9. Georgia
9
GEORGIA
T he madman holding me tightly against him led me down the alleyway behind the hotel and out to the street. We were around the corner from the entrance. People passed us on the street, looking curiously at the building, with its shrieking alarms and large crowd of upset patrons standing outside on the sidewalk. They’d evacuated, it seemed, every room but the restaurant.
Cop cars screamed toward us, and hope fluttered in my chest. I stumbled for a second, seriously considering ripping myself out of my captor’s hold and making a run for the road. I could throw myself in front of one of the cop cars and point out the gunman.
“Don’t even think about it.” His deep, low voice was a growl in my ear.
He prodded me with the gun and herded me toward the wall of a nearby building.
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” I muttered hopelessly as he pressed me against the building, adopting the pose of a couple wrapped up in each other and oblivious to the commotion down the street.
“Sure you weren’t.”
His tone was so overly confident, something in me snapped, and I spoke without thinking.
“Don’t pretend like you know me. You don’t know anything about me.”
He stared down. I wished I could see his eyes. What kind of eyes went with a man like this? A man who would shoot up a room and take a woman hostage?
A muscle worked in his tight jaw.
“You’d be surprised,” he ground out and glanced over his shoulder. “If you want this to be as painless as possible, consider keeping your mouth shut from now on.”
He pulled me to him, and we were walking again. This time to the road. Cabs were lined up along the street, with some of the drivers out and watching the action.
“You’d be surprised.”
His voice worked through my mind, playing on repeat. It was so familiar, somehow, and yet different. He had no accent. His tone was clipped. And yet… I could have sworn I’d heard it before.
We got to a cab, and my captor rapped hard on the hood to get the driver’s attention.
“You working?”
The cabbie nodded and ducked back into the taxi. We got into the back, the damn gun digging into my side the entire time. I caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror and tried to tell him with my eyes that I needed help.
“Where to?” the driver asked as we turned away from the hotel and police. Turned away from any sign of help.
“Boyle Heights,” the man answered confidently, then rattled off my address.
My address.
What was the point of trying to get away, when this man clearly knew where I lived? He probably knew where I worked, too.
I blinked at the taxi driver in the mirror, my eyes crying out for help.
“Nice photo on the dash. You got kids?” my captor asked the driver.
He nodded. “Four of them, if you can believe it!”
“Wow, four kids… a lot of mouths to feed.” My mystery man in black glanced at me.
The subtext of his look was clear. He’d hurt the driver if I said anything to him. I got it. I wasn’t getting anyone killed.
We drove in silence. I watched the city pass by outside the window, envying the people walking freely to and fro. Just an hour ago, I’d been one of them. I hadn’t appreciated that simple action, until now. In an hour, my life had been upended, and I couldn’t get my brain to accept it. The change was too dramatic.
A new, starkly terrifying thought hit me.
What would happen when we were alone? What did this man want? Was he here to hurt me? Was it because of my father? Was he going to kill me?
Panic threatened to close my throat, my lungs seeming to seize up. I could barely drag enough air into my chest. Spots danced in front of my eyes, and a wave of dizziness hit me. I was having a panic attack. I was no stranger to them. I’d been having them since I was nineteen years old and my world fell apart.
I closed my eyes and focused on three things. Three things I could smell. Asphalt from the slightly open window. Air freshener. My shampoo. Then three things I could feel. My jeans. The leather of the seat. A gun in my side. Nope. Not helpful. Finally, I let my eyes open and focused on three things I could see. The back of the driver’s head. The sunlight falling in the window and landing in a square on my leg. The dark glasses of the man who was holding me at gunpoint. He seemed to be watching me, but it was hard to tell. He could have been asleep for how impassive his face was.
“Have you received any international mail recently? Something from your father?” my mercenary asked.
Shit. The package that I hadn’t collected yet.
“No. Why? Should I have?” The lie left me before I could stop it. Why was I lying? The only reason I had was that this man was dangerous, and if he wanted whatever my father had sent me, it might be important. I needed a bargaining chip to protect myself. I couldn’t let him have it.
The cab pulled to a stop, and fear slammed back into me. Before I could think about trying to call out to the driver, we were back out on the street.
I lunged away when my captor turned to close the door, and he yanked me back in, hard.
“What did I say about repeating myself?” he murmured ominously. “Now, be a good girl and invite your guest upstairs.”
