Chapter 19 #2
The dial tone filled the car through the speakers. It rang. And rang. And rang. But he didn’t answer.
“Fuck,” I hissed, disconnecting the call and trying again.
When my eyes flashed to the mirror again, a knot pulled in my stomach. A third vehicle had joined the party, and they were gaining on us.
This wasn’t good.
Kai’s phone continued to ring before I disconnected again. Next to me, Sofia clung to her seat belt, gasping as I navigated the car around a sharp bend, the rear end swinging wide.
Once I’d straightened up, I tapped at the screen again, dialing Connor, but after several rings, the call diverted to voicemail.
“Fuck! Why the fuck is no one answering their fucking phones?”
“I’m scared,” Sofia whispered, her voice barely audible over the rushing of blood in my ears.
I whipped my head to her, her face pale, and her blue eyes wide. Terrified. Forgetting the screen and my desperate attempt to call someone for backup, I reached across to squeeze her knee. “You’re okay, Sofe. I promise, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
It was a promise I was determined to keep.
Without anyone answering their damn phones, I was on my own. I had a gun stashed in the car, but this wasn’t a fucking action film; I couldn’t hang out the window, shooting, while steering the car, so we didn’t crash.
There was only one option.
Pressing harder on the gas, the car lurched as we flew through the narrow roads leading further and further into the hills. Adrenaline flooded my system, and usually, I would have loved the rush, but not with Sofia in the car. Not when it was clear how petrified she was.
Every so often, my gaze flicked to the mirror, and relief seeped through me when the cars following started to fall behind. Nearing the spot where I needed to turn, I reached over and pulled Sofia’s seat belt, tightening it.
“Hold on.”
She squealed when I suddenly turned the car off the road, driving between two thick trees. There wasn’t a road, or even a dirt track, just the rough terrain of the forest, but it meant that there was little chance of us being followed.
Checking the mirror again, I unclenched my hands from where I’d gripped them around the steering wheel at seeing we weren’t being followed. But I wasn’t taking any chances.
Exiting out of my contacts on the computer screen, I loaded another page, keeping one eye on the trees ahead. Finding the app I needed, I tapped in a code.
“Miles, what the…?” Sofia started, trailing off as she gaped at the ground ahead, rising.
I didn’t answer her, concentrating on the narrow tunnel opening up. Ensuring the car was lined up to fit into the small space, I switched the headlights on just as we entered the tunnel, and the car descended to the underground safehouse.
The bunker had been one of my brighter ideas. I’d discovered the old World War Two bunker when I’d been identifying places we could use for safehouses across the city. Kai had spent a fortune transforming it into a usable location, and until now, we’d never had to use it.
I tapped in a second code into the screen, and behind us, the door began to close again, shutting us in. When we reached the bottom of the tunnel, sensor-triggered lights flickered on, lighting up the space big enough for two cars.
Coming to a stop, I switched the engine off and grabbed the gun from the center console. “Stay here,” I instructed, getting out and locking the door behind me.
Ensuring no one had discovered the bunker and was lurking inside somewhere, I passed through a door that required another code to be entered before checking the open-plan space, and hoping like fuck we wouldn’t be in here long.
The bunker was small, and aside from a bathroom, there was nowhere to escape. The thought of being trapped in there for more than a couple of hours with Sofia made it impossible to breathe.
Content that the place was as it should be, I returned to the car and opened Sofia’s door, offering her my hand. “Come on, it’s all clear inside.”
Of course, the defiant mare ignored my hand and pulled herself out of the car, strolling into the bunker with her nose in the air. I rolled my eyes and followed behind. Guess she wasn’t scared anymore.
She stopped several feet inside, taking in the couch and coffee table in the middle of the room, the tiny kitchenette, the double bed at one end, and the desk with a computer at the other, before spinning to face me.
“Will we run out of air down here?” she asked, taking me by surprise. I’d been bracing for her to tell me the bunker was not to her tastes and she wanted to leave immediately.
“No. There’s a ventilation system installed, along with backup generators. There’s also electricity and water down here. Kai and I made sure this place was fully functioning when we converted it a couple of years back.”
“Oh,” she replied, walking further into the space, her shoulders relaxing.
“There’s a bathroom in there if you want to…clean yourself up,” I said, pointing to the closed door.
She raised a brow in question before her delicate features twisted into a scowl as if she’d just remembered my come was still between her legs. Huffing, she crossed to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Now that the adrenaline was leaving my system, and I was satisfied no one had followed us, I pulled my phone out to ring Kai and get to the bottom of what the fuck was going on.
