Chapter Thirty
Isla
The second I stepped out of the restaurant proper, the Neanderthal was breathing down my neck, issuing orders. “Across the lobby. Don’t detour, don’t stall, don’t fuck around. Elevators. Double time.”
I glanced over my shoulder, but then had to look up at him.
Taller than Nix by a couple inches, his voice deep but not loud right now, he was somehow walking both behind and beside me.
Almost at an angle, but also, he was just that large—broad shouldered, huge muscles, and so damn tall.
“Worried I’ll make a run for it in my heels?
I bet it’s killing you not to walk in front of me. ”
“You have no fucking idea.” Not making eye contact, he scanned the lobby. “On your left. Elevators.”
“I know where the elevators are.” I didn’t need his help or the added humiliation of Nix leaving me at the restaurant only to send this asshole in his place.
“I can get to the suite all by myself, thank you very much.” After Nix’s comment about the containership, and the fact that Helios was here, I figured I wasn’t giving anything away by admitting I was staying in the hotel.
I also didn’t want to leave the property in case my text had gone through to my brother.
Helios punched the call button for the furthest elevator, but he didn’t respond.
A moment later, the door slid open, and he muttered another order. “Go.”
I stepped inside, but this wasn’t an elevator I recognized. Before I could ask, Helios was swiping a card key, and the door shut.
“Secret elevators at public hotels. Aren’t you and Nix full of surprises.”
“Not as many as you, woman.”
I ignored the dig and wondered where my infuriating, green-eyed SEAL had gone. Except he wasn’t mine, and the anger at him leaving, the righteous emotion I so desperately wanted to hold on to, it was falling away with every floor we ascended.
In its place was the ugly shade of jealousy churning with the embarrassment of rejection. What if Nix had ditched me for the beautiful woman? I couldn’t even blame him if he had. She was stunning and sophisticated, and her designer outfit wasn’t a knock-off.
But sending Helios to escort my walk of shame? That I could, and would, blame Nix for.
The elevator kept climbing, so I asked, “Where are we going?”
“Where Nix told me to take you,” Helios replied with a brand of attitude I was sure he’d earned on the battlefield.
Shoving down all the rolling emotions over how this evening was turning out, I aimed my indignation at the convenient target. “Boat boy, errand boy. Seems like you’re adding to your impressive résumé.”
With shocking restraint, he said nothing as the door opened to a two-story penthouse suite that looked more like a luxury residence than something you’d find in a hotel.
Stepping off the elevator, Helios held his hand against the door and flicked his chin toward the impressive foyer and expansive views from the living area beyond.
“Wow.” I walked into the place that looked nothing and everything like Nix’s fancy mega yacht. “Is this Nix’s place?”
“No.” Tucking my clutch under his arm, then pulling out his cell, Helios stood in front of the now-closed elevator doors as his thumbs flew across the phone’s small screen.
“Always so talkative.” I walked toward the glass doors that were reflecting the opulent suite’s subdued nighttime lighting, but were also showcasing an endless expanse of the darkened ocean.
Stepping right up to the sliders, wanting to go out on the balcony, I cupped my hands against the glass.
“Where is Nix?” The hotel’s pool looked like a tiny, lit-up turquoise oasis from up here.
“Out,” Helios clipped cryptically.
I turned to look at him, and that’s when I saw my backpack.
That alarm in the restaurant, that brief moment of doubt, the reason I’d sent the text, it all came rushing back. “What’s my backpack doing here?”
Shoving his phone into his pocket, Helios looked at me.
But this time, he didn’t have disdain written all over his face. He didn’t even look at me with irritation. His expression locked down, his legs braced a foot apart, he crossed his arms, and his entire demeanor turned deadly. “Start talking.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning and my spaghetti-strapped dress raked across my body like tiny razors of judgment.
“About?” The private elevator, this suite, this scenario, the warfighter in front of me—all of it was a mistake, and it was me who was judging.
I was judging myself. My complete stupidity.
“Who the fuck are you?” Helios demanded.
