CHAPTER 19 #2
“Thanks,” I sputtered as I tried to stop my brain from short circuiting.
I’d had sex, and not just the things I allowed Justin to do to me.
I’d had sex with a couple of guys when I was in school.
I had thought it would be a way for me to take that piece of me back from the creeps who had tried to rip it away so many times.
It hadn’t worked like that, and the sex with the guys I chose was uneventful – boring, even.
I had never understood what all the excitement was about it, and I had convinced myself the love making I read about in romance books was nothing but fiction.
But what just happened when Cal touched me – that felt like a taste of the things I had read about, and I found myself wondering if I would find sex with Cal as boring, or worse – traumatic - as it had always been before.
Maybe not, but just the thought of trying made me feel slightly panicked, after what that monster had done to me just a matter of days before.
It hadn’t been new. I had been forced against my will many times in my younger years, but somehow the attack in the car park seemed to have hit me harder than any before.
Maybe because I was older now, and because, deep down, I felt I should have been better at protecting myself.
Maybe because I had thought I had escaped all of that hell when I started earning enough money to put a roof over my and my Mum’s heads, and had been proven wrong.
Whatever it was, it was clear I needed to give myself time to heal. If only I knew how to do that.
“Are you okay, Cara?” Rafe’s hand landing over mine startled me badly, and I realized I had zoned out.
“Sorry,” I told him with a fake laugh, not wanting him to think I was scared of him again. “I was miles away.”
“Would you prefer if we didn’t drink too? We don’t want to upset you, and it would do us all some good to drink something other than wine and beer,” he offered kindly.
“No. It’s fine. I don’t mind you drinking. I just prefer not to. Just…vodka. I can’t stand the smell of vodka. People always say it has no smell, but it does, and Mum…she always reeked of it. I think that’s the only thing that might make me feel uncomfortable.”
“Ah, yer’ll be fine then. We’re more whiskey drinkers in this house,” Arran assured me.
“None of us drink like Mum did, Tesorino. I’d never subject you to that kind of drunkenness,” Rafe added.
“It’s fine,” I said again, dismissively.
“You don’t need to tiptoe around me. You’re all young guys.
I’m sure you get drunk occasionally. It’s not going to make me lose it if or when it happens, just as long as no one starts hurling their empties at me,” I tried for a laugh, but it fell flat as every face just stared at me.
“I will kill anyone who throws anything at you!” Dante roared as he got to his feet and seemed to spike with anger. “Who did that? Your Mum?”
“Easy there, Dante. I’m fine. I’m sure no one will throw anything at me now. I was just joking,” I told him in a rush, hoping to calm him down.
“You don’t joke about people hurting you!”
“I know! I’m sorry. Let’s just forget about it, okay? I’m here now and I’m safe, right?” I asked him a little nervously. I wasn’t scared of him, but it was certainly unnerving facing down six and a half feet of rage fuelled muscle.
“Absolutely fucking right. No one hurts you again,” he agreed a little more calmly.
“What’s going on?” Cal asked as he paused in the doorway with two glasses in his hands, and stared at the scene before him.
“Nothing. Dante is sitting back down and we’re all going to have a nice dinner together,” Rafe spoke up. Dante stared at me for several moments longer, then he finally sat. Only when he looked away from me to start filling a glass with wine, did I breathe again.
“Are you alright?” Cal whispered to me when he took his seat beside me again.
“Yeah. I think I upset the big guy though,” I admitted.
Cal handed me a glass of water and put the other down for himself, then Terza started bringing in huge serving dishes filled with delicious smelling food. Dio and Arran jumped up to help her, and in minutes the enormous table was dwarfed by the feast atop it.
“I don’t know where Gia is. I texted her three times to come down, but she’s not even reading the messages,” Terza told us as she set down the last dish, then sat with us. Dante handed her a glass of wine and she took a big gulp of it right away.
“I’ll go and get her,” Dio said, then he was gone.
“Let’s get started. I don’t want it to go cold. It smells amazing as always, Terza,” Rafe said, and I loved the way Terza still blushed slightly at the compliment. She had always done that, even when I was a kid and told her she was the best cook in the world.
“It’s nothing special. Just a roast,” she shrugged.
I couldn’t hold back anymore, so I reached for the closest thing to me and moaned a little when I saw it was cauliflower cheese, topped with bubbling gooey cheese, browned to perfection.
“You’re making those noises again,” Dante accused, and when I looked up, his gaze was locked on mine.
“Sorry,” I uttered, my cheeks flaming. “It just looks and smells really good. The noises just happen.”
“Ignore him, hen. Get yer dinner,” Arran told me, and when I glanced over to him, he was mouthing something, which I couldn’t quite catch, to Dante.
I had the enormous serving spoonful of cauliflower almost to my plate when Dio reappeared in the room.
“She’s not up there. Check the cameras Dante. See if she’s somewhere else in the house,” he barked urgently.
“You think she snuck out again?” I asked as I set down the dish and spoon, all food forgotten.
“She wouldn’t. I told her how much danger she would be in if she left this house unprotected,” Rafe said, but there was no hiding the panic on his face.
“Who saw her last, and where?” Arran asked.
I kept my mouth shut, since I hadn’t seen her at all since the previous night, when she told me she didn’t want me there.
I had felt bad all day for not seeking her out to talk things over, but I just didn’t feel up to it, and if I were really honest with myself, I was too scared of her telling me she hated me.
“I went up to her room this afternoon to collect the tray from lunch. She was sat on her bed, on her laptop. I told her she needed to be at dinner, and that I’d text her when it was ready. She didn’t really say anything to me though, other than a quick ‘thanks,’” Terza volunteered.
“Dante?” We all looked to Dante, who was tapping away on his phone.
“She left her room at 14.33. She was dressed up. I’ve got her going down to the gym, but then she disappears from the range of the cameras,” Dante explained.
“Can I see what she was wearing?” I asked.
Dante turned his phone towards me with a still image of Gia emerging from her room.
In it she was dressed in a short dress, strappy heals, and a long tailored coat.
Her hair was pinned up in an elaborate style and her makeup was dark and heavy.
There was no question she was dressed for a night out.
“She snuck out,” I surmised as I looked to Rafe. “She’s all dolled up. No way she did that to come and eat dinner, plus she has a coat on. She found a way to sneak out.”
“Fucking girl!” Rafe growled as he slammed his fist down on the table so hard the dishes all shook.
“I’ll talk to the guys out front, see if they saw anythin’ out of place this afternoon. Someone must a picked her up. She willnae a used public transport.” Arran stood as he spoke and started from the room.
“What if she took a cab? Do you have access to her accounts?” I asked.
“Yes. I’ll check them. Dante, see if you can find how she got out.
This house was locked up tight. No way she slipped past all of our guys.
One of them had to let her go,” Rafe ordered as he too stood and started out of the room.
“Cal, can you and Cara try to access Gia’s laptop?
Maybe she arranged to go to a party or something?
I need to know who she’s been talking to today.
We need to find her before Kozlov’s men do. ”
“On it,” Cal nodded. He grabbed my hand and stood, pulling me along with him.
“What was she thinking? We were shot at yesterday! How can she not see how much danger she’s in out there alone?” I growled as we started jogging up the stairs, still hand in hand.
“Gia isn’t the most logical thinker, not when it comes to choosing between what she wants and what is right, anyway,” Cal told me, and I fully believed that.
This was what I had meant when I told Cal I thought she needed a reality check.
She seemed to have no awareness of how the real world worked, nor of how dangerous it could be.
I just prayed she wasn’t going to get that reality check that night.
I didn’t ever want her to face that kind of initiation into the dangers of this world.