A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

11. Nate

11

NATE

Tuesdays are, by far, the most cursed day of the week. It’s probably not the day’s fault, but we live in a society, and because we do, Tuesdays are cursed. It’s like a Monday without any of the notions that this can be a fresh new week, the steep incline to the crest of the hill that is Wednesday afternoon. Smooth sailing from there, but Tuesday? No.

Today, barely past 7 AM, things are already bad because I spilled Jenna’s and my Tuesday Iced Coffees down the front of my shirt before school. I thought I had an extra one in my car, or at least a sweater or something, but last month I cleaned out my trunk which was really a great thing for past-me to do at the time, but has left current-me almost late for work in the last week of school, rushing home to change. It’s fine. It’s Tuesday.

I cruise up my apartment building stairs and my neighbor must have taken his Adderall early this morning because the reggae is already blasting. (I asked, he said he can’t code without it, and really, who was I to keep him from his livelihood?) My shirt is still sopping wet, sticking to my chest, and my pants are soaked too. I am about to unlock my door when I see that my handle has been busted and is hanging loose from its socket.

Light from the big windows I’ve started leaving open for Ranger comes through a small crack between the door and shines onto my dirty ass shirt.

I weigh my options because I honestly do not have time for this, but I’ve been gone for just over an hour with the gym and the coffee run, so if someone broke into my damn apartment they might still be here. I could call the police, but I can’t stop thinking about what Vanessa said about the cops eating out of the overflowing fists of the city’s criminals. She didn’t say this in so many words, but I got the picture.

I didn’t see Tony outside the building, probably because he doesn’t need to watch my place if I’m not here.

I could call?—

No .

I’m not going to call the very person who is most likely the reason someone has broken into my apartment in the first place.

But then again, if it is her fault she should pay for my busted doorknob and whatever possessions have been stolen in there. Reparations for emotional damages, too. I can type up an invoice.

My right eye is twitching but I shake out my arms a few times to psych myself up. I need to be ready for anything.

Slowly, I push the door open with my pointer finger, opting not to call anyone until I know how bad the damage is. The door squeaks on its hinges and I stop, cursing the old building with its old fucking doors, and then resume my progress. I toe off my dress shoes and creep down the entrance hall to the living room which looks just as I left it. Nothing is too far out of order, as far as I can tell, but Ranger isn’t sprawled out snoozing in his usual sunny spot.

I whistle for him, and he barks in response. My head snaps to the sound and he’s sitting in front of my bedroom, tail thumping against the wood floor.

“C’mere,” I whisper and, after whining and walking himself in a circle three times, he does. I scoop him up and kiss his head a dozen times before venturing onward, him still cradled in my arms like a newborn. My bedroom door is shut, which I swear is not how it was when I left this morning, but if a burglar wanted something from my apartment, it probably wouldn’t be my old clothes.

It takes four deep breaths to get my feet to move forward, and I don’t put Ranger down because I’m too afraid that he’ll get snatched by the boogey man in the rest of my unexplored apartment. I slowly step across the floor to my bedroom and the wood only creaks in the one spot it always does, the one I should have avoided, but still nothing sounds from beyond my bedroom. No sudden movement, nothing jumping out at me from my bathroom or cupboards.

A car honks from the street below in its normal fanfare, and it nearly makes me scream or throw up or, I’m not sure, my adrenaline is so high.

I decide I will call Vanessa, because something is very wrong, though I don’t know what, and it is absolutely her fault.

This is exactly what I tell her when she picks up the phone, I whisper it, and she doesn’t understand, so I have to repeat myself, louder this time, and I still haven’t opened my bedroom door, because I just know there’s something in there.

“Nate?”

“Yes, this is Nate,” I snap. “Someone was in my house, might still be in my house.”

“Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Home, and no?—”

There’s a creak behind my bedroom door and a yelp escapes from me.

“Nate?”

“I just heard something,” I whisper.

“Do you have a gun?” Vanessa says.

“No, I do not have a fucking gun,” I snap, though I am cursing myself for not listening to Jenna when she told me I should buy one of her dad’s pistols off him.

“Get a knife then, a kitchen knife will be fine,” Vanessa says through the phone. I want to talk back again but I hear a loud thud, like something just dropped off of my bookshelf. Taking as few steps as I possibly can, I grab my biggest kitchen knife from the block and hold the phone between my shoulder and my ear, still cradling Ranger in the other arm. He has no clue the danger we are in.

