Love Op: A Spicy, Cat-And-Mouse, Thriller Rom Com (Love and Other Jobs Book 5)

27. Mattie

Iopened my eyes to find a bokeh of white and green, blending together and shining bright against a dark backdrop. A droning beep pierced through my aching skull, and its rhythmic ting made me think of a hospital. Like a heartbeat monitor. As my vision came into focus, I realized that it was my own heartbeat on a monitor. Then a blood pressure cuff tightened around my arm, and the sharp sting of an IV in my arm catapulted me back to awareness.

Lobotomy.

Had they already done it? Had I lost a piece of myself? Had my frontal cortex been severed, and my emotions tampered with… taken away from me?

No. No, I still felt the same. Maybe I wasn’t meant to feel the difference? I felt terrified, desperate, and so angry, I could happily snatch up the nearest medical instrument and shove it deep into Jonathon’s eye cavity. Surely that was a good sign. I pulled in a breath, filling my lungs that felt tight and unused, like I’d been barely breathing for hours.

“Where is Doctor Hughes?” a male voice asked. “She needs to be put under.”

“On his way,” a woman answered.

“She has a fast metabolism. She woke before he could get here.”

“Should I push midazolam?” the woman asked.

I forced out a groan, rolling to my side on the table. From what I could tell, I was in a dark operating room, and the only light in the room had been cast on the operating table where I lay. An older man—a surgeon, I guessed—had already scrubbed in and held his hands aloft in the way that I usually saw them do to keep the field sterile. A nurse, also masked and wearing the same pale green medical outfit, turned a questioning glance at the gray-haired man.

“I think you’d better,” the doctor said, his eyes roving over me.

I had on a medical gown, but my limbs weren’t tied down. As the nurse went to a silver tray at her side to reach for a drug, a hit of panic jolted through my veins. Move, Mattie. Get up. Don’t let them. I shook off the monitors on my left hand, and without stopping to think about the safety of the motion, I reached over and ripped the IV out of my right arm.

“She’s up,” the doctor said, darting forward to grab me.

I didn’t know if it was because he was old, or perhaps they hadn’t expected me to wake up before the anesthesiologist had put me under, but I evaded him easily. Even with clumsy limbs and a sluggish mind fogged over with drugs, I managed to flop off the table and scramble away. The doctor and nurse were the only ones in the room, and I realized with a stab of surprise that this wasn’t actually an operating room at all. It was a dining room. They’d closed off the room with plastic and tape, and although furniture had been moved against the wall and medical equipment moved into the space, I was still in the chateau.

What. A. Psycho.

“Guards!” the doctor called out, backing away from me like I was a rabies-infested animal.

Guards weren’t good. An old doctor and a startled nurse holding a syringe, I could handle. But big dudes with guns and tasers were another story. The dining room was huge, with a wall of radius windows with peaked arches lining one side, and it stretched out so long, it was maybe half the length of a football field at least. I stumbled away from the operating room setup, tripping on an Aubusson carpet and searching the wood-paneled walls for an escape. There were several doors to my right, and one glass-paneled set of French doors that seemed to lead outside to the darkening sunset evening.

Plastic crinkled, and the same pair of guards who had taken me from New York hurried into the room. I recognized the long, hawk-like nose of the taller guard and the whippet-like build of the shorter one. They both wore all black, but neither was particularly bulky—a build like Kael’s was rare, really. But even if they weren’t as strong as Kael, I still couldn’t out-wrestle them both.

I turned and sprinted, not paying any heed to the fact that my medical gown hadn’t been fastened properly or that I was barefoot. I didn’t know what my plan was—where could I possibly go with a veritable army of men at Jonathon’s disposal to catch me? But I couldn’t sit there and let them put me under, either.

Fast metabolism. They hadn’t expected me to wake up, so I had to make use of this chance. I sprinted hard, aiming for the French doors that led to a gold-washed, autumn vineyard beyond. The burgundy and brown leaves sloped in gentle hills just beyond the glass doors, beckoning me to escape in their rows of fragrant flora. My hands connected with the handle, and my body slammed against the door. I fumbled with the latch.

Locked.

“No,” I gasped. Two pairs of hands yanked me away from the door, and the smell of cigarettes and stale BO assaulted my nose. I thrashed as they hauled me away. Despair gripped me so tightly, I thought my blood stopped churning altogether.

“What’s going on in here?” Jonathon’s voice asked. “Doctor?”

“Apologies, sir,” the doctor said from the other side of the room as the guards dragged me back across the antique hardwood floors. “She has a fast metabolism.” The doctor had an accent—Romanian? I couldn’t be sure. “She woke much faster than expected.”

