Chapter 12 Massimo #2
“Nothing I can’t handle,” she said quickly, and then looked around surreptitiously.
I found myself fighting a grin. She was, for lack of a better word . . . adorable. From an avenging angel last night to this sweet and bright-eyed girl this morning. How could such duality live inside one shell?
“Can you look something up for me?” she asked, and passed me the slip of paper she’d been writing on.
“What’s this?” I stared down at her, perplexed.
“The name of the company that pays all the bills for Hallow Hall,” she supplied.
She waited for me to respond, and when I failed, she huffed.
“They have to be the ones involved in all of it. They aren’t making money off the patient fees here.
Some of the patients aren’t even paying to be here, like me. They’re making money another way.”
“And what do you want me to do about it?” I asked, reading the name on the paper.
Centrium Group.
She nearly said something, then paused.
“I—I don’t know,” she admitted, her eyebrows drawing together. “I thought you could find something out about them. I’ve never managed to get on the internet here, so I can’t really research anything . . .”
“And if you find out something about them, what are you going to do about it? Go out there and try to bring them down? Tell the police? Expose them to a reporter?” I asked, pushing the paper back across the desk to Katarina.
She stared at me defiantly. “Why not? They can’t be allowed to continue. They are the ones who profit off all of it. What happened to Mira is on them, too.”
I nodded simply. “Sure, it is, but you don’t know who these people are. They could be Mafia. You can’t take them on.”
“You could,” she challenged.
A chuckle left me at her confident words. “Maybe, but I won’t.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
Something stuck in my throat at her look.
It was fearless. It was strong. Katarina had a moral outrage that I rarely witnessed in my world.
She was a good person, through and through.
She’d seen awful things happen, and she wanted to do something about it, despite what it might cost her.
If I wasn’t careful, that look on her face would enchant me into promising to be her white knight, and that wasn’t a role I was qualified to play.
I could be her grim reaper, but never her guardian angel.
After all, I’d never managed to keep my mother safe, so what chance did I have to save anyone else?
“Because I don’t care. I’m not being paid to care,” I said.
She flinched at my caustic tone. It was better she understood who I was now than hide it.
I loomed over the desk and got in her face. She was so lovely with her chin high and eyes blazing, spoiling for a fight.
“I’m not your hero, Katarina, you should understand that now. Centrium, Pavol, and Benedict . . . I don’t care about any of them, except for doing the job I’ve been employed to do. I don’t care about the bad guys. I am one of them.”
A vein pulsed in her throat, the only sign that she was scared. Scared of me. It was something I was used to, of course. It was better that way. It kept things clean.
“Come into the office,” I instructed firmly, deciding to end this pointless conversation. I strode around the back of the desk and into the small private office behind it. Inside, I took the tape and painkillers out of my pocket and set them on the table, then leaned a hip on the desk.
Katarina shuffled in slowly, slightly bent over in a way that clearly pained her less.
“Do a better job of hiding your injury,” I muttered.
She glowered at me. “Well, I heard the police already ruled it a suicide, so I guess I’m off the hook.”
“Not with Pavol and Benedict. They know something went down, they just don’t know what, and they can’t afford to have detectives in here poking around.”
She nodded and then winced again.
“Close the door and lose the T-shirt,” I demanded.
She blinked at me, pink immediately tinting her cheeks. “Here? Anyone could walk by.”
“That’s why we’re inside the office. Take your shirt off now.”
She sighed heavily. “You sure get off on ordering people around.” She held herself away from me, probably upset that I hadn’t offered to help her with her little investigative task.
“And you’re sure argumentative with someone you just found out is a stone-cold killer mere hours ago.”
She thought that one over for a moment, her hands on the hem of her T-shirt.
“Technically, I was the stone-cold killer last night, so”—she eyed me up and down— “watch yourself, Lucifer.”
That pulled a chuckle from me. How the fuck she managed to keep her wit and dark humor in this place was a miracle in itself. I’d been right that morning when I’d first glimpsed her outside in the snow. She was special.
And now, she was mine.
Then her shirt was coming off, and I was staring at the work of art that was her torso.
Yes, I’d been right, she was too thin, frail even, but that would be easily remedied when we got out of here.
The curve of her waist and line of her spine were beautiful.
Elegant in a way that no one should be, standing there in white cotton track pants, frayed as hell, and a graying bralette that had definitely seen better days.
None of it distracted from her, however.
Well, that wasn’t true. One thing did. Mottled purple and blue bruises along her rib cage.
Vargas. That fucker. If he wasn’t already burning in hell, I’d bring him back just to kill him more slowly. He’d gotten off too lightly.
“Come here.” I nodded to the spot just before me.
She wrapped her arms across her chest, even though it had to hurt, and came to stand before me. A pink blush made its way down her neck. She looked every inch her age just then. Young and inexperienced and painfully unworldly.
I took her chin between my fingers and raised it so her gaze hit mine.
“You’re hurt, and I’m going to tape up your ribs to support them a little. Okay?”
She nodded and slowly lowered her arms.
I turned her slightly and checked the damage on her rib cage clinically. Then I started to tape.
“You’ve done this before? Do you have medical training?”
I shook my head. “Nope, I just had to do it to myself and my guys in all kinds of situations when there was no doctor for a hundred miles.”
