THE BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS

EIGHTEEN (RUBY POV)

"Blumes, calm down, getting upset is not good for your health." Iselen looks at her mentor with a straight face while the beautiful woman ignores her and keeps pacing up and down around the kitchen island. Suddenly, her blue Chuck Taylors stop and she turns around to point at my girlfriend with a threatening finger.

"Don't you dare to tell me what I have to do. It didn't work years ago and won't work now," Bluma answers with a quiet tone of voice but full of tension and Ru whines from the couch hearing her. "They've tried to kill you, for fuck's sake!"

"I'm aware that someone tried to sabotage my car, the police are investigating it and there's nothing we can do in the meantime so... calm down." The German lady takes a deep breath, crossing her arms over her chest, and nods but her eyes are shining with rage and she keeps clenching her jaw hard. I fidget awkwardly on my stool and drink a sip of wine I don't actually want, I just want to keep my hands busy so they can't see I'm shaking a little. Bluma would get madder, probably.

The truth is that I haven't stopped shaking for the past two days, since we crashed against Ivory's car to stop our vehicle. I didn't realize how much the situation had affected me at that moment; the way Iselen behaved, keeping her poise, helped to me to hold back my nervous breakdown but, once I forgot about her dominant tone of voice, I began to understand what the incident involved. Someone tried to kill us, they really did that, because whoever sabotaged the brakes, they didn't know where we were going or how fast we were going to drive. An accident in the middle of the city can be less serious because everybody drives slowly and stops at red lights, but we could've had an accident in the middle of a highway... We could've killed innocent people crashing against them. I guess this is why the police are taking this very serious, way more serious than my report about the anonymous letters and threatens to my dogs.

Fear and concern kept me awake during two nights and, also, I was feeling pain since my neck and shoulders were throbbing like I worked out hard and had sore muscles. After a doctor made sure we had nothing serious, Iselen called Ivory and took us both to her favorite Thai spa to get a wonderful massage with essential oils that soothed our bodies, although my mind was still a whirlwind of thoughts when we left the building and headed to the Indian restaurant where we had lunch with our friends. Lisette was worried too but Medusa managed to make me laugh while planning funny ways to torture the perpetrators... that girl has a vivid imagination.

The problem is that we don't know who is responsible for this situation and we've been debating with Bluma for an hour. It could be Black Mamba, it could be Iselen's ex-sub, it could be both of them, it could be another client of the club who's bitter because my Dom doesn't work with them anymore, it could be a crazy fan... I had some of those but they used to harass me online and only bumped into them in real life occasionally. Buma has ruled out this idea immediately, those anonymous letter started to arrive right after I got frequent appointments with Iselen and, above all, after she kicked the artist's ass out of the club. Actually, it seems to me she's dying to find out that Samarkand is involved in this situation somehow to teach her a lesson she deserved long time ago... but we can't report her without clear evidence.

"The police didn't find anything," the elegant woman growls before grabbing her glass of wine and drinking a big gulp. I stare at her worried, this is the first time I see signs of her illness, she looks paler and skinnier than a week ago.

"I'm aware of that too..." Iselen sighs wearily. "They think my car was sabotaged in the club parking lot because there's an alarm in my house garage and no one has touched it, but there aren't surveillance cameras in the Boulevard of Broken Dreams so they don't have any clue. They're taking a look at the footage from a nearby parking lot to check if the saboteur left their car there. I'll fix this mess, I promise. I'll hire some bodyguards if necessary..." Bluma nods reluctantly putting her glass on the island next to Romeo and getting closer to me, her arms enclose my torso and she holds me tight against her body, kissing my forehead. I can't help getting relaxed and snuggling closer, feeling safe in her embrace despite I know she's becoming more fragile every day.