Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

6: I somehow cock-block myself

Rain-drenched and exhausted, I flung myself over yet another parapet and shinned down what musta been the millionth gutter pipe, into a grimy alleyway.

A María resident for most of my twenty-seven years, I knew every inch of the city, but at that moment I had no idea where the fuck I was. Disoriented, muscles screaming with lactic acid, scar pulsing in agony, still my ego wouldn't let me beg two seconds' rest from my heart-stoppingly hot tormentor.

A bang, followed by a thud. Dante Russo bounded off the alleyway's slippery wall and landed on cobblestones with the kinda graceful agility that made me wanna punch him in the kidneys.

I'd quizzed him on how he'd gotten into the Vogel compound. No answer. I'd asked him where we were going. No answer. He hadn't spoken a word to me. Not one word of commiseration for my oozing cuts from the warehouse windowpane. Not one apology for stealing my spot on the clock tower. Not one challenge to fight for it. The guy just leaped and flipped and kipped past me, like I was a fucking ghost.

In the heady days of being a teenage pickpocket I'd leave police officers in the dust, zipping up gutter pipes like the rat I was while cops clutched their bellies and huffed into radios sixty floors below me. Where had all the athletic, beautiful cops like Dante Russo been back then? Even more infuriating than Dante's grace was his intellect. When not belaying across the city, he was busy flipping roof tiles to download data from hidden cameras, setting off remote-controlled smokescreens to hide us from Vogel, and navigating the labyrinthine María backstreets like a sniffer dog. I'd never have stood a chance against law enforcement in the shape of Dante Russo had I bumped into him as a fledgling criminal, nor even as Rocco Genovese's bodyguard.

I blinked away raindrops. Nothing but gray edifices and fuzzy streetlamps loomed out of the dark as we twisted and turned through the maze of central María side-streets. A few more leaps over walls and crouches behind dumpsters, and suddenly the limestone wings of the María PD eagle appeared outta the city's gloom, the great rock of a building illuminated by blue-white streetlamps that cut through the sheets of water. Back when I was a pickpocket the very sight of the María PD building would send bolts of terror through me. After today's chaos at Vogel, I couldn't fucking wait to get inside.

Dante breezed through the office space that surrounded the front desk, bumping fists at cries of "Come chat sometime!" and "Where you been, man?" from the adoring officers. Like he fucking owned the place.

Or like he felt at home.

I trailed after him, waving my ID under officers' noses before they shooed me along the corridor after Dante. When he marched into the central office Sylvia was right there, pacing, like she'd been waiting for him for hours.

"What happened?" Sylvia looked beyond Dante to where I stood dripping rain on the carpet tiles.

"Why didn't you tell me your plan?" Softly-spoken, but Dante couldn't stop the irritation from dragging at his consonants. "It was complex and high-risk. Unsuitable for unqualified individuals," Dante continued, his gentle voice somehow pressing the words neatly into everyone's ears. Despite how quietly pissed-off he was, listening to him was kinda soothing, like he was presenting some new-found logic to us all. "I almost didn't extract the Red Demon at all."

"I'm fine," I said, shaking water outta my ear like a muddy hound. "Dante got me before a circular saw did."

Rayan put a hand on Dante's shoulder. "You OK, man?"

Dante reassured him with a pained little smile.

"Sorry, Sylvia. My bad. I thought Dante knew." Gabi bounded over and pulled Dante into a hug. "Where you been, hermanito?"