Severed Ties: A Dark Stalker Romance (Tainted Love Book 1)
Severed Ties: Chapter 20

I want to fucking kill someone. No one in particular. A faceless man who has done some kind of wrong. It doesn’t matter as long as their blood spills over my hands and their final breath is at my mercy.

There’s something in Clara’s past she doesn’t want me to know about, and that only makes me need to know more. She’s hiding things from me, from Wynter, from everyone, and I won’t stand for it.

It takes everything I have not to turn around and walk back into her apartment, to not storm right up to her and tear her dress off and see for myself what she’s hiding. But alas, that won’t win me any favors.

Thoughts hammer me as I swing my leg over my bike and shove the helmet onto my head carelessly. I need to get out of here before I do exactly that.

Maybe she’s wearing a wire. Maybe she’s trying to take Frost Industries down from the inside. It’s not the craziest thing that’s ever happened, but her exposure to the darker sides of the business is minimal, so that seems unlikely.

Perhaps she has scars. But then again, I watch her on the cameras in her apartment most nights and I’ve seen her change more than a few times, but maybe the camera quality is too poor to capture them. The feed is black and white, and although there’s not one blind spot in the whole apartment, there has to be something she’s hiding. I just need to figure out what it is.

I haven’t even made the conscious decision before I realize I’m driving to see the only person who can help me that isn’t Everett, someone who can dig up anyone’s deepest darkest secrets, even if it means owing a favor to someone just as fucked up as I am.

Thirty minutes later, I stop the bike on the other side of the city. The neighborhood is rough, but then you wouldn’t expect a dark web hacker to live in an apartment with a view of Millennium Park.

Ace lives in a fashion you would expect him to. A small, rundown apartment surrounded by nothing but computers and take-out containers. The only exception is his bedroom, which consists of a simple bed and one dresser, and a room he uses as a gym. He’s an enigma and one we don’t use nearly as much as I think we should. Everett has boundaries, but Ace? Ace will go to the end of the fucking earth to uncover what he’s looking for. There’re no stones he won’t overturn nor lines he won’t cross, and that’s where our similarities lie.

I stomp up the steps of the building that should have been condemned years ago, barely bothering to look around to make sure my bike is safe. If they’re brave enough to steal from me, they deserve the fucking thing, even if they’ll replace themselves bleeding out through the gaping wounds where their hands were once connected to their body.

The steps creak beneath my boots, making sure my presence is known. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Ace, but I’m almost certain I’m the only motherfucker brave enough to show up here unannounced, and because of that, I don’t bother knocking. When you have the reputation Ace and I do, you don’t need to lock your doors because no asshole is ballsy enough to waltz into your apartment unannounced.

“What the fuck do you want?” His deep voice rumbles through the dark apartment before I can plant both feet past the threshold. The glow from the wall of screens not dissimilar to the one at The Circle is the only light in the whole place and it outlines his large frame sitting in front of the desk.

“Is that any way to greet your big brother?” I half laugh, but there’s no humor in it. We’re not really brothers, not by blood anyway, but we did grow up together in foster care, and we’ve seen more shit than anyone has a right to see. We escaped together. Did what we had to survive together. And then, when it came to it, we went our separate ways because although he’s the only living member of my past, he’s also the person that can drag me back to that time with one glance.

“That doesn’t answer my question, asshole.” He still hasn’t bothered to look at me, and if I know him at all, which I do, he probably won’t bother.

It’s not until I move toward the desk that I notice his fingers flying across the keyboard and the way his eyes dart from screen to screen, but I know better than to ask any questions about what he’s doing. “I need your help.”

He lets out an annoyed huff and looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “And what makes you think I’m going to drop all my own shit to help you?”

I tug the knife from the back of my pants, the agitation getting the better of me, but as soon as the blade presses into my forearm, some of my demons step away and allow me to think. “There’s a woman.”

“Isn’t there always?” He chuckles, but there’s no humor in his words. Ace is a tortured soul just the same way I am. You don’t go to hell and back and come out the other side as a well-rounded member of society. “Who’s the latest obsession?”

I glower at the side of his face, but I can’t snap back the way I want to. I can’t take the knife pressing into my own skin and slice his neck open as penance for suggesting Clara is like the other women I’ve asked him for background checks on. She’s more than they were. They were just something to pass the time, fleeting affections that died after only a few weeks. Clara’s different in every way. Instead of watching from afar like I usually do, I’ve allowed myself to get close. I’ve installed security systems, cut myself a key to her apartment, and I’ve watched her sleep every night for months. The other women were only ever from afar. “It’s different this time. She’s more than the others.”

This seems to pique his interest and he finally turns away from the screens in front of him and looks to me with curious green eyes. When we were young, they would change from blue to green depending on his moods, but since we escaped, his tortured soul has been too dark to return to the former. His messy blond hair looks both perfectly styled and as if he’s just rolled out of bed, and his tattooed forearms peek out from under the rolled-up sleeves of his sweater.

“Interesting,” he murmurs. “What is it you want to know about your little conquest?”

“Everything,” I blurt out. “Frost did a basic background check on her, but there’s shit missing. I know it.”

He nods slowly and crosses his arms across his chest. “I don’t want to give the impression that I give a shit about your life or anything you do, but don’t you think she’s hiding whatever it is for a reason?”

“Since when did you start caring about keeping others’ secrets safe?”

“It’s not her I’m worried about.” He sighs. “Sometimes people hide their pasts for a reason, Tommy. We should know that better than anyone else.”

I hate that he’s right, but it’s not going to make me need to know everything about my little fawn any less. It’s a compulsion, a need I have no control over, and with each day there are secrets between us, the deeper the itch in my veins burns.

“Are you going to help me or not?”

Ace pinches the bridge of his nose, dragging his arm into the dim light from the screens until the scars so similar to my own are visible. “Fine. But don’t tell me I didn’t warn you when the truth comes out.”

I give him a sharp nod and turn on my heel. “I’ll text you with what I’ve got.”

He mutters something under his breath that I’m sure is an insult, but I’ve already been away from the cameras for too long. She’s vulnerable and hurt, and she has no one watching over her. Not that she knows of at least.