“You’re not my guest,” I muttered.
“Fine, how about the man who decides your fate?” he replied, just as quietly.
I glanced at him but found his face still as impassive as ever.
We started up the stairs to the top floor. He was right behind me the entire way, breathing down my neck.
“What’s going to happen when we get inside?” I asked, risking a glance over my shoulder.
“I wouldn’t like to spoil anything… You’ll just have to wait and see.”
His uncaring tone nearly brought tears to my eyes. I forced them back. Get a grip! Don’t let this asshole see you cry. He had to lower his guard at some point, and then, I’d be ready.
We got to the top of the stairs, and I fumbled for my key, taking way longer than I needed to, putting off the moment when we’d be alone.
“Don’t drag it out, Georgia.” His tone was lethal.
I grabbed my key and put it in the lock. The damn thing jammed, because of course it did.
I wriggled it around as my captor watched me in stony silence.
“What did I just tell you?” he growled when I’d failed to open the door for several moments.
“I’m not dragging it out, it’s broken.” I jiggled the key in the lock.
He sighed and brushed past me, taking the key from me and trying himself.
The door swung open.
“I made it easier for you,” I said, about to brush past him and go inside.
He took a step back, and the position put him near the top of the stairs.
I didn’t even think about it. My survival instincts were pumping. I just acted.
I twisted and shoved him as hard as I could, both hands to the solar plexus. He swayed back. The stairwell below him was steep and long. A fall would injure him, maybe even render him unconscious.
At the last moment, his hand snaked around my wrist and pulled me with him. I don’t know how he managed it. The speed of his reflexes had to be otherworldly, because he didn’t fall. Instead, he grabbed me and used the momentum to spin us both around on the top step. My back slammed into the wall, and then he was there, pressing me against the tile without mercy. Somehow, his hand had ended up behind my head, thank God, as it cushioned the blow of the wall.
Now, he used that grip to tilt my head back, exposing my throat to him.
“I told you not to fuck with me, Georgia. You’re out of your league. Accept it now, or the future is going to be difficult for you.”
“Like you care about my future,” I snorted.
I needed him to back up and get away from me. His rigid body leaning into mine was a display of power I didn’t need. I already knew how outmatched I was. And his scent… this close, there was something disturbing about it. It was almost too nice to inhale. It was too pleasant… It made me forget what he was. I needed space from it.
“Don’t try and play games with me… you won’t like the games I play back, topolina .”
The nickname froze me to the spot. A bucket of ice water over the head.
The voice clicked into place in my head. It all went together. The way he carried himself… it was different, and yet, the same. There was a new predatory grace and trained precision to his movements that he hadn’t yet developed in his reckless youth. His face, once just bearing the promise of the man he would become, had embodied every drop of it. His scent. The way it called me closer… even after all these years.
The smell of home.
His sunglasses hadn’t budged an inch, even in our tussle. I reached for them, and he knocked my hand away. If I could see his eyes, then I’d know for sure. No one had eyes like Elio Santori.
“Elio?” I whispered.
It was hardly audible, yet as loud as a gunshot.
He stilled. An eerie kind of absence of motion. He didn’t breathe. It seemed like his heart didn’t even beat.
Then he tilted his head to the side.
“Who?” His tone was cold, disinterested.
“Elio, is it you?” I murmured. My heart was hammering, threatening to break through my ribs. Did I ever think about the man who had broken my heart into pieces? Only every single day, but hey, I’d improved upon the first few years of my twenties, when I’d thought about him every few minutes.
He sighed, the lower part of his face still not giving a single thing away.
“Again, who? I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Liar. You’re him.” I was convinced. I could hear him murmur topolina again and again in my head. It had tripped off his tongue so naturally, there was no mistaking it.
He shrugged. “Think what you want, Signora Conti. It doesn’t matter to me, and it won’t change anything for you.”
It felt like the world slowed to a crawl as he reached up and pulled at the arm of his sunglasses. They came off slowly, and every second lasted a lifetime while I waited to see if my ghost, the man who’d haunted me every day since he’d left, had come back into my life.
The glasses fell away, and he looked right at me.
And his eyes were brown.
Dark brown.
Emotions I couldn’t name swirled inside me. Relief, disappointment, fucking confusion.
“Are we done here?” the man murmured.
I nodded mutely.
“Good. Now get the fuck inside, and stop testing me.”