Chapter 24
24
CELIA
I had no sense of how much time passed, suspended like that with the cool air brushing over my mouth-damp clit, my nipples, and my red-hot ass.
When I heard the door open, I didn’t know whether to feel panic or relief. “Luca?”
There was no answer. My body started to tremble.
Something soft brushed my skin. A blanket.
The blanket was dropped, covering me.
Someone pulled the blindfold off my face. It yanked at my hair, and I let out a gasp of pain.
I found myself looking up at Dante’s face—not that he was looking back. He had his eyes averted, as if he had been keeping from looking at me as he carried the blanket in.
“Dante,” I whispered, all my panic dissipating. “Is everything okay?”
He shook his head, finally looking back at me.
My heart rate sped. Whatever he saw in my face spurred him to action, because he pulled a notebook out of his back pocket and quickly scrawled something. He held it up to me to read.
He shouldn’t have been cruel to you .
I let out a long breath of relief. I’d thought we were under attack, that my father and brother might discover me like this. Luca might find my degradation amusing. They would murder me for it.
“To be fair, I did try to shoot him.” I was surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth, though my voice shook. My sense of humor in general was pretty shaky at the moment.
He flipped a page, scrawled something else.
He deserved it .
The laugh that burst out of my throat was unexpected…and unexpectedly loud.
I glanced at the door, afraid that Luca would come through it. “Dante, are you going to get in trouble for being here?”
His brows arched, but he shook his head. He finally glanced over my body, though after a second I realized he was just looking at the parts the blanket covered. He’d gotten it over my breasts, my torso, and one leg was exposed, the blanket hanging off my pale calf. He swallowed hard, then moved the blanket so it covered my leg completely.
Then he moved down my side so he could begin to unbuckle my ankle from the restraints.
Relief flooded me at the thought of being released, but I also felt so worried for him. “Are you sure it’s safe for you?”
His fingers wrapped around my ankle as he released the strap. He frowned, and it took me a second to realize why as his thumb gently brushed across the bruises on my ankle. I’d writhed and yanked at my bonds, especially trying to escape them once Luca left me, and blue-purple bruises bloomed across my skin.
His jaw went tight. He jerked upright as if he were about to stride out of the room. I reached for him before I could even think, stricken with another surge of panic, and he paused. He gave me a reassuring smile that didn’t reach his eyes and then began to release the other ankle.
As soon as he had stopped unbinding me, I scrambled up, wrapping the sheet around myself. I didn’t want to be trapped, helpless. For a second, his gaze fixed on me as if he were transfixed, his dark eyes smoldering.
Then he turned his back.
“I’m going to get dressed,” I said, quickly moving past the wreckage Luca had left of my clothing and going to grab new clothing. I dressed quickly. “It’s okay to turn around now.”
He did, and he studied me carefully before he held up the notepad with the latest message.
Do you want to get out of here ?
“I don’t want to go back to my father’s house,” I burst out. Staying free of him was my first priority, more important than anything else, even now. “But I don’t want to stay here right now. But I’d rather, if…”
He nodded, his gaze dark. Then he held out his arm to me.
I went with Dante. When I stepped out of the room into the hall, I expected it might be a trap, but there was no one there.
Dante led me down the stairs, staying close to me. I could barely breathe when we walked through the dark garage. I kept expecting someone to jump out and attack us. He opened the car door for me, and I checked the backseat before I slid in.
He got into the driver’s side. The garage door rumbled upward, so loud in the night that it seemed like Luca would have to know, wherever he was. My hands twisted the hem of my t-shirt.
And even so…
I felt odd leaving Luca behind.
DANTE
I couldn’t believe that I had her in my car.
She looked nervous. As we drove the winding trails down to leave the cemetery, she sat forward as if she might have to fight her way to freedom. She’d made it clear that she was willing to do just about anything to try to reach her freedom. Luca sure as hell knew that.
I had stitched up his head. I worried about him, but I still found it hilarious.
