Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

“What the fuck?” I hiss, hurrying to his side.
He clutches his stomach, hunching over to hurl violently into a plastic
wastebasket.
“Jesus, Mateo, what happened?”
Sucking in a breath that sounds like it gets caught in his throat, he glances
up at me through glassy eyes, panic lacing his brown irises. A deep crimson
flush crawls up his exposed skin, and his hand lashes out awkwardly,
grasping at nothing as another wave of vomit barrels out of him.
“I heard food poisoning,” comes a voice from somewhere behind me.
“Doesn’t present like it, though.”
One I recognize better than my own.
It caresses my skin, its heat ghosting across the back of my neck, telling
me the owner is close.
“What do you think, little one?”
A sheen of sweat beads along Mateo’s brown hairline, and the basket falls
from his grip to the floor, toppling onto its side as he collapses in a
convulsive fit.
My stomach churns, bile teasing the back of my throat as the voice
materializes at my side, the physical manifestation of the phantom I’ve tried
to rid myself of over the last few weeks.
I don’t speak, fear gripping my entire being in its claws, squeezing until
I’m completely helpless to watch my fiancé writhe on his bed, seizing and
drooling with no interference.
Even though the man at my side is a doctor.
His presence tells me that right here, right now, he’s my father’s fixer.
That this was a hit.
As Mateo’s body goes slack, his life force bleeding from his body within
minutes, I watch Kal Anderson from my peripheral, trying to rectify this
being with the man I once cared for.
The man who took my virginity eight weeks ago, and left me before the
sun was up, scarred in more ways than one.
Tousled, inky black hair sweeps back over his head, like he’s spent his
time combing through it. His jaw is sharp enough to cut glass, covered in a
thin layer of stubble and framing Adonis-style bone structure, while his dark
eyes are more reminiscent of the evil he’s rumored to be.
He towers over me, taller than anyone else I’ve ever known, the black
material of his expensive suit perfectly fitted to every muscle and curve of his