Chapter 43: Make Sure Your Employer Offers an Emergency Martial Arts Support Benefit

One of the thugs stepped forward slowly with a leery grin on his disheveled face.

The enclosure was dark enough that Octavia couldn’t really make out their faces, but she could see the hungry glint in his eyes.

She discarded the thought of screaming for help. She’d seen how deserted the area was, and the noise of construction would undoubtedly drown out her cries.

“Hand over the bag,” his voice rasped.

Octavia’s first thought was one of confusion, then she realized she still had the bag Lila had given her in one hand. She didn’t know what they thought was in it, but she saw an opportunity for her escape.

“I don’t have any money,” she said, holding her hands up, the bag dangling from her right hand.

“Just hand over the bag and no one gets hurt,” the man growled.

~Yeah, right,~ Octavia thought. She surveyed the area with a quick glance. On her left was a couple of old wooden crates.

The thug who’d spoken had stepped forward, but the other two were still right by the exit of the enclosure.

Octavia didn’t want to try barreling through all three of them, but she knew she’d have a chance if they were distracted.

“Now!” the man yelled.

Octavia acted quickly. She tossed the bag at him. As she’d calculated, it went over his head and to the right end of the passageway.

Being the greedy, desperate thugs that they all were, they all dove for the bag once Octavia tossed it. That was when Octavia made her move.

She bounded toward the wooden crates and vaulted herself onto one. Then she pushed off it, using its height to take a flying leap up and forward.

While the three thugs were scrambling for the shopping bag, Octavia vaulted herself over their heads and past the opening.

She landed roughly, tumbling to the ground and skinning her legs and arms as she did, but she didn’t hesitate once she hit the ground.

As soon as she stopped skidding over the littered earth, she sprung upward and broke into a run.

She sprinted around the fateful corner she’d sprinted past moments ago and moved toward the end of the narrow passageway.

She forced herself to ignore the scuffling and thudding feet behind her as the thugs resumed their chase. She’d taken them by surprise, giving herself a chance to get away.

The end of the passageway got closer and closer. She ran. The sounds of pounding feet were closing in on her again.

She felt a hand brush against her back, and in the next instant, rough fingers closed around her arm.

Octavia didn’t stop to think. She sent her elbow whizzing backward and drove it into the face of the person behind her. His grip loosened but did not release.

Octavia followed up the elbow with a side kick. She whipped her leg up and drove her foot into the man’s middle sending him flying backward right into the other two thugs who were behind him.

While he went sprawling with a strangled cry, Octavia pushed forward. With a final leap, she burst out of the closed space into the light.

She turned to the direction she had originally come from and bounded forward, determined to escape.

A superhuman fire flooded her veins, pushing her forward and yelling into her mind that she would not be trapped again.

That’s when yet another figure rounded the corner in front of her, barring her way.

Octavia, still high on adrenaline, did not even think of stopping. She lunged toward the figure, attempting to ram into whoever it was.

She was an arm’s length away from him when it clicked in her mind who the person was.

“Raemon!” she exhaled, suddenly stopping herself. She still ran into him, barreling into his broad form.

“Octavia,” he said sharply, “what are you—”

He was interrupted by the scuffle behind them as the three assailants burst out of the passageway. Raemon took one look at them and understanding instantly became clear in his features.

He pushed Octavia behind him in one, swift move, shielding her from the three thugs who were advancing to where she was.

The thugs did not consider Raemon’s appearance a good enough reason to give up crime for the day. They approached Raemon carefully, one of them holding a hand to a bleeding nose.

“This one looks like he has money,” one said, “get his wallet!”

At this command, the three of them jumped toward Raemon, ready to rip the very shirt off his back. But this was not to be.

A look at Raemon’s face should have been enough to warn them of what they were getting into. In all the times Octavia had witnessed his anger, she’d never seen his face look that furious.

His eyes burned differently than they did when he was fuming at Lucas or threatening presumptuous employees. This was a different fire. And somehow Octavia knew this fire was the deadliest of all.

Octavia’s assailants rushed at him, and if the casual observer blinked, they would have missed what happened in the next few seconds.

One of them hurled a fist at his face, and Raemon simply caught his fist in one hand. Then a swift motion of his hand twisted the man’s arm in an abnormal direction.

The distinct sound of bone cracking resounded, and the man crumpled to the ground in pain.

On his way down, Raemon drove his other fist into his middle, sending him flying across the space and slamming into one of the walls.

Before the second thug could throw a punch, Raemon had grabbed him by the shoulders and struck his face with a right hook.

