Page 26 of Alik
“Don’t worry about why I’m here.”
“I just?—”
“Olive.” He doesn’t raise his voice. Actually, he lowers it, but it might as well be an ice pick to my throat with the way it freezes me.
“From an Irish mobster,” I whisper, my fingertips burning as they rub against the brick.
His eyes light up with interest. “And what were you planning on doing with this video?”
I don’t hesitate again. “I was going to leave it anonymously at the police station. I swear, I…” my voice quakes, “I only wanted to get back at Creeper. I have no interest in hurting the Irish, and if you let me go, I will never go near any of you ever again. I swear to you. Please…” I choke on the word, closing my eyes when my lip quivers.
Alik’s scent envelops me when he closes the distance between us, casting a sinister shadow over me that makes my knees quake. I can’t summon the courage to look at him.
When he puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes, a rush of cold air whistles past my teeth, and after his fingers glide up my fragile neck to raise my chin, I finally open my eyes.
“I know it seems like I came here to hurt you,” Alik says, his face expressionless. “I showed up out of the blue, right when you needed me, and since then I’ve been acting strange… It doesn’t take a genius to figure out I wasn’t here by accident.”
I try to shrink away from his touch, but he holds my chin still.
“But I’mnothere to hurt you. I’m here to help you. And I need you to trust me because what I’m about to say makes me very vulnerable to you. So I need to trust you too. Am I able to do that?”
I barely manage a nod.
“Good,” he drawls, letting go of my chin to finger a lock of my hair. It feels so impossibly intimate, and I don’t know how he justifies it. Of all the fantasies I’ve had of him, this scenario never came close to being one of them.
He holds up the recorder. “I want you to take this to the police station, like you planned, butdo notturn it in anonymously. I want you to give a written testimony of every single thing you know about the Irish’s operation.”
My eyes widen. “What?”
“You need me to repeat myself?”
“No, I…” I shake my head. “They’ll kill me. Aren’t you one of them?”
“Do I look Irish to you?”
I open my mouth, but instead of responding, I look over him, as if I don’t have every part of him memorized. No, he doesn’t look Irish. But I’ve been around long enough to know you don’t need to be Irish to be affiliated.
Still… Obviously, he’s with someone else.
“Then who are you? I don’t understand.”
Alik looks me up and down, heating my skin while making me want to run away at the same time. I don’t understand what his looks mean, or his words or his actions for that matter. I don’t understand him at all.
“Right now, I’m your best friend.”
“When they find out it was me, I amdead.” My voice sounds higher than before. Less afraid. More amazed at his ignorance.
He shakes his head. “You’re the DEA princess. The Irish don’t have the balls to touch you over something this small.”
“Then why?—”
“TheIrishare not the people you need to be worried about,” Alik interrupts, his voice lowering like he’s about to tell a campfire story.
I hug my cramping stomach and wait for him to go on.
He sighs. “Look, the other night, in a roundabout way, you asked if I was a criminal. The answer is yes, I am. Which means I hear a lot of talk in my world, and word has been spreading that your father has it out for some dangerous people. Those people wouldn’t think twice about hurting you just to get to your father, so today when I heard your name come up… I decided to keep an eye on you. So that’s why I’m here, and that’s why I want you to follow through with what you already had planned.” He gently takes my hand and places the recorder in my palm, closing my fingers over it in a way that’s almost a caress.
He’s been watching me?