Fangs, Fate & Other Bad Decisions novel Chapter 53

Chapter 53

The first thing I notice when I wake up on Wednesday morning is that the air around me tastes wrong.

There’s no warmth lingering on the mattress beside me. No soft breath hitting my collarbone. No scent of wild jasmine and sharp sarcasm that’s hovering between the threads of the sheets. Just a sterile silence that’s too clean and untouched. Like the bed has never known life, let alone the kind that laughed against my chest and whispered in her sleep.

I sit up slowly, my body moving as if it had forgotten how. The sun that’s bleeding through the tall glass windows is too bright. It burns instead of warming as it should, 1 don’t bother checking the time, because it doesn’t matter.

I shower without registering the temperature of the water or the smell of my shower gel. I dress via muscle memory–a black shirt, a pair of black slacks, and a black watch. It feels like putting on armor, but not the kind that protects. The type that buries.

As I head toward the elevator, I pause at the door, just for a second. Something inside me wants to turn back, as if I forgot something important or left something unfinished.

But there’s nothing here. Just echoes and expensive silence.

So I walk out.

By mid–morning, I’m ready to raze this building to the ground.

1 sit at my desk with a thick report in front of me- -something about patent renewals and licensing agreements. But the words blur, and nothing sticks. I read the same line four times before it dawns on me that I hadn’t absorbed a single syllable.

Griffin walks in with a manila folder clasped in his one hand, his company tablet in the other, and states, “Financial projections from the biotech

division.”

“Leave it,” I say without even bothering to look up.

He lingers, though, and I’m forced to ask, “Was there more?” in a tone that’s clipped and already fraying at the edges.

He clears his throat before adding. “Only that you asked to sign off on these today. The board’s waiting on them.”

I look up slowly and menacingly, slowing my words down, “Then let them wit.”

Griffin gives a short nod, but there’s a tightness in his jaw. He doesn’t push the matter further; he never does. He just turns to leave without saying what’s clearly on his mind.

When the door shuts behind him, I drop my pen unceremoniously, and it clatters against the polished desktop with a finality that makes even me

Minch

Everything feels so fucking loud. My pulse, the ticking clock across the room, the scraping silence inside my skull.

I press my palms to the desk and force myself to breathe. In, out. Again. And again. It doesn’t help in the slightest.

So, I grab my phone and call the one person I really shouldn’t.

“Holland,” a gruff voice answers.

want access to the traffic cams on the corner of Greene and Wellington,” I order. I don’t have time for pleasantries when it comes to this.

“There’s a brief pause before he says, “That’s not one of our surveillance zones, sir.”

“It is now,” I say with finality. “Send the live feed to my office monitor. You have five minutes.”

“Sir, if I may…” he starts hesitantly.

I cut him off before he’s able to waste any more of my time. “You may not. Just do it, Holland. Or would you like me to find myself a new cybersecurity specialist?”

giving him a chance to answer me, my hand trembling slightly as I set the phone down. Whether it’s from adrenaline or barely contained restraint, I’m not sure.

We both know I’ll never fire him; he’s o come through for me too many times in the past. That, though, doesn’t mean I’m not above flaying his ass if he doesn’t do as I say.

Four minutes and thirty seconds later, one of the monitors on the wall across from my desk flickers on with grainy footage from three angles–a view of the bookstore’s entrance as the awning above the door flaps slightly in the wind.

She looks tired. No. Not tired. Worn out Like the world has asked too much of her again, but she gave it anyway because that’s who she is down to her core.

I sit there long after she’s disappeared, just staring at the empty sidewalk and the closed front door. At the shadow of her that lingers in my mind’s eye.

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