Chapter 13: Filthy Secrets
The steam in the bathroom couldn’t hide the smell. It clung to her, a perfume of cordite, warehouse filth, and old blood—Zara’s blood, the blood of the men she’d gutted. Aaliyah scrubbed her hands under scalding water, the surgical brush scraping her skin raw. In the frosted mirror, her reflection was a ghost with a vivid, thin red line across its throat.
The penthouse was Malik’s, a sterile, secure box high above the city. A sanctuary of his making. It felt like a gilded cage.
She heard the low murmur of his voice in the living room, giving terse orders on a secure line. Cleaning up. Always cleaning up. Her medical kit, now stained, sat open on the marble counter. She had butterfly-stripped the cut on her neck. The deeper wounds were elsewhere.
She turned the shower on, a cascade meant to pound the memory from her muscles. She stepped under the spray, let it scald her shoulders. She closed her eyes and saw the patterns on the concrete, the way the light caught the slick, ropy lengths of intestine. She saw Malik’s face as he took her against the generator. The brutal convergence of horror and need.
She was soaping her arms, her hands trembling, when the pounding started.
Not on the apartment door. On the bathroom door.
“Aaliyah! Aaliyah, open this door! Now!”
Her father’s voice. Ice flooded her veins, sharper than any knife. Idris Nasir. Here. In Malik’s penthouse. The one place he was never, ever supposed to be.
The doorknob rattled. “I know you’re in there! I heard the shower. We need to talk. Right now.”
She stood frozen, water sluicing down her naked body. How did he get in? Malik must have let him in. Why? Her mind raced, tripping over panic.
The bathroom door opened.
It wasn’t her father. Malik stood there, a dark silhouette against the brighter light of the bedroom. His eyes were unreadable. He stepped inside and locked the door again silently, the click final. The pounding continued.
“Aaliyah! Answer me! Are you hurt? What is happening?” Her father’s voice was frayed with fear and anger.
Malik crossed the bathroom in two strides. The shower glass was fogged but transparent. He didn’t open the door. He just looked at her blurred form, then at her clothes discarded on the floor—the scrubs stained with rust and another man’s blood.
“He followed you,” Malik said, his voice barely audible over the water and her father’s insistent pounding. “He was waiting at your apartment. Saw my men drop you off. He’s not stupid.”
“Let me talk to him,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
“No.”
He opened the shower door. The cooler air rushed in. He was fully dressed, a stark contrast to her nakedness. He didn’t step in. He simply reached in, his strong hand wrapping around her wet bicep, and pulled her out.
She stumbled onto the bathmat, dripping, exposed. He backed her against the cold marble wall beside the vanity. The shock of the stone on her skin made her gasp.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
His body caged hers. One hand pressed flat on the wall near her head. The other went to the front of his trousers. He unfastened them, freed his cock. He was already half-hard, thickening rapidly as he looked at her.
“You’re going to answer him,” Malik murmured, his mouth an inch from her ear. His free hand slid between her legs from behind, his fingers rough against her inner thigh. “But you’re going to answer him soaked in me. Dripping with it. So you remember who you belong to while you lie to your father’s face.”
He pushed two fingers inside her without preamble. They were dry, a harsh, stretching intrusion. She cried out, a short, sharp sound.
“Aaliyah! Was that you? Open this door!” Idris shouted, his pounding becoming frantic.
Malik’s fingers curled, a cruel, knowing hook that pressed against a spot deep inside that sent a jolt of electric shame through her. He began to move them, a slow, deliberate scissoring. The friction burned, then began to melt into something else as her body, traitorously, responded. Wetness gathered around his thrusting fingers.
“Tell him you’re fine,” Malik whispered, his breath hot on her neck. He bit the juncture of her shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to sting. His fingers pumped faster.
“Dad…” she called out, her voice trembling. She tried to make it sound annoyed, tired. “I’m… I’m fine. I’m just in the shower.”
“Fine? You disappear for two days! Your hospital said you called in sick, but you weren’t home! Then I see you getting out of a car with his men! What is going on?” His voice broke. “Has he done something to you?”
Malik added a third finger, stretching her wider. The stretch was intense, almost too much. A groan clawed its way up her throat. She muffled it against her own arm. He twisted his wrist, the heel of his hand grinding against her clit with each inward thrust.
“Tell him you’re stressed from work. Tell him you needed space.” Malik’s own breathing was becoming ragged. He withdrew his soaked fingers and positioned the thick head of his cock at her entrance. He was not gentle. He pushed forward, a slow, inexorable invasion that made her eyes water. He was so much larger than his fingers. The full, aching stretch stole her breath.
“I… I was at a conference,” she gasped, the lie tumbling out as he seated himself fully inside her, hilting against her cervix. “A last-minute thing. Dad, please. I’m tired. I just want to shower.”
“A conference? You think I’m a fool? Malik! I know you’re in there! You open this goddamn door! What have you done with my daughter?”
Malik began to move. With her father’s shouts as a soundtrack, he fucked her against the marble wall. Each thrust was deep, measured, and devastatingly intimate. The wet, slapping sound of their bodies meeting mixed with the spray of the still-running shower. He kept one hand splayed on her stomach, holding her in place, feeling himself move inside her.
“You’re so fucking tight,” he gritted out, his voice raw. “Even now. Even lying. Your body doesn’t lie, Aaliyah. It takes me. It wants this.”
She was fragmenting. The visceral reality of Malik buried inside her, the cold wall on her front, the heat of him at her back, and her father’s desperate, suspicious voice just feet away—it was too much. Her climax built not as a wave but as a shattering, a silent, internal detonation that clenched around him violently, milking his length.
He swore, a filthy, fervent word into her wet hair. His control snapped. His thrusts became short, frantic jerks. He came with a deep, guttural groan, pumping his release into her in hot, pulsing surges. She felt the overflow trickle down her inner thigh.
They stayed like that, joined, panting, as the sounds of her father’s pleas gradually subsided into a frustrated, worrying silence on the other side of the door.
Malik finally pulled out. The aftermath was a cold, leaking emptiness. He tucked himself away, fastened his trousers. He handed her a towel without looking at her.
“Clean yourself up. Get dressed. You’ll go out there and you will calm him down. You will send him home, believing you are a stressed, secretive daughter who had a brief affair with his old friend that is now over. You will do this for him. To protect him.”
She wrapped the towel around herself, shivering. “And what happens after I send him home?”
Malik turned to the vanity. He pressed a hidden panel. A compartment slid open. Inside lay an obsidian dagger, simple and lethal. He touched the hilt but did not take it out.
“Zara made her opening move. She showed us the battlefield. It’s not warehouses.” He finally looked at her, his eyes were like the stone of the dagger—cold, sharp, capable of infinite damage. “It’s here. It’s in our heads. It’s the people we love. She won’t stop. So after you send him home, you decide. You walk out that door with him, and I make sure you never see my world again. Or you stay.”
He closed the compartment.
“And you learn to use more than a suture kit.”