“Don’t you dare threaten me,” she hisses. “I’ve told you. I’m in this with you. We are a team, but more than that, we are a family.”
I’m impressed, albeit a little surprised. When I first met Alexis, she wanted to change the world. She wanted to help people, to find the good among the bad. She would never have dreamed of becoming a Mafia don’s woman, would never have been able to accept that kind of darkness into her life.
What has happened to her? I can’t say that I mind, and to me, she has never been sexier, but I wonder if perhaps she would have been happier if we’d never met. If she had stayed naive to the monsters lurking in the dark. Because of me, she has been kidnapped, tortured, and has learned horrible truths about her father, a man she once idolized.
But she is mine now. And that’s all that matters.
I lean over and kiss Alexis hard.
20
Alexis
I stand with my hands on my hips, staring at the mound of packages on the couch in my office. I need a better system for this. Last week I initiated an appeal for gifts and letters of support to provide to the addicts in our treatment centers, and from the looks of it, the initiative has been quite successful. There must be a couple dozen packages and even more letters spilling onto the floor.
Before I hand over the task of opening, reading, and distributing the letters and packages, I want to see the kinds of things people are sending. I asked for homemade gifts if possible, things that were personal, that might reach someone from beyond the veil of addiction.
I start with a package on the top of the heap. Inside is a knitted blanket and a note: This too shall pass.
I like that. Simple. Effective. This is going to make someone’s day. I set it to the side, and open up a few more packages, revealing a clumsy but cute clay mug, a pair of pink pajamas, and a framed photograph of a Hawaiian beach scene.
Happy enough with that, I move on to some of the letters. Oddly, a few of them are addressed specifically to Gabriel, though the senders have used the PO Box I specified in the advertisement. I don’t think anything of it, and start opening letters. The first couple are lovely—messages of support, personal anecdotes, kind words. Exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
Then I get to one of the envelopes that has been addressed to Gabriel. I am confused to find that the letter has been written to Gabriel personally. The more I read through, the more my confusion gives way to fury.
It’s fan mail. For Gabriel. But it’s far from the sort of innocent fan mail a pop star might receive from an obsessed teen. The letter is filthy. The woman who wrote it promises to love Gabriel forever, even if he is guilty, and there’s a strong suggestion that it might be even sexier if he was.
I snatch another of the letters with Gabriel’s name from the pile and open it. More fan mail. I start going through all the letters, horrified that apparently Gabriel’s crimes have garnered him the same kind of fan base enjoyed by psychopaths like Charles Manson. These women all offer to wait for him. They would do anything for him to write back. They adore him.
Who are these bitches? And don’t they know that he’s mine? Somebody should tell them.
I storm over to my desk and whip out a pad of paper and a pen. I set the tip of the pen to the page, and suddenly I feel ridiculous. Am I actually going to respond to some pathetic fan mail? That’s crazy. These women don’t stand a chance with him. There’s no need for me to feel jealous. So why am I so protective?
Because he’s mine, a small voice hisses in my mind. And because anyone who has the audacity to think otherwise needs to be shown the error of their ways.
I shake my head and clear it of those poisonous thoughts. Just then, my receptionist buzzes me.
“Yes?” I answer, grateful for the distraction.
“Um, I have a Ruby Flint here to see you,” Laura says uncertainly. “She doesn’t have an appointment.”
Ruby Flint. Fuck.
Whatever it is that the lead detective on Gabriel’s case wants to say to me, I know it can’t be good.