“Where’s the anesthesiologist?” Jonathon asked. I looked over to find him advancing on me with calm, unhurried steps and annoyance written all over his pale features. “Matilda, darling, stop that. There’s no point. You’re just embarrassing yourself.”

I leaned over and bit the guard closest to me, snagging a good bit of his fleshy arm below his short sleeve between my teeth. I bit hard, harder than I thought possible, and just as he screamed in surprised pain, I tasted blood on my tongue. A jarring strike to my cheek forced me to release him.

I fell to my knees, my head ringing. The other guard had cuffed the side of my face, and a dull ache spread from my cheekbone to my buzzing skull. I gasped, hands splaying out on the cold hardwood and senses reeling. Blood drizzled from my open mouth onto the polished floor.

“For God’s sake,” Jonathon drawled. His dark floral and leather shoes came into view, stopping just a foot from me. Those were stupid-ass shoes. They looked like an eighties couch.

I spit out a mouthful of blood before raising myself to my knees to look up at him. “Ghost is going to kill you for this.”

Jonathon looked faintly amused by that. “One very capable bodyguard—no matter how impressive his rap sheet—is not going to get past an entire security detail, Matilda.”

I snuffed out a laugh, wiping blood and saliva off my mouth. “I’m not saying he’ll do it before you get what you want. I’m just saying he will do it. He’s petty like that.” I would have stood if I thought I could, but between the drugs still fogging my system and the swirling in my vision from the hit to the head, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

Jonathon remained nonplussed. “Well, I appreciate the heads up. I’ll be sure to beef up my security. In the meantime,” he snapped his fingers. The guards lifted me up by my arms again, and this time, I hung uselessly between them. “You’re ruining my vision, Matilda. I wanted this to be a peaceful process. It’s a beautiful thing. Let it be.”

I sprayed blood and spit in his face. It painted his skin like bloody stars, and he stumbled back, grimacing. “What the fuck?”

I grinned. “Oh, sorry, was that not very orphic of me? My bad.”

“Get her on the table,” Jonathon growled.

Pop, pop.

Two taps of percussive sound fired off in the distance. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were fireworks. But I did know better. Hope leaped in my chest, and I lifted a devilish grin to Jonathon’s surprised features. “Oops. You summoned a Ghost.”

Pop, pop, crack.

Jonathon rotated a glare to his guards. “What’s going on?”

Static crackled over a walkie-talkie on the guard’s hip, and he released me, stepping away to speak in hurried French to someone on the other line. The second guard wrapped an arm around me securely from behind.

Gunfire sounded in the distance, closer now and so loud, it cracked through the air like whip strikes. My smile broadened. I didn’t know how he’d done it, how he’d discovered which house I was at, or how he’d gotten here so fast, but I knew with absolute certainty who had come for me.

“Get her to the table,” Jonathon repeated, his mouth screwed up in a tight line and his eyes volleying over the expansive dining room like a spirit might actually appear out of thin air.

Knowing Ghost the way I did, it was a possibility.

The man behind me jerked me backward, but there was no way. There was no way I’d let him sweep me to my doom with Kael this close. I fought him, elbowing his stomach and bringing up my heel toward his crotch. He dodged me, wrapping me in a full-body bear hug. I went limp until I slid between his arms, and he stumbled forward.

“For Christ’s sake,” Jonathon shouted. “Can you not manage one woman?”

The guard hissed something in French I didn’t understand, but it sounded a lot like a string of curses aimed at Jonathon, and then at me, and he tackled me to the ground, wrenching my hands behind my back. As he brought his body over me, I arched my back and slammed my head backward into his nose.

Crunch.

The man cursed in English, slurring out a “Shit, moszerfucker,” before rolling away from me. I scrambled to my feet, only to be met by a sudden blow to the other cheek. Jonathon had hit me that time, and the open slap from his hand connected with my face with a dizzying crack. I fell back to my hands and knees, my face on fire and my vision spinning.

“This is not how this was supposed to go,” Jonathon raged. He hauled me up by my arm and shook me. My already reeling head pulsed with agony. “This is not what you are. Stop acting like a deranged creature and behave.”

I coughed out a laugh. “I am, though.” I lifted my vision to Jonathon’s pinched features, and his face swam as I struggled to right my equilibrium. “I am perfectly deranged. And no matter how much of my brain you scoop out, I always will be. You can’t have me, and you can’t change me. Not that it matters.”

Pop, pop, pop.

My smile darkened. “He’s coming for you.”