The safehouse was fitted with signal boosters feeding into antennas outside the bunker. It was how I still had a signal on my phone, and how the computer could still connect to the internet even though we were deep underground.
Dialing Kai’s number, he finally answered. “Miles.”
“Where the fuck have you been? What’s going on?” I growled, moving to stand as far from the bathroom as possible so Sofia couldn’t overhear.
“You made it to the bunker then?” he replied, confusing the hell out of me.
“Yeah. How did you know that?”
He sighed heavily, and a lump of dread landed in my gut. “Remember when I sent Riley to the South of France, and you brought her back? I was so damn mad at you, but now I know it was the best thing you could have ever done for me.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “Kai, what the fuck are you talking about? I don’t have time to reminisce.”
“I know you’ll be mad at me, but I’m worried about you, Miles. You haven’t been yourself since we lost Theo, and I think if you just give yourself a chance with Sofia, you can be happy again,” he continued, sounding more and more unlike my ruthless cousin I’d always known him to be.
“You’re really beginning-”
“It was our men following you,” Kai interrupted. “I knew you’d think someone was following you, and I took a chance that you’d go to the bunker.”
My jaw clenched. “What do you mean, 'it was our men following us?'”
“It was a setup, Miles,” he huffed, losing his patience. “I set it up.”
“What the fuck, Kai? A setup? Sofia was scared out of her fucking mind!” I snarled, my feet moving on their own to pace the bunker.
“And for that, I’m sorry. But you and her need to spend time together. She’s good for you, Miles, you just need to get your head out of your ass long enough to realize that.”
“Fuck you, Kai, you don’t get to tell me what I need.”
Fury coursed through me, my head spinning with his revelation, and my body shaking with the need to pummel my fists into something.
I stormed over to the door that would lead back to the car, but the second I reached out to press the handle, a click echoed through the bunker.
Still, I grabbed it and tried to shove the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.
“The security of the bunker has been signed over to Apollo for a few days,” Kai explained in my ear as I desperately tugged at the handle, but the door refused to open.
“You can waste your time trying to overrule Ash’s security, but my advice?
Spend the time with Sofia. Like you bringing Riley back to me, I suspect this will be the best thing to happen to you. ” With that, he disconnected the call.
Not thinking straight, thanks to the blinding white rage thrumming through my body, I launched my phone across the bunker. It smashed against the wall and landed on the ground, and I couldn’t help but glare at the splintered screen.
“What’s going on?” a soft voice asked tentatively from the doorway of the bathroom.
I closed my eyes, but kept my back to her, unable to look at her for fear that I would lose all control over my temper. “We’re stuck here.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’re stuck here?’” she demanded. I counted to ten in my head, and when I failed to answer, footsteps shuffled across the room. I cracked my eyes open to find her staring at me with a fearful gaze. “What’s going on, Miles? Who was chasing us?”
Resignation rushed through me like a tidal wave. I had no choice but to tell her the truth, not when it was evident she was still terrified that someone had been after us. It had probably brought all sorts of memories back from when she was kidnapped. “No one was chasing us. It was a setup.”
Her brows lifted. “A…a setup? I don’t understand. Who would do that? And why?”
Her barrage of questions added to the frustration crawling through me, and my attempt to keep my temper in check was gradually crumbling. I scrubbed a hand down my face, giving myself a second to compose my thoughts.
“My fucking idiotic cousin has somehow got it into his thick head that we need to spend some time together.”
I couldn’t hide the disgust in my tone, but it wasn’t aimed at her.
I was disgusted with myself.
Because, despite the anger coursing through me at our current predicament, there was a part of me—namely my cock—that was running wild with ideas of all the ways we could spend our time. All of those ideas involved me slamming inside her again, and feeling her tight pussy clenching around me.
Something that I wouldn’t allow to happen again. Not unless I wanted to drown under the betrayal already weighing me down.
At my words, hurt flashed across Sofia’s face, and her sparkling blue eyes hardened. “Right. ‘Cos spending any time with me is unbearable for you, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Milo, I’ll do my best to keep out of your way. It shouldn’t be too hard, I’m used to being invisible.”
Before I could respond, she stomped back to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, the lock sliding into place with a resounding click. Not that I would have stopped her from walking away. If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to stop the truth from leaving me.
That she wasn’t invisible.
I’d always seen her.