She pondered that for a moment. “Military?”
I gave her a swift nod.
“Army?” she pushed.
I shrugged. “For a while, then the Col Moschin.”
“Is that where you learned it?”
I raised an eyebrow at her while tearing another piece of tape from the roll.
“To . . . kill,” she dropped to a whisper.
“No. I was born with that skill. A God-given talent,” I murmured, and smoothed the tape over her ribs.
“Well, at least you have one.” She was staring off at the wall, her eyes hazy and distant.
“Everyone has one.”
She shook her head slowly. “I think my only one so far is my ability to take a punch.” She sighed.
“Says the girl with angels in her head.” I straightened up and put my hands on her waist once I was done wrapping her ribs. Her skin was pebbled with gooseflesh, and my hands were warm.
She started at first, but I held her firmly until she relaxed again.
“Is that a nice way of saying crazy?” She glanced up at me, dark-blue eyes steady and unflinching.
She might think I’m a devil, but she wasn’t afraid of staring me down.
I liked that. I liked that a lot. I didn’t meet many people with gumption anymore. Usually they cried and begged for their lives, abandoning all dignity in the end.
I had a feeling that Katarina Dmitrova didn’t beg easily. Last night and pleading for her life had been an exception, perhaps the only one she was willing to make, and even then, she’d quickly switched to proposing a deal.
Strength filled that slender spine, and determination angled her chin at me.
No, she didn’t beg for just anyone . . .
But she’d beg for me.
“I thought that was unique,” I reminded her of her words the other day.
She nodded and then seemed to remember something. “You said you’d met someone like me. Who was it?”
She had grown used to my hands on her bare waist, so now I circled my thumbs. She swayed closer to me. The girl was touch-starved. I knew how she felt. I’d spent long touchless years in the Special Forces. It was a particular kind of loneliness.
I hesitated. Sharing wasn’t something I was inclined to do with anyone, and yet, I could tell she needed something from me. A concession.
“My mother,” I admitted. I didn’t want to lie to her. There was something refreshingly honest about every interaction I’d had with this woman. I’d seen her dark parts, and she’d seen mine. I wasn’t changing that now.
“She heard angels speaking?” Katarina asked.
I nodded. “In the end, before they sent her away, and after, too, I guess, going by the journal they sent me of her last days.”
Katarina’s breath hitched. “She died?”
I nodded and slid my hands slowly up her torso. “She died, her head full of angels, alone, far away from the boy who loved her, without a single person to put her favorite snowdrops in her hair when she was laid to rest. But that’s not what’s going to happen to you, little stray.”
Her breath caught. “It’s not?”
I passed my hands slowly over the cups of her worn cotton bralette, and her nipples poked against my fingers, hard and hungry.
I shook my head. “No. It’s not. I won’t let it. I take care of my belongings, and now that includes you.”
“I—” She took a deep breath as I rubbed the backs of my fingers insistently over her nipples.
“I’m not a possession. I don’t belong to anyone, including myself.
I’m . . . I don’t know what I am anymore.
” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “The truth is . . . I’m nothing. ” Her words were so desolate.
I slid my hands up her chest, leaving her pert breasts and passing her pounding heart. I wrapped them around her neck, as fragile as a stalk, and cupped the underside of her jaw. Her face fit in my palms like I’d been designed to hold her, just like this.
“You’re not nothing. Not to me,” I told her. My tone offered no room for disagreement. “To me . . . you’re mine . . . just like you agreed to be.”
The phone rang on the desk beside us, the sound jarring after the quiet intimacy we’d just experienced.
Katarina pulled her gaze from mine and picked it up.
“Hallow Hall Institute,” she said quickly into the receiver. She turned away from me to write something down.
“I’ll make sure Dr. Blackwood gets the message.”
She hung up and gazed at the phone longingly.
“Why don’t you call the cops?” The question had been nagging at me. She claimed not to be crazy, but her presence here didn’t quite make sense. Why hadn’t she escaped already?
She looked at me.
“If those men deserve to die, if they’re hurting the patients here . . . why don’t you call the cops? They leave you alone, unattended in this office, like they trust that you won’t.”
“I tried once, in the beginning, but they know that I won’t try that again. I can’t.”
She said it so certainly, I knew they had to have some kind of leverage over her.
I thought for a moment.
“Who are they threatening?”
She blew out a long breath, and her shoulders sagged.
“My mother. They’re threatening my mother.”
Of course. Was there anyone else that a person would never dare risk?
“What’s her name?” I heard myself ask.
“Elena Dmitrova.” She glanced over my shoulder. “Shit. Sister Vera’s coming. You need to get out of here. She won’t like me speaking to you.” She yanked her T-shirt over her head, presenting her back to the door.
With a nod, I stepped out of the office and met the nun in the hallway.
“Father Lucciano!” Sister Vera said, and smiled coyly at me.
But my mind was a million miles away. So, Katarina’s mother was still alive? And yet, she remained here . . . in hell? Why didn’t her mother help?
“I’ve been searching all over for you. Father Benedict needs to see you.”
Benedict? It would be interesting to see how he was feeling the day after his boss had killed himself. Entertaining, at least.
“Very well, Sister. I’ll go to him right now.”