Every day after Eden came home from school, her first stop was the library. Lily would wander around, checking out romance novels and blushing as she read. Eden, however, was using one of the libraries' computers to print articles about the man in the mask. There were a lot, and she printed every single one. She'd stared a timeline on her wall, obsessively tacking all the information she found on him in order. She'd even researched the victims and plotted them under the day they were killed. And as far as she could tell, the man in the mask was being truthful; each man so far had been a registered sex offender.
Eden picked up the stack of newly printed papers and walked over to where Lily sat absorbed in a paperback. "Lil? You ready to go home?"
She looked up, a deep blush spreading over her cheeks. "Yeah, on sec..." Eden watched as she finished the last few pages of the chapter. Eden tilted her head and read the description on the back of the book and her heart sunk. Lily had always been drawn to sappy, pretentious romantic novels. But that wasn't how life worked. Life was cruel and unfair. Happy ending were for children. Life wasn't a Disney movie, love didn't triumph the villains. And Lily was going to be constantly disappointed that her life wasn't like her favorite characters; that she didn't get the happy ending. "Okay..." Lily said distractedly as she slipped the bookmark in between the pages, her eyes still moving over the last few words. She shut the book, sighed, and looked up with doe eyes.
"Ready?"
Lily nodded and stood. She eyed the papers clutched tightly in her sister's hands. "Why are you still obsessing over that killer?"
"I just—"
"He's a murderer!" Lily said in disgust. "You watched him kill three innocent men! Isn't that what that detective said? So why are you acting like he's some sort of hero? But he's not. He's a murder."
"What if they did deserve it?"
Lily looked like Eden had slapped her. "Two wrongs don't make a right, Ed. Those people died." She gazed at her small hands. "You don't think that, do you?" Lily seemed, for the first time in a long time, disappointed in her sister. Like she couldn't believe they were related. "Nobody deserves to die, Eden," she said quietly.
Of course nobody deserved to die, not in Lily's world, at least. Not in Lily's mind where two strangers fall in love at first sight. People falling in love and people being killed couldn't be in the same world, they just couldn't.
Eden and Lily walked home quietly. Eden wished she hadn't said anything, she wished she'd just gone to the library on her own like she'd planned. As soon as they walked inside, Lily went straight to her room, Eden practically on her heels. "Lil—"
Lily's door shut in Eden's face and she stood in front of her sisters' door, wanting nothing more than to take back the words she'd said. Eden knew she shouldn't have said anything to Lily, but what was it going to take to make Lily see that there were bad people out there? Didn't Lily notice that her big sister always locked herself in her room each night? Didn't Lily feel the kitchen knife under Eden's pillow when she slept in there? Didn't she question why?
"Why the long face, Princess?"
Eden shook the glazed look off her face and turned with a scowl towards Drew. He smirked and brought a beer bottle to his thin lips.
"Come on, have a drink with me."
A vivid scene played out in Eden's head of her and Drew sitting down on the vomit stained couch, each holding beers. Of herself breaking the bottle over his head and the couch suddenly being stained with red too...
She folded her arms over her chest, shot him her best glare, then stalked off towards her room.
Eden sat cross legged on the floor of her small room, sorting through the masses of papers. She worked on her timeline well into the night, though she wasn't sure exactly what she hoped to find. Her dad had stopped giving her shifts; he wanted to lay low for a while, seeing that it's illegal for minors to work at a night club, let alone strip for one. She'd made Detective Yates promise not to breathe a word of her job—or anything she'd said—to anyone at his department. Though Yates looked murderously angry when she'd told him the secrets she'd never spoken to anyone else, he agreed to keep quiet.
She didn't believe him.
After pinning another piece of paper to her wall she stepped back to examine her work. She could hardly tell that the wallpaper was peeling, or that there was water damage stained the top because there were so many papers covering her wall.
She'd only left her room for a few minutes to check on Lily and grab a granola bar from the kitchen, but when she returned her window was wide open and a man in black leather was facing the wall covered with news reports. "You've been busy," he said quietly, his voice so deep and rough that she faltered. Everything about him screamed danger. He turned to her as she shut the door soundlessly. Goosebumps broke out across her skin.
"I have." She stayed by the door. He stayed by the window. They stared at each other from opposite sides of the dark room. He seemed so large in her tiny room, so out of place. So treacherous. She gulped.
He glanced back towards the wall again and his lips twitched up into a smile. "And? Have you made a decision?"