He then sent a powerful uppercut jab into the thug’s middle, no doubt crushing the bones in his rib cage.

He tossed the man’s crumpled body away from him like a coat and took a step toward the last assailant.

The thug with a bleeding nose, seeing his accomplices go down as quickly and painfully as they had, had abandoned the idea of taking anything from Raemon and was about to break into a run.

But Raemon grabbed him by the collar of his mangy clothes and yanked him back before he sprinted off.

The thug writhed to get out of Raemon’s grip, and Raemon let him go. Then the thug turned and began throwing wild punches at Raemon.

Most of his punches landed on Raemon, but the man’s fists bounced off Raemon’s body like he was made of steel.

When it seemed that Raemon was done witnessing the thug’s poor attempt at fighting, one hand shot out and trapped the man in a choke hold.

The thug clawed at Raemon’s hand at his neck. A strangled cry forced its way past his blood-stained lips.

“Please!” the man cried through his choked breath. “We…we didn’t take anything—honest! We didn’t hurt her!”

Raemon gave him a look of disgust, then released his hold.

With a gasp of air, the thug sank to his knees, choking and spluttering blood at Raemon’s feet.

Raemon continued to look down at him in disgust. Then he suddenly brought his foot up, aiming for the thug’s head.

As Raemon’s heel bashed into the man’s face, he fell to the ground, and his body went still.

Raemon stood over the man’s still form for a moment, then turned and walked back to where Octavia stood.

Octavia was still in the exact position he had left her, her mouth open and eyes wide.

“Are you all right?” Raemon asked, grabbing her by the shoulders.

“What…the…fuck…did you just do?” Octavia stammered out in her state of shock.

“Are you hurt? Did they do anything to you?” Raemon asked, concern evident in his eyes.

Octavia shook her head, trying to reboot her mental systems. “I’m fine, really. Just a little…shook.” She looked up to Raemon’s face. “Did you…kill them?” she asked tentatively.

“Of course not,” Raemon said, “I just hit them hard enough that they’ll be out for a few hours.”

Octavia’s brow furrowed. “Why the hell did you not?” she demanded.

Raemon eyed her. “Should I have?”

“Um, those fuckers just tried to rob me. And who knows what else they’d have done? I’d prefer them dead, actually,” Octavia said.

The adrenaline hadn’t quite worn off, so it was understandable that she wasn’t exactly herself.

Raemon looked down at her with his usual unreadable expression. But the menacing flames were gone from his eyes.

“I’ll kill them then if you like, but that will have to be later. Let’s get you away from here.”

He led her out of the deserted streets. The first store they came across was a small post office with an elderly, kind-looking woman sitting behind the counter.

Octavia was in a bit of a daze while Raemon did all the talking.

She found herself being led to the back of the office where Mrs. Dayton, the post-office clerk, brought in a glass of water for Octavia and handed Raemon a first aid kit.

Octavia sipped the water silently, sitting on the desk in the backroom. The adrenaline had completely worn off. She realized just how much danger she had been in.

She was torn with a number of different feelings: relief that she was unharmed and excitement at how she had acted in the situation. But she also felt an indescribable emotion toward her boss.

“Yes, three of them,” Raemon was saying into his phone. “Near the warehouse district. They’re still there. Make sure you deal with it.”

Octavia watched Raemon nod solemnly at whatever the person who was speaking to him said, then end the call and put his phone back into his pocket.

He walked to Octavia and began rifling through the first aid kit.

“I’m fine,” she protested weakly.

“You’re bleeding,” Raemon said simply.

Octavia looked down at herself and realized that her pants had been ripped open, and there was rusty-colored, dried blood caked around one knee.

The other knee was just mildly bruised. She reached a hand out to touch her knee, and that’s when she saw the blood on her arm, soaking through her shirt sleeve.

“Damn, I really liked this shirt,” she said.

Raemon took her arm in his hands. Before Octavia could protest, he ripped the sleeve open with a small blade, revealing the deep gash along Octavia’s forearm.

Octavia squirmed while Raemon cleaned the wound; he ignored all the threats of violence she made and applied the antiseptic to her arm a little too liberally, Octavia thought.

Finally, he bandaged up her arm with gauze that he fastened with an elastic bandage.

“Do I want to know how you learned to do this?” Octavia asked.

“Probably not,” Raemon said, dabbing at her bloody knee with a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic.

Octavia squeezed her eyes shut at the sting of the disinfectant. “I so want to hit you right now,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Wait until I’m done,” Raemon said.

Finally, Raemon had finished bandaging her knee, and Octavia sighed in relief.

