“Yes,” I replied.
She glanced away, but I didn’t miss how her eyes were clouded with that familiar worry I had seen too often in others.
Too often in myself.
It was an unpleasant reminder, and despite my admonitions, I felt another bloom of sympathy, one I didn’t stamp out quickly enough.
“I’ll stay tonight,” I said suddenly. She turned her head sharply. “You know, in case he needs more medicine.”
Adela stared at me, and I could see her refusal on the tip of her tongue, but at the last second, she changed her mind.
“Thank you,” she said.
I nodded and headed toward the small bedroom where I slept and where Christoph’s supplies were stored. I lowered myself into the stuffed armchair and sighed.
What the hell had I been thinking? Offering to help, letting my idiot sympathy, the good part of me, the part that Christoph and his family had tried to destroy, rear up and take control?
I should be reveling in his pain, in hers, not trying to relieve it.
Leaning back in the chair, I looked at the machines, the medicine, all in neat rows, the finest that money could buy, and that cold anger, the feeling that had been my only companion, the thing that had sustained me through the years, came back, slow at first, but growing with every moment until that sympathy had passed.
He had had none of this, had had no one to care for him, while Christoph Senior’s dirty money bought him only the best. Where was the justice in that?
I jumped to my feet, the anger making it impossible for me to stay still. My weakness, the vestiges of the person I used to be, had made me offer to stay, but I’d use this opportunity to my advantage. The house was dark, quiet, and I had the perfect excuse to look around.
Pacing the floor as I waited only seemed to make the time pass more slowly, but sitting was not an option, so I traced a pattern on the intricate brocade rug with even-spaced steps, my cheap black clogs contrasting with the fine woven material.
And as I walked, I thought and planned.
I’d seen nothing inside of the house, but I knew well enough to look below the surface.
I’d known Christoph’s reputation before I’d arrived, and nothing I’d seen, or, rather, hadn’t seen, so far had dissuaded me.
The house was usually teeming with activity, the men who came and went uniformly tattooed, uniformly menacing, and uniform in the way they overlooked me. It was a part of the plan, after all, me presenting a caring, nonthreatening front. And it was working on everyone.
Except him.
I paused as the image of the one man who’d disrupted the pattern popped into mind. I started again, but the man’s image didn’t leave me.
He was suspicious of me, and had made no effort to hide the fact. That didn’t bother me, though. I’d expected—and prepared for—suspicion and worse.
What I hadn’t prepared for and probably couldn’t have prepared for was my reaction to him. I’d thought of him far too often since I’d seen him, had pondered the picture he cast, huge, intimidating, the patches of skin at his wrists inky with tattoos, his physical form so at odds with the fine, tailored suit he’d worn.
And just as often I’d thought of being close to him, touching him to see if he was as strong as he looked, wondered how he might look stripped of those fine clothes, wondered how the scowl that had covered his face might change if I touched him.
I stopped again, chided myself internally. There was no room to wonder about him in any way, especially not that one. There was also no room to worry, to question. My goal here was clear, my plan laid, and any deviation, no matter how intriguing the cause, would get me killed, or worse, jeopardize the outcome.
Purpose again firmly in place, I grabbed the doorknob and turned it slowly, listening for any sounds of life. Christoph Junior was out, and I knew Adela liked to watch TV in the evening but wore headphones so as not to disturb the old man. I hazarded a look out of the door, saw and heard nothing, and risked stepping out.
There were always men here, at least two at the front and back entrances, one in the garage, but so far, at least during the day, they seemed to stay outside, leaving Christoph and Adela be. I’d prayed for this chance, and I wouldn’t let the fear that had my stomach in a death grip, the coward’s voice that whispered in my mind that I could be caught, stop me.
So I stepped out of the room, trying to appear casual, relaxed, like I had every right to be here.
And not at all like I was searching for a way to destroy them all.
I knew the layout of the house well by now, and I followed the main hall toward the heart of the house. No one usually went upstairs, which meant I was primed to search it, anxious to see what I might find. But for now, I would focus on the common areas downstairs.