"I have," she repeated, voice wobbling ever so slightly.
"And?" he pressed.
There was a loud, booming laugh from down the hall that made both of them freeze.
Eden turned and locked the door, then took a few steps toward him with a determined look on her hard features. "I have conditions."
She hadn't expected a reaction, but if she had, it wouldn't have been for his smile to widen. "So do I, but ladies first."
"You need to train me—"
He gave a short laugh. "You thought I would let you go out there without proper training?"
"I'm sorry I don't know the protocol one goes through to be bait."
He glanced around her shabby room, trying to hide his ever growing smile from her view. "The rest of your conditions?"
"You don't kill them in front of me. I don't want to see it happen."
"Understandable." He nodded. "Anything else?"
She took a deep breath, looked him dead in the eyes and said with so much venom, conviction, she wasn't sure who she was anymore, "You give my dad a warning."
He took a step towards her, a frown now set onto those full lips. Why was she looking at his lips? She only now realized there was a split on his bottom lip and blood was oozing out. "What kind of warning?" he asked gently, though it still came as a growl.
She stopped when she heard more laughing from her brothers' room, heard Drew snort and yell something crude. Eden stepped even closer to the man, her voice a low snarl. "You tell him if you find out he's working minors in his club again, you're going to kill him."
He stared at her; her eyes gleamed with an unwavering determination. He should have known it was a warning sign. "And... if he starts working minors in his club again?" he asked hesitantly.
"You kill him."
The words hovered in the air between them and he waited for her eyes to fill with regret, for her to take her words back. But she didn't. If anything she darkened.
"Those are your conditions?" he asked quietly.
She nodded, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip. "When you give him his warning, make sure it sticks." His brows knit together behind his mask, and although she couldn't see his confused face, his silence must have told her he didn't understand. "Get... creative."
"Torture," he said gently, now observing her in an entirely different light. She was more damaged than he'd thought she'd be. He hadn't expected she'd be so... so similar to him. She was just as detached and ruthless as he was, and the fire of revenge was nowhere near being extinguished. She wanted blood.
"Do you...do you do that?" Eden asked, shifting weight between her feet.
"I can."
Eden's eyes wandered around the room anxiously before falling back to his. "What are your conditions?"
He watched her momentarily; he watched the shadows from the moving tree outside her window dance across her beautiful, yet hard, face, he watched her round eyes dart around the room, watched her moved nervously under his gaze. God, he seemed to want her more than he wanted vengeance. He cleared his mind and his throat before regaining his attention to his cause.
"We meet at least three times a week for basic training; you need to learn self-defense before we advance or I let you anywhere near danger." Ironic, he thought to himself. He was more dangerous than those men, just in a different way. "Don't try finding out my identity. I'll tell you when you're ready." He already wanted to tell her, he was already itching to let her hands slip under his mask. "If I tell you to run, you run. You do as I say when we're in the field. No ifs, ands, or buts. You do as I say. And once you're in, you're in." Once you're in, you're mine.
The only part of his proposal that scared her, was that once she was in she couldn't leave. She had to stay and fight; she didn't have the option of changing her mind. But she held out her hand, her drive unwavering.
His gaze flickered to her outstretched hand before returning to her eyes. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she said fiercely. "I'm tired of being afraid. I want to be feared."
His leather clad hand practically swallowed hers as they shook. "We'll meet tomorrow night."
"Where? When?"
"I'll find you."
"How did you find me?" she asked. The question hadn't crossed her mind until now. It scared her that she hadn't questioned his presence in her room until now. "How did you know where I lived? How did you know which window was mine?"
"I made sure you got home safely the night I... saw you. What kind of immoral murderer would I be if I let you wander back into the lion's den right after I saved you?"
Her lips drew up a fraction of an inch and she gazed at him sadly. Before she thought of stopping herself, she brought her hand to his face and wiped the wet blood off his split lip with her thumb. He stiffened against her finger, his eyes wide. He drew in a deep breath, half wanting to suck her thumb in his mouth and clean it off.
Eden dropped her hand to her side, feeling like she shouldn't have touched him.
He shook that deranged thought from his mind and glanced at the collage of dates and photos on the wall then back to Eden. "Why did you make that?"
She made it for a lot of tangled reasons, but she said the answer that just about summed it up. "I wanted to be sure of what I was about to get myself into."
"And are you?" the man asked.
"We just shook on it, didn't we?"
"I'm not a good person."
"Neither am I."