Poisonous Kiss: Chapter 29

At the end of the day, it’s up to you if you want to look away from your fears or face them head on.

For years, I found a middle ground: I buried my fear and just ignored it in hopes that it would one day fade away.

But then I married Gabriel. A man who brings out the wild fierceness in me I’ve never really known how to express. A man who lets me run through the dark and explore the blackest parts of my soul without any judgment or shame.

A man who’s taught me how to look my fears in the eye and not back down.

So I haven’t.

Three weeks ago, exactly fifty-eight minutes after I walked out of his office, Governor Hall resigned, citing “personal health issues”. Less than half an hour later, he was eating those words when the press got copies of the recording of him propositioning an eighteen-year-old staffer and almost pulling his dick out on camera.

Then it all snowballed, and I finally decided enough was enough.

“Mr. and Mrs. Black, it is so good to have you on the show with us today!”

I smile at Jen, the insanely perky morning show host, as the bright studio lights blaze down on us.

“Thank you for having us, Jen,” Gabriel says with one of his trademark jury-charming, winning smiles.

It used to freak me out how he could so seamlessly switch from one persona to the other. How he could be so charming and smooth by day, and this dark, vicious monster by night.

It doesn’t freak me out anymore. I know it’s not that there are “two Gabriels” inside of him. It’s just all part of who and what he is: a man who makes me feel like I’ve never felt before. A man who makes me come alive in ways I never have.

A kindred spirit that I never thought I’d find.

“Well, Gabriel, or I suppose we could just start calling you Governor…”

“Jen, Jen,” Gabriel chuckles. “Let’s not be too hasty. The election is still a few weeks away.”

“That may be,” Jen laughs. “But I’m sure you don’t need reminding that you’re running unopposed.”

He is, too. In the three weeks since Preston Hall resigned and was then publicly shamed and dragged through the mud, his lieutenant Governor, Rupert Cleef, has taken over the position. But Cleef isn’t seeking the office permanently, and the only other candidate in the race just bowed out a week ago, throwing her support behind Gabriel.

Pending an utter catastrophe, the seat is Gabriel’s.

“Well, Gabriel, though I do suppose we’ll talk about you eventually…”

The live studio audience laughs. So does my husband.

“First, we need to talk about your superwoman of a wife.”

I cringe as most of the audience jumps to their feet and starts applauding. But I remember Meredith’s coaching, and wave with a humble smile.

I never intended to be a “hero”. I never wanted to be the push that gets a ball rolling. But something snapped in me that day when I stormed into Preston’s office unafraid and angry. Then, when Amber’s footage was leaked, a woman came forward with a similar story of Preston exposing himself to her in a conference room. Another woman a few days later accused him of rape.

After that, I was done being silent. I added my voice to the mix, and since then, a dozen more women have come forward. Now, the attorney general for the state is opening a criminal investigation.

Preston Hall isn’t just out of office. There’s a very real chance he’ll go to prison.

“Believe me,” Gabriel smiles, turning to me. “There is no one I’d rather talk about.”

That, of course, gets another whole round of applause from the crowd. He reaches over and takes my hand, squeezing it tightly as our eyes lock.

“You must be so proud of her.”

“I am, Jen,” Gabriel says. “Too often, people in power are allowed to step all over those considered beneath them. In my administration, that’s going to stop. We’re going to have full transparency. Full accountability.”

The audience cheers.

“And I can’t wait to do all of that for this great state with my wonderful wife at my side.”

Even Jen stands and applauds when Gabriel turns to cup my face and kiss me on national television.

Together, we’re unstoppable.

One of our unspoken rules is that at work, we’re completely professional. We frequently drive to the office in the same car, and ride the elevator up together. But once those doors open to the Crown and Black offices, the PDA between us stops entirely.

Not, of course, that I don’t want to put my hands all over him every minute of the day. But it would be very unprofessional to do so. And one of the things I love about Gabriel is that he value professionalism as highly as I do.

Today, though, after the morning show interview, I gasp when the elevator doors to the Crown and Black reception area slide open and Gabriel’s hand grabs mine again. The breath leaves my body as he spins me, pulls me into his arms, and kisses me, hard.

I’m flushed and panting when we finally break apart, our eyes locked.

“Um… What was that?”

“That,” he growls with a sly grin as he pulls me close again, “was me kissing my wife.”

I chew on my lip, trying not to blush.

“Have a good day, dear,” he growls into my ear. “We still on for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah,” I grin.

His hand tightens on my waist as his teeth rake delicately over my earlobe, making me tremble.

“And still on for…dessert?”

He means chasing me through the house, pinning me down, literally ripping my clothes off, and fucking me savagely until I’m bruised and sated.

“Yes,” I breathe. Then I pull away with a sharply arched brow. “Unless someone skips out on me again.”

He sighs, rolling his eyes when I mention the night before, when he slipped out of the house just as I was falling asleep.

