Chapter 30
SCARLETT
MY PULSE RACES AS I try to make sense of what Gabriel just told me. Carla wasn’t his girlfriend. She was being controlled, just like he is, and just like I’m about to be.
“Come on, untie me now,” Gabriel says.
“No. You’re pretty like this. Let me think.”
He actually laughs, and the sound breaks some of the tension in the room.
“We need to do something to make those people pay,” I say. “The campus needs to be freed from them.”
“That will be hard to achieve since we have no resources or anything to fight the actual mafia. And I can’t lose my mom and dad too.”
“So what then? We just give up?”
“You should leave. I’ll say I came too late and you were already gone. They’ll take out their anger on me, but I’ll survive. They still need me, so it won’t be too bad. And they’ll let you go since they don’t care. They’ll find someone else.”
I frown at him. “You’d risk their anger to save me?”
“Yeah.” His gaze doesn’t waver.
I believe him. He wouldn’t be sabotaging himself for no reason. He wouldn’t be throwing games and ruining his own reputation and career for nothing.
It would be easy for me to just leave, go home, and pretend none of this ever happened.
But I can’t do easy, because I can’t imagine leaving Gabriel on his own or getting someone else in trouble. Even though I don’t want to admit it just yet, I’ve fallen for him. I came here to destroy him, and instead I fell in love with him.
“Don’t worry about me,” he says. “I was on my own from the start, so I can manage.”
I cross the room and place my hands on his face. His skin is warm under my palms, and I lean down and kiss him. My lips press against his, soft at first, then deeper. When I pull back, I look into his eyes. “I can’t do that.”
He stares at me, his brow furrowed, his mouth slightly open, his eyes searching mine.
I look at him, still tied up, and an idea forms in my mind. “Do your mafia guys have an enemy or a rival, or someone who could be messing with them?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Great. I have an idea. Is that guy who’s ordering you around full of himself and doesn’t think too much?”
“Yeah, obviously. If he did think, he’d know not to risk injuring me when he needs me to play. But he doesn’t. He’s all ego.”
“Perfect. Let’s pretend you got caught by the enemy.”
I grab his phone from the desk and move behind him. I take his tied hand and press his finger to the screen until it unlocks.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Wait.” I grab a tie from his closet and wrap it around his mouth, gagging him.
He makes a muffled sound of protest, but I ignore him. I hold up the phone and start recording a video. Him tied to the chair, gagged, and looking disheveled and panicked.
“Perfect,” I say out loud, stopping the recording.
Then I untie the knots binding his wrists, my fingers fumbling with the rope until it finally comes loose. He pulls the gag out of his mouth.
“What the hell is your plan?” he asks.
“Let’s hope this works. Because even if they don’t think their enemy kidnapped you, they can think someone else did. Someone who knew about you.”
“And then what?”
“Come here.” I climb onto the bed and gesture for him to follow.
He gets up from the chair and sits next to me. I wrap my arms around him and hold him close. His body is tense, his shoulders rigid, so I run my fingers through his hair.
“It all needs to be done quickly so they don’t have much time to think,” I say.
“What if they don’t take the bait?”
“Then nothing. You’ll say you escaped, didn’t see anyone, and that’s that. We’ll blur the background in the video so they can’t tell it’s your room.”
He’s quiet for a moment, his breath warm against my neck. Then he pulls back slightly to look at me. “You’re insane.”
“Maybe. But it might work.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll figure something else out.”
His jaw is tight, his hands flexing at his sides. “What about my mom and dad?”
“They shouldn’t be in any danger because the mafia will still want to control you, and they can only do that if your parents are alive and well.” At least I hope so.
My sister was in this same position, tied to these same people and forced to do the things she didn’t want to do. And now she’s dead.
I won’t let that happen to Gabriel or to me.
I won’t let the bad guys win, no matter what.