I grabbed the gate remote and pressed a button so that it swung open. She gave me a glance out of the side of her eye. “Do you know where Luca is?”
I nodded. Luca was a man who had many fetishes, but I was starting to think his biggest obsession had become making sure she would stay where he left her.
The gates closed again behind us. We drove through town and got onto the highway. For a long time, she studied the road, as if she were making sure she knew exactly where we were.
“Are you safe?” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
I couldn’t make sense of the way she was worrying about me. Even when I was untying her restraints, she had acted as if she would put them back on herself rather than get me in trouble.
I nodded again, reaching out to take her hand. I just wanted to comfort her. But once my fingers brushed her leg, she turned wide, startled eyes up to my face, and I regretted it. I started to put my hand back on the steering wheel, but she grabbed my hand and squeezed.
“Is Luca going to be okay?” she asked.
I wanted to tell her that he would be…unfortunately. I was so pissed at him right now for what he’d done to her. But she was so wide-eyed and genuine, so I just gave her hand another squeeze and a nod.
I hoped she wouldn’t forgive that man easily. Or maybe at all.
No, I couldn’t imagine my life without Luca. But he did have a lot to learn about how to treat a woman.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft.
She chewed her lower lip as the two of us kept driving. “Maybe I should have asked you where we were going. While you could still talk to me.”
I was tempted to pull over to write my response. But we both wanted to get the hell out of this city, I knew that.
I traced letters over the back of her hand. It took her a second to realize what I was doing, and then she tilted her head, thoughtful. She laid her hand over mine, stopping me from writing anymore. “Safe?”
I nodded.
“I know I’m safe with you,” she said. Her tone took on a bit of playfulness. “I just wanted to know how long it would take us to get there.”
I traced a number across her hand. She turned it over, offering me her palm to write on. I loved the feeling of my fingers against her palm. I’d fantasized about touching her like that again, offering messages that were just between us.
“Two,” she said. “Two hours.”
I nodded again.
“But then what? What are we going to do? How long can we last before my father finds us?”
I squeezed her hand in mine, glad that I couldn’t answer any of her questions right now.
But I wanted her to feel better.
There was one thing I could do for her, though. I reached into the center console and pulled out the phone that I picked up for her. When I held it out to her, she gave me a confused, weary look. I dared to look away from the road to give her an encouraging nod.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
I mimed holding an imaginary phone to my ear.
“Ohh, you don’t even have to be able to talk to mock me,” she commented, but she smiled, and just that tiny fraction of her smile was like the sun coming out. “I think you know what I mean.”
I picked up my notepad and flipped back several pages. There was a note I had written before I talked myself out of disrupting all of Luca’s plans.
Call your friend .
She gave me a startled look, and then she asked, “Are you sure?”
I had a feeling she thought it was a trap.
She was raised to be suspicious. If I were Luca, it probably would have been. It was funny how two people could grow up in the same world and come out so differently. Our mother had affected him quite thoroughly.
Then, as if she’d felt a wild surge of trust, she went for it, hastily calling. She went still instead of fidgeting as she waited, every muscle tense. Her face in profile was serious. Afraid.
And then, there was a delay as if the number was being diverted, and then a young woman’s voice floated through the air. She sounded young to be plotting so much.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Celia.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Celia gasped out. “Are you?”
“I’ve never been better.” The other girl’s voice was breezy.
“You’re in danger,” Celia said. “You’ve got to be careful. Luca knows something about our…plans.” She cast a sidelong glance at me. I wasn’t particularly hurt by her lack of trust.
“We’re always in danger. We’re girls.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Listen. Whatever you hear, don’t worry. I’ve got a plan, and you don’t have to worry about me.”
“Whatever I hear?” Celia’s voice had turned steely. “So, you know that I’m going to hear something that I’m not going to like. What is it?”
“Celia. Can you stop worrying about everyone else at the moment? Tell me what you need from me.”
“I needed to know that you and…” She cut herself off rather than reveal another name. “I just need to know that you’re safe.”
She glanced at me, as if she wondered if there was something that I needed from her too.