“Do you have it?” Behind her voice, I hear honking through the phone. She’s driving, maybe driving here, or maybe just on her morning commute to do crime around all of Boston. “Nate.”

“I have it.”

“Good, now don’t move.”

This is not the advice I thought she would be giving me right now, I thought she might say to leave and potentially be ambushed on the street again, or to barrel in there and go all slasher-flick on whoever has broken into my apartment.

She’s right, staying put sounds like the best option.

Vanessa spouts some commands to someone on the other side of the line before her voice is back in my ear. “We’re on our way.”

It sounds like she’s about to disconnect the call and my stomach lurches. “Wait?—”

Vanessa is quiet, waiting. I hear the car through my phone’s little speaker, imagine her racing through the city, hitting morning traffic. I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Please don’t hang up.”

A beat passes, but I know she’s still there. “Okay,” she says, and her voice is so soft. I almost let myself take comfort in it.

Almost.

Ranger sneezes in my arms and I start sniffing too. It smells almost like. . . smoke.

I turn my gaze to my bedroom door and sure enough, I see smoke seeping out beneath the crack of the white door, crawling across the scratched and stained floor towards me.

“Shit,” I murmur.

“What is it?” Vanessa asks.

The fire alarm starts beeping; I spring into action, dropping the knife on my kitchen table and setting Ranger on the ground before retrieving the tiny fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink. I don’t even have to psych myself up to open the door, I’m too worried about all my shit getting burned to a crisp, the whole building catching fire with it.

There’s a good amount of smoke in the room, but I find quickly that the source is a small fire in my metal trash can, the one from the bathroom. Ranger barks at it with all his might, like doing so will scare it into submission.

My phone slides to the ground with a thunk while I pull the pin and squeeze the lever on the extinguisher, covering the fire in white foam. The smell burns the inside of my nose and my eyes, ammonia and ash.

The fire alarm keeps up its beeping, but my bedroom window is wide open, most of the smoke left in the air flowing out of it. I never leave my window open without the screen because this is how bugs get inside. It’s the window with the fire escape which is horrifying to me.

I hate that someone could be out there right now watching me, waiting to shoot me and Ranger through each of our heads.

My closet is empty, and my room is otherwise unoccupied. My shelf looks untouched, the frames on my wall not even off kilter. I don’t see anything immediately off as my eyes scan the room, just the window, the foam in the trash can still making its crunching noise as it falls to liquid.

Vanessa is shouting something through my phone’s speaker on the ground and I pick it up and press it to my ear.

“I’m fine, it’s fine,” I say. “Someone started a fire in my trash can.”

I climb onto my bed and hold down the button on my fire alarm until it stops beeping. Ranger is still barking, though; howling and growling at my bathroom door like the old piece of painted wood is the one that started the fire.

Vanessa is speaking something in my ear, but the gut churning foreboding feeling in my stomach is back as I step down and approach my closed bathroom door.

I shouldn’t open it.

I very much should not open it.

“What’s happening?” Vanessa demands, then yells to someone on her side of the line, “ Go faster !”

Now that I’ve joined Ranger on the ground, his barking has quieted to a growl, and despite the ongoing internal conflict regarding whether I should open the door, I twist the handle, cold in my slick hand, and push into the bathroom.

The lights are off, but I smell it first: a thick scent, sweet and coppery, and accompanied by a steady dripping sound into my tub. I cannot hear Vanessa through my phone, just the dripping in the tub. I cannot feel anything except for dread in my spine, it holds me hostage and I don’t want to move, but I can’t not, I have to turn my head, I have to make sure someone isn’t there waiting to shoot me. It feels like I am moving slowly, my arm lifting to flick on the light before my sight is filled with red.

Red everywhere .

It’s so, violently red. That’s what surprises me most at first, the fact that it looks like corn syrup and food dye splattered against my mirror and the walls and all over the floor.

My eyes find the source, a man hung up in my shower, his arms suspending him in the air, one tied to my shower head, the other strung up to the curtain bar.

His neck, his torso are both?—

I fall back onto my ass and Ranger starts barking again, loud howls at the man whose stomach was sliced open, his insides on my tile. Tony .

“Nate,” I hear through the phone, loud and insistent. “ Nate ?—”

“Get here,” I say, before promptly losing the entirety of my breakfast.