I recited the name on my expired passport. “Isla Sennan.”
“Who was the sniper in France?”
“I didn’t see his face.” That day.
“I didn’t say it was a man.”
I didn’t have any room to negotiate. Too many floors up, no way down that wasn’t past him, his complete change in disposition that was more than menacing, I didn’t lie. “I heard his voice.”
Fast and lethal and full of unhinged anger, Helios barked his accusation at me. “You fucking moved toward him.”
My mouth opened, and I fell into the trap before I even realized what was happening. “You shot at him!” Shit, shit, SHIT.
“You trespassed.”
So rattled, too damn rattled, I made the mistake Wolf had accused me of not thirty-six hours ago.
I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings.
And I did not pay attention to the details.
I didn’t ask about the elevator before I stepped on.
I didn’t get suspicious when he didn’t react to me mentioning I could get myself to my suite, and I didn’t case the living area before I walked right to the glass and looked out like an awe-struck child.
If I had, I would’ve seen this for what it was.
A second kidnapping, in plain sight.
I also would’ve seen what was and what wasn’t in this suite.
A laptop on the counter.
A suit jacket draped over a dining chair.
A pair of combat boots, neatly placed just inside the hallway off the foyer.
The hint of vetiver that wasn’t only coming from the cologne on my wrist.
This penthouse was definitely currently inhabited by Nix. But same as his yacht, same as the few sparse items strategically placed there, I stared at the boots, at the few sparse items in a Four Seasons penthouse, and I knew. This was all a facade.
The memory of his voice from a month ago came flooding back.
“Danner MEBs. Marine Expeditionary Boots.”
The same combat boots he’d told me to stand on before ordering me to put my arms around his neck and follow his lead. Then he’d pulled me against his chest and pretended to protect me.
Everything all those weeks ago, everything tonight, everything he did, was a calculated act.
Throwing me over his shoulder when a firefight had broken out, steadying me after a helicopter ride, holding me secure as a violent storm slammed into his boat—all of it had been contrived. And I’d fallen for it because in a moment of weakness on that yacht, I’d been scared.
Except I hadn’t been afraid of the pitching yacht. I hadn’t even been afraid of the taciturn former SEAL who’d kidnapped me and held me captive.
I’d been afraid of the storm.
The kind of storm a traumatized young girl never forgets.
Mentally visualizing a bright sunny day instead of a pitch-black night with a dangerous storm I couldn’t escape, I inhaled a lungful of clean air. Then I exhaled through a choking memory of icy ocean water as I stared at the threat standing in front of me, and it came without restraint.
I am strong. I am safe.
My mantra.
Born from suffocating fear on the worst day of my life, it’d invaded my psyche and bled from my lips in a hoarse shout so soul shattering it changed me.
No one had heard it over the crashing waves, and I’d paid for those six words.
Weak, spiraling, near death—God, had I’d paid for them.
But same as it had back then, same as it was chanting through my mind now, it had its own heartbeat.
I am strong. I am safe.
This warfighter in front of me was nothing.
A SEAL who’d kidnapped me again was nothing.
I was strong.
I had the heartbeat of a mantra born from a thousand tested souls that’d survived the ocean before me, and I was not afraid. Not of the storm, not of this penthouse, and not of the man who’d once again laid a trap.
I looked at Helios with my own warrior mask. “You’re not holding me here.”
Without so much as making a whisper of a sound, he moved toward the couch, picked up my backpack, and slung it over his shoulder. Then he shoved my small clutch into one of the cargo pockets on his pants.
Keeping his eyes on me, he retreated to the elevator and calmly pressed the call button.
Then he stepped back.
The doors slid open, and the message was clear.
I could leave—but I wasn’t taking my stuff with me.
Not stuff. Everything I owned.
My clothes, my shoes, my passport. The cell phone, money, and suite card key Wolf had given me. And my journal. Ten years’ worth of living life scattered over three hundred pages of shared humanity.
In that moment, I didn’t know who I was most angry with—Nix, Helios, or myself. Not that it mattered.
I walked onto the elevator.