she doesn’t look down. There also isn’t anything I can do for the blood on my scrubs, but I wipe off most of it from my hands with a towel and toss it behind the bed just as her concerned face comes into view.

“Hey,” she’s already saying in a rush, “I heard you scream and wanted to make sure you were okay . . . ” Her voice trails off as she takes in my bloody scrubs and Gracin towering just a few feet away. “Tessa?”

“I know, I’m a mess, right?” I try to laugh, but it sounds more like I’m choking. “They just brought this guy in with a hell of a knife wound.” I jerk my finger over my shoulder at the prone Salvatore. “Bled like a son of a bitch.”

“I’ll say,” Annie says slowly, as though she can’t quite get a handle on the weird feeling in the room or why I’m acting so crazy. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Absolutely. Just a hell of a mess to clean up.” When she doesn’t leave after another pause, I add, “Thanks for checking, though. I’m sorry if I scared you. I didn’t know you were working this morning, too.”

She pauses, her eyes flitting back and forth between Gracin and me. “I had to work a double,” she says, and I note the dark smudges under her eyes. “You sure you’re all good here?”

“All good,” I glance over my shoulder at Gracin’s unreadable expression. “He was just about to help me clean up,” I say as though he didn’t just kill a man with a pair of scissors and then threaten to kill her and possibly me, too.

She must read something in my eyes, some emotion I can’t control because she makes a move to run, to call out for help. Before I can warn her to stop, before I can even turn in Gracin’s direction, he’s across the room with his hands wrapped around a stunned Annie’s throat. His arms flex and tears leak from her eyes as she struggles for breath. The fact that I let this man touch me brings bile to the back of my throat.

I manage to look up into Gracin’s eyes, startled to realize the same eyes that I’d found so alluring now seem as dead and as hard as the ice slicking the gravel outside.

His nod is little more than a jerk of his head. “Get me out of here, and I’ll let sweet little Miss Annie run along home.”

“Fine,” I almost shout. I would do just about anything if it meant him getting his damn hands off her.

Gracin releases Annie and murmurs to her words that I can’t hear, but I can guess. Her face pales, and I send her a pleading look, hoping she knows that he really will kill both of us if she doesn’t do what he says. If I make it through today, I may just kill Gracin for this. The only thing that keeps me from going crazy is imagining all the different ways I could do it.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” the devil himself warns as another set of footsteps draws closer to the room.

Surprisingly, Annie manages to compose herself just as the footsteps come to a stop. Whatever Gracin said to her must have been effective, because the only evidence of her distress is the redness circling her eyes and suffusing her cheeks. I hope my control is as absolute as Gracin takes a seat on one of the hospital beds.

“How is everyone doing here?” the officer asks, finally peeking his head in. If he notices anything off about the three of us, he doesn’t say anything. His eyes merely skitter across the room without actually seeing anything before he nods to the bed Salvatore is in. “Doc give the all-clear for him to get out of here?”

In the end, I don’t even have to think twice about what I’m going to do. The action feels as natural as breathing. I guess I’ve gotten better at lying than I thought.

“I’ll need to keep him for observation. Those guys really did a number on him. He might have a concussion.” I’m pleased to find that fear doesn’t cause me to stutter. I sound as bored and impatient as he did.

The officer shifts, visibly uncomfortable, either from the mention of the sound beating they gave him or the fact that he’ll have to take shit for not bringing the prisoner back. “Sergeant didn’t say anything about observation. He’s supposed to go back to the cell when you’re through with him.”

I have to rally all of the resolve I didn’t know I had when I say, “Do you want to be responsible if he sustains further injury because you were too impatient? Let me do my job. You do yours.” Then I wait because I’ve learned it makes people more uncomfortable when there’s a tense silence, and they will do just about anything to avoid it.

“You’re the boss,” he says, shifting a hand through his hair and taking a step back toward the door. “No skin off my teeth. He’s all yours.” He pauses, perhaps finally sensing the tension rolling off Annie and me in waves. “Are you sure everything is okay here? If you want, I can have another officer come—”

“No, there’s no need, we’re okay,” I say shortly. My tone is sharper than I intend because he doesn’t know how on the mark he is.

The officer, no doubt irritated by my interruption and tone, lifts his hands. “Whatever you say,” he says and backs away.

Heart in my throat, I turn to Annie to offer an explanation or plead my case, but she backs away, her movements so quick and instinctual that she nearly trips over her own feet.

“Don’t,” she squeaks out. “Just—don’t.”

Gracin observes from his spot on the other side of the room, his expression unreadable. The attraction that has been ever-present since we met has turned to flat out rage, but I manage to channel it into determination. I have to make this work. For Annie.

“You’ll need to stay out of the way until it’s time,” I tell him. “We’ll have to wait for shift-change, and you’ve already caused enough fucking trouble today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and the amusement is plain in his tone.

I grit my teeth and imagine gutting him with a scalpel.

Annie takes a seat behind the computer, leaving me to face the rush of afternoon patients—a mix of regulars who come to have their meds administered and a handful of inmates in for annual exams. The work keeps my hands busy, but my mind is on Gracin, who sits quietly in the corner. When the nurse in charge of medical stops by to inquire about Annie’s presence, I beg her off, saying I’m swamped and desperately need Annie’s help.

Under her condemning eye, I clean up the murder scene with unsteady hands, silent tears streaming down my face. There’s blood all over the grout again, and I can’t help but compare it to the night I had to clean up my own after one of Vic’s beatings. I gag on my disgust and throw the bloody towels into the appropriate receptacle. I allow Gracin to get up long enough to help me change the sheets on Salvatore’s bed. When I’m done, it looks as though he’s just resting peacefully, which only makes me cry harder.

By the end of the day, my nerves are shot, and I can’t stop from shaking. The poor man whose medicine I’m trying to administer withstands several long minutes while I fumble with bottles until I get my hands on the correct one. I mumble a distracted apology as the patient shoots me an irritated glare.

Even though I’ve desperately tried to ignore Gracin, I find myself looking up while I’m in the middle of treating patients. Each time, he’s watching me, waiting. In response, I bare my teeth, which only causes him to smile. He obviously has me right where he wants me. There’s no need for him to continue the little charade. It makes me want to claw his eyes out.

When Gracin lifts into a sitting position and pins me with a level stare, I know it’s time. With a nod, I glance at the door and find the officer has abandoned his post for the evening shift change. The very thought of how precisely Gracin orchestrated this entire situation makes my whole body go cold. If he can do this, what else is he capable of? Murder may seem like the worst act on the spectrum, but after years of torture from the one man I was supposed to trust, I know there are worse things than a quick death.

Annie still hasn’t said a word to me, and she hasn’t moved from her spot behind the desk. When Gracin gets to his feet and heads in her direction, she shrinks back against the chair, which emits a terrible squeak.

“Gracin, don—”

But before I’ve finished my plea, he strikes out with a swift grace I’m always surprised to see from his bulky form. His fist collides with Annie’s cheek, her eyes roll into the back of her head, and she slumps indelicately in the chair. He ignores my cry of protest and carefully arranges her body at the computer. When he’s done, her back is to the door. Anyone looking in would think she’s working. During shift change, no one comes to the infirmary, and most inmates are busy going to and from the mess hall for dinner. Salvatore is expected to sleep throughout the night for observation, and no one but me will know he isn’t sleeping.

My stomach sinks when I realize this is actually happening. I’m about to wreck my life for this man. All the prisoners who saw us together. The guards he bribed. Everyone will see me walk him out of prison, and I can only imagine the news reports. The trial. Oh my God, Vic is going to be furious.

“Time to play, little mouse.”