“I’m sorry. It couldn’t wait.”

I slap at him playfully. “It’s not like the motion could be filed with the court until this morning anyway.”

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “But you know me.”

I do, and I love that I do.

“Hey, girl.”

I grin at Cassidy as I walk into the break room to grab a coffee.

A few weeks ago, after the shit went down with Preston, she and I finally got together and smoothed over whatever rockiness had been going on with us over cocktails. Basically, she’d been blindsided by my “romance” with our boss and felt embarrassed that she’d been shit-talking Gabriel or talking about banging him without knowing he and I were a thing.

Which we weren’t. But that’s beside the point.

After that, she just felt awkward about how badly she’d reacted to the news. And given I was so wrapped up in trying to figure out Gabriel and me, we drifted apart more than we should have.

Thankfully, all that’s behind us now.

“You looked so good on TV!”

I groan. “Ugh, I don’t know. It felt so staged, you know?”

She rolls her eyes as I pour myself a coffee. “It’s scripted TV, Fumi. Anyway,” she shrugs, “I thought you killed it.”

“Well, thank you,” I grin.

“Oh, shit, speaking of killed…”

I frown as she pulls closer to me.

“Did you hear about Dwayne Halbertson?”

I grimace, remembering the piece of shit who walked on a technicality after raping and killing Kasey Cruz.

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

I blink. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Murdered,” Cassidy grimaces. “In his own apartment, too.”

“I hope they catch whoever it was so that they can give them a medal,” I mutter.

Cassidy clinks her coffee mug to mine. “Cheers to that.”

“When was all this?”

“Last night.”

Something flickers in the back of my mind.

“Anyway, I gotta run and get these deposition transcripts to Alistair’s office. Later, TV star.”

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Later.”

I’m shaking a little as I walk back to my office and quietly close the door. I sit at my desk, my pulse thudding dully in my ears as I open my laptop.

You’re crazy.

I have to be. And yet, no matter how many times I tell myself that, it doesn’t stop the little alarm blaring quietly in the back of my head.

That alarm gets a little louder when I google Dwayne Halbertson’s name. It swells to a jangling wail when my eyes land on the address.

Please no.

My heart is racing as I copy Dwayne’s address from the article into Google Maps and then click on street view, showing me images of the building and its surroundings.

And my hand flies to my mouth.

Oh God.

That’s the curb where my cab driver dropped me off. That’s the alley I walked down, where I was stalked by that creep with a knife—who then disappeared into thin air except for a pool of blood.

Holy fucking shit.

That was Dwayne’s apartment.

I’ve spent two months telling myself the man I followed that night was just a man I thought was Gabriel. That my husband really did just go to the office that night, as he sometimes does. That the man I followed into Brooklyn was some random guy.

What if it wasn’t…

My heart pounds harder in my chest. My throat constricts, the small of my back growing clammy and slick.

What if that really was Gabriel going to Dwayne’s apartment that night, and if so, what possible reason would he have to be there?

My tongue feels too big for my mouth as I swallow. My mind starts to flip through disjointed memories of Gabriel boasting about his near-perfect win record. Of his disdain for the system that allows men like Dwayne Halbertson to walk on a technicality after committing heinous crimes.

What if there’s even more to his darkness than you know…

What if there’s more to it than I want to know about the man I married? The man who gets off on chasing me through the dark. The man who’s far stronger, deadlier and more agile than you’d ever guess seeing him in that Tom Ford suit with the three-hundred-dollar haircut. The man who knows how to hunt and stalk his prey. How to use a knife…

I’m going insane. I have to be. There’s no way…

I shake my head. But suddenly, another thought blinks into my mind. No, not a thought.

A name.

My hands shake as I Google Salvatore Avella—the disgraced administrator at a well-known private elementary school here in Manhattan who turned out to be a predator. Crown and Black represented a number of the victims and their families in that case pro bono.

If I remember correctly, the case got screwed royally because of a technicality involving mishandled evidence—and the arrest paperwork being filed incorrectly, too, I think.

Salvatore walked.

And then, a month later, he was murdered, gruesomely. I shiver as I remember Cassidy telling me about the bizarre crime scene where he’d been choked to death: a crime scene which included fingerprints and hair samples of celebrities—which you can buy from weirdos on eBay, I’ve checked—that made it all into one big black inside joke about strangulation and child predators.

I feel numb as I bring up the internal Crown and Black files on the case, though I already know what I’m going to find. Even so, when I read with my own eyes who the lead attorney was, I can feel the color drain from my face.

It was Gabriel.

Same as with Dwayne.

What the fuck…

For a second, I almost stop. I should slam my laptop shut, take a breath, and go outside to touch grass or something. Because I must seriously be losing my shit.

But I don’t stop. I pick up my phone and dig deeper.

“Hey, Chase? It’s Fumi.”

“Hey,” the firm’s resident tech support guy mutters. “What’s up?”

