Chapter 46
FOUR MONTHS LATER
ETHAN
Blinding light reflected off the windshield of Giovanni Abramo’s car when it parked beside the hangar, momentarily flashing in my eyes, aggravating me. I’d been fighting a headache since accepting this terrible job.
The thirty-year-old Italian man with curly dark hair stepped out of the car and went to the trunk to fish out an enormous bag that looked like it weighed as much as he did.
I wound up doing the work, as I knew I would. Giovanni was used to being waited on, and he only spoke Italian. All other languages were inferior and beneath the Abramo family.
“I take it you’re Nathan?” Giovanni asked, looking up to meet my eyes that were almost a foot above his.
I’d been told my Italian was almost flawless. “Yes. Pleased to meet you.”
“I’m glad you were available. My last guy got sick, and I thought I was going to have to cancel. I’ve been planning this trip for months.”
Unbeknownst to Giovanni, his bodyguard had come down with a horrible case of intentional drugging. I’d decided my character of ‘Nathan’ for this assignment would lack any personality and be all business. “I’d like to speak with the crew and inspect the plane.”
Giovanni gestured that direction, as if saying, “After you.”
Exterior inspection revealed nothing abnormal, but I didn’t find that surprising. Not too many people cared about Giovanni. His father Vitale was the one who garnered the most attention.
There was a crew of three attached to the jet, two men and a woman, all dressed in matching black attire. I evaluated the pilots, one young and one older. The flight attendant was in her late twenties, maybe thirty. Brunette. Utterly gorgeous, but they usually were on these private crews.
Sometimes they were simply in-flight, high-class hookers.
“I need to examine the interior,” I said to her.
Giovanni smirked. “None of them speak Italian. I believe Olivia is American.”
I repeated in English, and she blinked a pair of emerald green eyes at me. For a second, I saw a flash in them, an emotion I wasn’t expecting. Annoyance. Then, it was gone.
“All right, this way.” Her voice was lyrical and pleasing.
Once inside the plane, my head was an inch from the ceiling. She followed me and remained in the aisle while I inspected the seats and lavatory, watching me, curious.
“There’s nothing on board you need to worry about,” she said.
“Is that right?” I came closer, needing to make it past her to view the cockpit and galley.
“Yes. It’s my job to know what happens on my plane.”
Her plane? Pretty territorial, but she took pride in her work, and I could respect that.
When she didn’t step out of my way, it forced me to examine her closer.
In a word, she was elegant. Long lashes rimming intelligent eyes.
She didn’t find my size intimidating. In fact, she didn’t seem to find me intimidating at all.
I was so very tired of doing this, I must be slipping. I felt like I’d been undercover my whole goddamn life. I’d sworn that job in Croatia would be my last. Juric, or whatever that man’s name had truly been . . . it was supposed to end with his death.
Now I was standing on a plane that was gearing up for South Africa, a fake passport in my pocket, staring at a woman who the real person inside me thought was profoundly beautiful. Not that I was allowed to have those kinds of thoughts.
It didn’t matter, anyway—she was looking back at me like I was an asshole. That was what I’d seen earlier in her eyes, and she wasn’t wrong.
“I need to look in the galley and cockpit,” I said, prompting her to move out of my way.
She continued to silently watch me as I did this, making it awkward, and I felt the strange desire to fill the silence.
“How long have you been the attendant for the Abramo family?”
Her jaw set. “I’ve been part of the crew for a month. Are you about finished?”
“Yeah, but I need the keys for the galley—”
She was gone, like she couldn’t stand to be around me another moment. I followed her down the stairs to where Giovanni waited with a smile.
“All clear,” I said in Italian. If the galley was locked, it was secure.
“Good. I’m sure she’s anxious to get pre-flight checks done.”
I paused. “You mean the pilots.”
“Yes.” The Italian took a breath, and then his smile widened into a grin. “You do realize that she’s the captain, right?”
Fuck me. No, I hadn’t.
I was an asshole, and a sexist one to boot. My English was hurried when my gaze found her green eyes. “Please forgive me for making a sexist assumption.”
She gave me a tight, polite smile. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first. Female pilots are uncommon.”
The older man passed her a clipboard, and she studied it like I ceased to exist.
A displeased look crossed Giovanni’s face as he looked at the screen of his phone, and he pocketed it in a huff.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“It’s fine.” It seemed like the Italian had more to say, and it came out quieter. “My father wants me to postpone.”
“Why?”
“My ridiculous brother. He’s probably holed up somewhere, buried under a pile of women, but because my father doesn’t know where Constantine is, he’s paranoid. Totally convinced something’s wrong.”
Something was wrong.
Constantine wasn’t buried under a pile of women. For a while, he’d been buried under a pile of rubble that used to be a house back in Germany, with one of my bullets in him. That moment replayed in my head. Kara Hayward slung over my shoulder, warning me about the man on my six.
What the hell had Constantine Abramo been doing there?
I was sure none of the memory showed on my face. I’d always been a spectacular actor, and my control over my emotions was absolute.
“Fuck him,” Giovanni said. “He’s not screwing this up for me.”
He turned and scurried up the staircase into the plane.
I took a last look at the exterior of the metal container I’d be locked in for the next sixteen hours. I could walk away, leave it all behind, but then good people might die. People like Jason and Shawn Dunn.
Olivia must have thought I was reexamining the plane, and she approached me hesitantly. The red silk scarf decorating her neck was a reminder I didn’t want of the man’s throat I’d slit in Trier. The one who had stabbed me and thankfully missed a kidney.
“I told you, there’s nothing on board you need to worry about,” she said. Her gaze went up to mine as her voice fell to a hush. “I have a feeling the most dangerous thing might be standing in front of me.”
She was much too smart for her own good. It left me with no choice but to put one foot in front of the other and scale the steps that would lead me into the belly of the plane.
The belly of her plane, I reminded myself.