Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,68
“You need to leave.”
“You need to give me a chance,” he replied.
He moved quickly, and my attempt to escape came far too late. I was stupid enough to believe he was too familiar to try something like this, to try to force himself on me.
First, it was a kiss. Wet, sloppy, and horrific. I tried to fight him. But despite him being much smaller than Zeke, he was strong enough to subdue me. To press me against the fridge, to move his hands under my shirt.
I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t get away. His hands were all over me.
He was going to rape me in the same kitchen where he’d last looked my husband in the eye.
His hands settled around my throat and his body pressed against mine.
16
He was off me as quickly as he was on me. A blur of movement. The thud of flesh against flesh. Martin’s body hitting the kitchen island, a wet thump, and then Zeke was there.
In front of me, hands on my neck. I screamed, flinched back from his touch, still reeling from what had happened. What had almost happened.
He took his hands off me immediately. “It’s me, sweetheart,” he said, voice low. Even. Non-threatening. I blinked him into focus. His features were blank. He was trying to lock it down, his fury. Trying to mask it because he could likely see the terror that seemed to be emanating for my very pores.
I took a second. Took another. Used his eyes as my anchor, pulling me back to reality. To my kitchen. Where my boys had breakfast. Where my husband had cooked for us. It would not be defined by this moment.
“I’m ... okay,” I said, my voice a rasp.
My hands went to my neck. Had he tried to strangle me to shut me up? Had I blacked out?
I looked downward to where Martin was splayed on the floor.
“He’s dead,” I said flatly. The statement was unnecessary since his eyes were wide open, unseeing, and there was a pool of blood growing underneath his head. Zeke had thrown him off me. He must have hit his head on the marble corner. A freak accident, Zeke wasn’t that precise.
“Yep.” The single word was even, calm. Cold. The killer I’d known he was. His eyes moved over me, worry puncturing that chilly mask he wore. “Are you hurt?” He stepped forward as if to touch me, but he caught himself at the last minute.
Parts of me ached without his touch. Other parts yearned for it. I should’ve not been craving him right now, with the dead man who had just tried to rape me mere feet away, but I was.
“I’m fine,” I said, not even lying. I was shaken, to be sure. I may have been sheltered from all sorts of violence throughout my life, but I knew this kind of thing happened. I donated to various women’s charities, had been to benefits, all the things the rich elite did to appease their guilt. I’d been the victim of an ass grab at a club, leers, whistles, things that shouldn’t exist in a perfect world, but this was not a perfect world. I was a feminist. I hated what men thought they could get away with, but I was somewhat insulated from it. I’d managed to pretend it didn’t exist in my world.
Not only did it exist, but it was currently staining my kitchen floor.
“What do we do now?” I asked, looking to the dead man and then back up to Zeke. My stomach churned ever so slightly with what was going on, but not as much as it should’ve. My meager lunch should’ve been joining the blood on the concrete. I should’ve screamed. Cried. Something to show I wasn’t a broken woman who wasn’t fazed at all by a dead man lying on the same surface her sons walked on.
“We call the police,” Zeke said.
My mind started working now. “Police?” I repeated.
He nodded once. “A man like this will likely be missed. Not by society, but by people he works with, people who are most likely blackmailing him. We also can’t rule out the fact that someone saw him come here, or he told someone he was coming here. He gets reported missing, cops will show up here. No way in fuck am I making you lie to the police or taking a chance that you might get involved in an investigation that takes you away from your boys.” He paused. “So we call the police. Tell