Novels by Ella Adulphus

I lifted her. She locked her legs around my waist immediately, tight and sure, like her body had been waiting for the chance. I carried her to the desk and set her on the edge and then I was between her knees and her hands were in my hair and we were kissing again, messier now, teeth and breath and we were kissing again, messier now, all teeth and breath and the raw sound of two people who had stopped holding back.She got both hands on the buckle and yanked it open, fingers shaking so hard the metal slipped once against her skin before it finally gave in. The leather dragged free. She shoved it aside without looking and went for the button of my trousers, breath already short against my mouth.I stayed still for her, one hand braced on the desk, the other spread wide on her thigh. I felt the muscle jump under my palm as she got the zipper down and shoved the fabric out of the way. She grabbed the front of my shirt, pulled me in hard, and I went with her, gripping her thigh tighter un

I moved closer.The carpet took my steps and gave nothing back, thick enough to swallow the sound so completely that even I almost doubted I was moving. Each step felt heavier than the last, not because of the distance but because of what waiting on the other side of it. She did not turn at the first one. She turned at the second, slow and deliberate, like she had been standing there the whole time waiting for the exact moment I decided not to stay in the doorway. The decision sat in my chest like something I had already lost the right to take back.Dallas.Afternoon light laid itself along the side of her face and caught in her hair, turning the darker strands almost copper where it touched them. It made her look like she belonged to a softer hour than the one we were living in. She had put on makeup, but only enough that it looked like she had done it with hands that were still a little unsteady. A thin, careful line of dark along her lashes. A little color on her mouth that made th

She picked up on the first ring, which told me she had been keeping the phone close for longer than she would admit.“Boss?” The word came out bright and disbelieving at the same time. “Is this…are you…oh my God. You’re actually calling.”“I’m back,” I said.She laughed, short and wet. I could hear a chair scrape. “I thought…people were saying things. I didn’t believe half of them but I believed enough that I kept the office locked. Are you okay? Are you in the city?”“I’m in the city. Open the clubs. All of them. Tonight if the licenses still hold. Tomorrow if they don’t. I want lights. I want staff. I want the doors doing what they are supposed to do.”“All of them?” She was already moving. I could hear it in her breathing. “Even the one on Fifth that the inspectors-”“All of them. If anyone gives you a problem, you call me. Not a manager. Me.”“Yes. Yes. God, I missed your voice. I mean…sorry. That was-I’ll do it. I’ll start now.”“Thank you, Lena.”She went quiet for a second, lik

I picked them up just after nine, when the light still had that thin morning edge to it and the street in front of the safehouse looked ordinary enough to lie.Hazel came out first. She had a bag on one shoulder and her mouth set like she had already decided not to ask me anything I would not answer. Dallas was right behind her. She paused on the last step when she saw me at the curb, keys still in my hand, and for a second neither of us moved. Then she came down anyway.I opened the back door for Hazel. Dallas took the front without being told. The doors shut. The quiet inside the car was thicker than the quiet outside it.I pulled away from the curb and kept my eyes on the road because if I looked at Dallas too long I was going to say something I could not take back yet.“I didn’t think it would work,” I said after two lights. My voice came out rougher than the sentence deserved. “Any of it. The club. The ring. Getting him in that car. I sat in a parking lot afterward and waited for

He ended the call and set the phone down like it might bite.“Bruce first.” Carlos mumbled, rolling his shoulders once as if settling the weight of the order. “Then the safe. That’s the order.”I nodded because my mouth did not have anything useful in it.They had Bruce waiting when we landed the second time, closer to the hills than the water. The house that had held him was already quiet in the wrong way. Carlos’s people had done what they were told. Bodies in a line along the inner wall, neat, like someone had been proud of the work. The air smelled like cordite and wet stone.Bruce was on his knees in the foyer with a bag over his head and his wrists bound behind him. When they yanked the bag off, his face was the color of old paper. Sweat stood on his upper lip. His eyes found Don’s slack body being carried in behind us and a sound tore out of him that was not quite a word. His shoulders jerked like he wanted to stand and his knees would not let him.“The safe.” Carlos snarled, a

Carlos' call came fifty-eight minutes after the black car pulled away from the club. I was still in the lot two streets over, engine dead, mask crushed in my fist. The leather of the wheel had gone damp under my palms. Every time a pair of headlights slid across the windshield my stomach dropped like the floor had opened. I kept seeing Carlos in that tight black shirt, the ring flashing, Don’s hand on him. I kept seeing the door shut. I kept seeing the car leave without me in it. The screen lit up with Carlos’s name. No greeting, just an address and three short words. “Meet me at 558 olive. I drove like the city wanted me dead. My knee kept bouncing against the underside of the wheel. I caught myself grinding my back teeth and had to force my jaw loose, then at a red light I dragged both hands down my face and left them there a second too long, breathing into my palms while I tried to shove the picture of Carlos on a warehouse floor out of my head. What if Don had seen the needle