Page 31 of Burn for the Devil
I watched while he replaced some bulbs, climbing up and down a short ladder he’d fetched. “Flip the switch, please.”
Darkness was closing in quickly. I fumbled around, not familiar with the walls and controls, trying to hurry while he did nothing with the flashlight in his fist to help me. Reaching the right spot, I pressed the lever back and forth.
“Crap,” he muttered. “I should’ve trusted my first instinct.”
“It wouldn’t have worked with broken bulbs.” He ignored me, as expected.
Timothy narrowed his eyes, signaling his displeasure. “I'll be back, wait here."
Where was I gonna go? Defiantly, I picked up my glass and shuffled to what I’d hoped was the living room with an arm outstretched, grasping at whatever I could find to lead the way. It was ridiculous the man didn’t have a back-up generator or any type of emergency lights.
My fingers found the edge of a wall and I sidestepped it, throwing my hand out so I didn’t walk into anything. I’d expected dead air but found something hard, and moving, instead.
Stumbling backward, I think I made a squeaking sound. A smooth hand suddenly gripped my arm, pulling me against a warm, solid body. I heard an intake of breath right before I felt silken strands caress my cheek. Familiar hair, familiar scent. “What did I tell you?” he whispered. “Naughty girl.” He took the wineglass from me and placed it down somewhere.
Ramone. I couldn’t say his name; I couldn’t say anything. My heart thumped in my chest, fear overtaking me at his unexpected placement in my ex’s new home. Why was he there? What washe doing with Timothy? Silently, he led me to the sofa, somehow able to see in the pitch-black tar that now enveloped us both.
19
Samantha
“I would never hurt you.” His words were meant to calm me, the smooth cadence of them flowing over me. I wanted to believe him. “I can hear your heart pounding as if you don’t believe me.”
Finding my voice, I answered, “Why would I? I don’t know you. Why are you here? I didn’t know Timothy had company over.”
He must have been crouching in front of me, his voice no longer coming from above. “Oh, but you do know. I told you, Samantha, to stay away from other men.”
“You said to stay away from Matthew.”
A sound rumbled from his chest. “Same difference.” I heard a pair of shoes scuff. “Stay right here,” he ordered me.
It was now so dark I couldn’t see my own hands in front of my face. The loss of sight heightened my other senses and I listened to Ramone walk across the hardwood flooring before I heard him slowly descend the basement stairs. My blood began to ring in my ears while I waited, goosebumps scattering along my arms.
Technically, I should have been yelling for help or shouting a warning to Timothy. For reasons I didn’t fully understand, I couldn’t. It just felt wrong to alert my ex-fiancé, it was as if doing so, I would be betraying the other man. There was no sensible way to articulate why I needed to protect Ramone.
Shoes stomped up the basement steps quickly, a beam of light crisscrossing the walls from the flashlight. I heard a grunt from my ex, and then a smacking noise, before the distinctive sound of a wine bottle shattering on the floor. Glass crunched under a shoe. Timothy grunted again but I couldn’t hear much of a struggle, only some muffled thuds. I expected what I knew was happening in the other room to have made much louder sounds, like in the movies. Instead, it was nearly silent.
The flashlight beam had stopped moving, coming to rest on a houseplant across the room from me, its shiny green leaves spotlighted. Slowly, I lifted myself from the couch after removing my shoes so I could move in silence. The beam of light dimly outlined the walls, enough to guide me safely to the divide between the kitchen and living room. A light under the stove range’s hood flickered on.
Ramone had Timothy bent over the kitchen island, stomach pressed against the countertop. My ex-fiancé's eyes were wide, pleading, lips moving soundlessly. Ramone leaned across him, black dress shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with a vest covering the shirt, and a gun tucked into his slacks. I saw the back of his head, positioned by Timothy’s neck and watched him shiver. He straightened, pulling something from his side, while whispering in his ear. My ex cast one more desperate glance my way before Ramone dragged something across his neck.
I backed up, gasping for air, watching the blood spurt and pool. My eyes met Ramone’s brilliant green irises when he turned toward me; the shade lit from within as my ankle bangedthe edge of the floor trim. I couldn’t run; my body frozen in time, as paralyzed as my lungs. Instead, I collapsed to my knees.
Growing up, I’d seen things I wasn’t supposed to, due to some of my father’s business associates, but it was never personal. It was never someone I knew. My father had always skirted the edge, as far as I was aware, of the more unsavory side of life, and questions were never asked by me. Or by my mother—that I heard. I didn’t know if my dad ever took care ofproblemshimself, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask. It was obvious that some of his friends were involved in illegal dealings, but no one ever discussed it outside of closed doors and I’d never watched anyone die right before my eyes.
From what I’d gathered over time, my father had my sister Zoey’s companions who’d fed her drugs “taken care of,” and I was glad for it. I just didn’t want to see it; the knowledge had been enough when he’d told my mother and I that they wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
Ramone cleaned his blade on the back of my ex’s shirt and let go of him, the body falling to the floor before he came over to me. “What did I tell you, sweetheart? I said to stay where you were.” He knelt in front of me and scooped me up, nuzzling my neck. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” he chided. I began to shake in his arms, unable to cease the jerky movements.
I wasn’t supposed to see that.
“Do you have a coat with you?” he asked. I looked up in confusion. “Never mind, I’ll keep you warm.”
Ramone deposited me into a car and pulled my head onto his lap. The last thing I remembered was an elegant finger lightly tapping my forehead above my brows, terror filling me, and next thing I knew, everything went dark.
I’d been thrust into a void, empty of any living matter, suspended in space, and without a sense of time. The feeling was both exhilarating and horrifying, the release of my careswelcome but the implications, not so much. It was what I’d always imagined death to be.
An awareness that the man I was inexplicably drawn to had been the one to trap me in a cottage and had now thrust me into a vacuum sat at the edge of my consciousness. I tried to draw on my anger and annoyance, but it flitted away, just out of reach. I’d never forget the finger tap to the forehead and what it signified though.