“We keep a record of all company phones, right?”

“Yep,” he grunts.

“Does that include GPS data?”

“Please, it includes the shit people look at in incognito mode.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay, well, do you think I could get the data dump from every company phone for a certain time frame on a certain date?”

Twenty agonizing minutes later, I get the file in my inbox. I’m still shaking as I export it to a spreadsheet which I sort by “active” status. Not everyone is using their company cell phones all the time, so that gets rid of half the firm right there. Then, I sort by phones that pinged data towers in Brooklyn in the specified time frame.

My heart thuds.

Now I’m down to twenty phones.

I breathe harder as I copy those phone locations onto a map. I zero in on Salvatore’s address, zooming in closer and closer, weeding out more and more numbers. Twenty drops to ten. To five. To three.

Then it’s just one, and my heart drops through the floor.

Just one Crown and Black cell phone was at Salvatore Avella’s exact address the night he was killed.

Holy fucking God.

Gabriel’s.

Gabriel, who was lead prosecutor on that case and was livid when Salvatore walked. Gabriel, who was also lead on Dwayne Halbertson’s case. Gabriel, who I’m now sure was the guy at Dwayne’s apartment the night I followed him. Gabriel, who went out last night without much explanation and then returned near the crack of dawn, on the very night Dwayne was killed.

Oh my God.

Oh…my…fucking…God…

“What say we blow off work and⁠—”

I almost jump out of my skin when I hear his voice. I whirl, my face still white, my eyes wide.

Instantly, my heart turns to ice.

Because Gabriel’s looking past me, right at the screen of my laptop, which has Dwayne and Salvatore’s files and articles about their deaths open, as well as GPS maps with cell phone data.

“What are you doing.”

My mouth goes bone dry. I stare at him in horror, almost unable to form words.

“Fumi…”

“N-nothing,” I choke.

He pulls his gaze past me again. When his brow furrows, and a vein begins to throb in his neck, my legs shake.

“Why are you⁠—”

Suddenly, it clicks for him. Suddenly, I see it, as his mask falls away. Darkness throbs in his eyes as they narrow like twin blades on the screen behind me.

Slowly, his gaze drags back to mine.

“Fumi,” he growls quietly. “You need to listen to me. It’s not⁠—”

“What,” I whisper in a choked, weak voice. “It’s not what, Gabriel? What it looks like?”

“Let’s have this conversation somewhere else⁠—”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He shuts my office door behind him. My pulse vaults through the fucking roof as naked fear stabs into me.

“Gabriel…”

“Fumi, I need you to listen to me⁠—”

“Open the door,” I whisper.

His jaw grinds. “You know what Dwayne was. You know what fucking Salvatore was!” His teeth are bared as his lips curl. “They were fucking monsters, Fumi! Worse, they were monsters that justice turned a blind eye⁠—”

“Tell me it wasn’t you,” I breathe. My eyes plead with him as my face numbs. “Gabriel⁠—”

“Fumi—”

“Tell me!” I hiss, lurching to my feet and scrambling back against my desk. Tell me that this wasn’t you!”

His jaw ticks.

“I can’t do that.”

Oh GOD.

My legs tremble, and my heart shatters.

“I can’t lie to you, Fumi.”

My hand flies to my mouth, my eyes bulging wide.

“Fumi, listen⁠—”

“No,” I croak, shrinking back against my desk. My hand fumbles behind me and closes around something heavy. I whip it out in front of me, brandishing it like a weapon.

A motherfucking stapler.

“Stay the fuck away from me!”

His lips draw to a line.

“Fumi…”

He takes a step toward me, and I shudder.

“Don’t fucking come near me,” I blurt. “Don’t fucking touch me, Gabriel!”

“Goddammit!” he barks. “LISTEN TO ME!”

I flinch as he suddenly surges into me, plucking the stapler from my hand and tossing it away.

“You knew what I was,” he growls.

My head shakes violently. “No, I⁠—”

“You did, Kitten,” he snarls. Somehow, him using that name right now really hurts. “Sit down and let me fucking explain⁠—”

“Get out of my way or I’ll fucking scream!”

“You know I love it when you⁠—”

“GABRIEL!!!” I roar, my pulse hammering in my ears and my whole world spinning. “Please!” I choke out.

His eyes land on the tear trickling down my face. I watch his brow furrow deeply, his jaw clenching tightly.

Wordlessly, he steps aside. In a daze, I shove past him to stumble out of the office. Just as I make my move, his arm shoots out, a powerful hand wrapping around my arm. I gasp sharply as he pulls himself right up next to me, towering over me as he leans down to let his lips brush my ear.

“You fucking know me, Fumi,” he growls darkly. “You know I would never hurt you.”

My pulse skips.

“Remember that.”

His hand drops from my arm. A second later, I’m stumbling out the door to my office and blundering toward the elevators.