“I’m pretty sure you need a lot more than that. Do you have your escape plan figured out?”
“Not at all.”
“We need to get you out of there. That man, Luca, has his own plan, and you can’t trust that it’s anything good for you.”
“I wasn’t operating under that delusion.”
“Tell me where you are, and we’ll come up with something.”
She glanced back at me. “I’m getting out of the city.”
“Good. If you can move around freely, you can get to the safe house. If you get there, hide out until I can get to you, all right?”
“Give me the phone, Moriah.” The new voice was low and male, and even though it was faint through the receiver, I could still feel the danger in the voice.
Celia tensed again, her fingers clutching the phone. Her lips parted, but she didn’t say anything. Just listening.
The voice was a dark purr, louder now because he was speaking into the receiver. “Moriah can’t play anymore.”
In the distance, Moriah called, “Remember what I said? Trust me!”
Celia’s hands were shaking as she lowered the phone, desperately pressing the disconnect button as if something dangerous would uncoil from the receiver and strike out at her.
“She’s okay,” she said, repeating the words almost as if it were a chant, as if it were a prayer. “She’s okay.”
I glanced at her worriedly.
She gave me a smile, though it was a shaky one. “She wouldn’t lie to me. If she said that she has a plan, that she’s handling things and she’s okay, she is…even if that man sounded terrifying. She’s the really terrifying one. I should be worried for him.”
She stopped her rapid rush of words.
To my shock, her eyes flooded as if with gratitude or overwhelm. I didn’t know what to do with those tears.
“Thank you,” she told me. She started to hand the phone back to me, and I shook my head.
“You’re trusting me with the phone?” she asked. “What’s your relationship with Luca?”
I dared glance away from the road for just a second to flip through a page in my notebook. I’d had this one prepared for a while.
He is an asshole .
She laughed, a genuine delighted peal of laughter, and then blotted the tears under her eyes away. “Yes, but that doesn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already discover quite thoroughly on my own.”
She didn’t sound like she hated him, which was pretty strange coming from a girl who had beaten him with a shovel and tried to shoot him with a gun. Which was funny, because usually women flocked to Luca. No wonder he was obsessed with her.
Of course, he was demonstrating his obsession through his need to keep her under lock and key, which was a big mistake.
Thoughtfully, she leaned against the door.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked me.
I had no way of answering that. Half of the sheets in my notebook contained the word asshole . I was not prepared for a conversation about love.
“It’s dangerous, you know? Even the kind of love we have for our friends. It’s scary, caring about someone. It means you can’t just make the next right decision for you . You have to think about so much.” She tugged on the end of her ponytail. “I can see why people give up on it.”
I shot her a quizzical look, then traced a heart on her hand.
Her eyes jolted up to mine.
“Yes,” she answered my unspoken question. “I’ve been in love. I loved a boy very much when I was a girl.”
Something raw and aching was opening up in my chest. Based on her sad tone and the sudden distance in her eyes, as if she were looking years into the past, she wasn’t really here with me anymore.
“I loved him, and I got him killed.”
I shook my head, rejecting that whole premise. She hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger. She’d never killed anyone.
Though Luca certainly hoped that would change soon.
He thought she had to get dirtied up to stay in our world.
I thought she was perfect the way she was. She could stay perfect. I would get blood on my hands for her.
I gave her another quizzical look, hoping to get her to keep talking. She shook her head gently, giving my hand another squeeze. “I’m so tired. Do you mind if I just rest until we get there?”
I nodded. Something in me felt proud to see her relax, to watch her falling asleep right next to me.
She roused herself a little and glanced over at me as if something had just struck her.
“Dante…were you the one who came into the mausoleum that night?”
I nodded.
“Thank you.” Her hand brushed mine. Her touch felt electric on my skin, and when she started to pull away, I slid my fingers across her palm. Her hands were so soft, so uncalloused.
She laced her fingers through mine.
It felt like a gift, and so did the smile she offered me, which was shy and sweet.
She fell asleep holding my hand.