“I think the first aid hurt more than the fall,” she said. She gazed around the room with a distant look in her eyes. “How did you know where I was anyway?”

Raemon was washing his hands in the small sink at the opposite end of the room.

“I tracked you,” he said.

Octavia frowned. “But I didn’t have my phone. All I had with me was your—” She stopped. “You tracked me through your bank card, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Raemon said, drying his hands on a towel, “all my cards have a tracking device embedded in them.”

Octavia reached into her pocket and pulled out the card. She inspected the shiny, silver-looking surface. “How the hell did you manage to fit a tracking device on this?”

“It’s my own personal technology,” Raemon said simply. “Nothing that’s on the market.”

She set the card on the table beside her. “But…why did you track me?”

Raemon answered while placing items back in the first aid kit. “I came out of the meeting, and you weren’t there. And all Lila gave me was a vague answer. I figured you would probably get lost.”

“I didn’t get lost,” Octavia protested. “That bitch Lila gave me bad directions.”

Raemon looked up. “Directions to what?”

“I don’t know, some store nearby. She asked me to return an item for her. An eyeliner pencil or something, I guess,” Octavia said.

Raemon paused, then pointed across the room to a small bag sitting on a chair up against the wall. It was the same dark-blue shopping bag Octavia had been carrying. “That?” he said.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Octavia said. “Where did you get it—”

“I picked it up off one of those lowlifes,” Raemon said. “They probably saw you with that bag and targeted you because of it.”

“How would they even know what it was?” Octavia asked.

“Well,” Raemon said, picking the bag up off the chair and reaching into it, “it wasn’t just an ‘eyeliner pencil,’ for one.”

He pulled a long velvet jewelry box out of the bag and opened it. Inside the box, resting on a deep-red satin cushion was a diamond necklace.

Octavia’s eyes widened at the sight. “Shit. That’s what it was? No wonder I got attacked.”

Raemon shut the box closed a little too fast. “Yes. I take it the lettering on the bag didn’t tip you off?”

Octavia shrugged. “Swavsky or something? I don’t know what that is.”

“Of course,” Raemon said dryly, dropping the case back into its bag. “I said you don’t have to run errands for Lila.” There was a hard edge to his voice.

“I know,” Octavia said, “I just wanted to be gone when you got out.”

Raemon’s face darkened. “Damn you, Octavia. Don’t you realize you could have been seriously hurt?” He crossed the room to where she sat and looked down at her with severity in his eyes.

“I almost got away,” Octavia said obstinately. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I would have even if you didn’t show up.”

“That’s not a risk I’m willing to take,” Raemon said. “What if you hadn’t?”

“You’d have to look for another assistant?” Octavia suggested.

Raemon’s face became even more severe. “I’m serious, Octavia.” He stared deep into her eyes.

Looking at him, something inside Octavia jumped as she realized what she was seeing. He had been…worried.

“I’m fine, Raemon,” Octavia said softly, “really. And I’ll never do anything for Lila ever again, trust me.”

Raemon’s eyes didn’t leave her face.

“From now on, you aren’t going to leave my side,” Raemon said.

“That isn’t going to stop Lila, you know,” Octavia said.

“I know,” Raemon said.

Raemon raised a hand to Octavia’s head. He picked at a spot on her head and pulled a small piece of debris out of her hair. Octavia watched his hand toss the piece in the trash can across the room.

She wondered what she looked like overall. Dirty, cut, and bloody. For a man who had just been in a tussle with three thugs, Raemon still looked clean and put together.

Octavia went numb as she felt a hand on her face. She looked up and realized Raemon had his hand against her temple.

He was probably brushing away some of the dirt that had landed on her face, she reasoned. But his face was incredibly close to hers.

And he was looking at her in that way. His fingers trailed lightly over her skin, tracing a path from her forehead, down one side of her face, all the way to her cheek.

It was like there was a change in the air.

Everything in the room seemed to pause its very existence in that moment. Octavia sat looking up at Raemon, telling herself she was unsure of what was happening, but knowing exactly what was happening.

The creaking door hinge broke the spell. Raemon’s hand dropped from her face, and he turned away. Octavia herself let her eyes drop to her hands.

Mrs. Dayton walked in with two uniformed police officers following her.

“Mr. Kentworth, sir,” one of the uniformed men said, “we have the men in custody. If the young lady will just come down to the station to give a statement, we’ll make sure we put them behind bars.”

The other officer then said, “Of course…they may need some medical attention before that. One of them will definitely need to be hospitalized.”

Raemon displayed no emotion at this.

“Good,” he said nonchalantly. “That was my intention.”