6. Alex
Alex glides into Antonio’s sports vehicle after he opens the door for her. Like him, the car is decked in black, with streaks of color (red) on the dashboard and seams of the leather interior.
“It’s so…silky,” she says. “Can a car be silky?”
Antonio’s eyes bore down at her before disappearing behind a tinted window. Even knowing him for such a short amount of time, Alex understands that response.
He closes the passenger door all the way and crosses to the driver’s side, toting his cologne with him. It smells as heavenly as it did yesterday; he could teach Nik some things.
If only the exquisite fragrance could drown out the agonizing silence. Well, technically, there’s some static on the radio, like a muffled blow dryer.
The floor mats absorb the sound of Alex’s bouncing heels. She tries to make the trip a little less painful by tapping in rhythm with the first song in the queue of her mental playlist.
Although, once they pull up to a red light, Alex realizes her feet are no longer bouncing. It takes her brain a second to catch up with her body and register the foreign hand draped across her left thigh. Foreign, yet offering a sense of security, like when Antonio stopped her from falling yesterday. It’s like someone draped one of her weighted blankets over her lap.
It shouldn’t be that comforting.
But it is. Then she remembers the other things he made her feel.
So, Alex coughs, and Antonio jerks away, never taking his eyes off the road. The entire exchange couldn’t have been more than ten seconds.
“Sorry. Not used to anyone being there,” he says, in a matter-of-fact tone.
That’s somewhat believable. There isn’t one fingerprint, strand of hair, or crispy leaf anywhere. Antonio could have told Alex he drove the car off a sales lot a few hours ago, and she’d believe that, too.
She pulls out the faux locs trapped behind her back. “Can I ask you a question?”
“I think you’re going to, regardless.”
Absolutely. “This is really all about you settling things with Ivan?”
Antonio massages the gear shifter. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I told you how much money I owed him and you didn’t even flinch.” Alex rubs her lip and sets her hand on the power window panel. Now there’s a fingerprint from her lip balm. Oops. “You don’t…want anything from me? There’s no catch?”
“The catch is you don’t work for Komarov or anyone like him ever again. You need money, then you take your ass to the bank like a normal person.”
Alex tries not to take offense to Antonio’s presumptive and somewhat privileged perspective. At its simplest explanation, her servitude to Ivan Komarov is the result of a get-rich-quick scheme gone wrong. The most thorough version—the one in which James, the only man Alex ever thought she loved, left her up a creek full of lava—means she will never be “normal” again.
Quiet circles back for the rest of the ride until Alex recognizes how close they are to Ivan’s. Since Antonio seems to be viewing the speed limits as suggestions, she warns him of an upcoming speed bump situated within two feet of its warning sign, and then the raccoons and possums that tend to end up as roadkill as a result.
Eventually, they pull up to a brick building with rusty onion domes atop the structure.
Alex has been in and out of the place at least a thousand times, but now, she feels like a trespasser. Her chest tightens and she rocks back and forth.
This is crazy. This is crazy, right?
“Look at me,” Alex hears.
Apparently, she spaced out long enough for Antonio to turn off the ignition, trek around to the passenger side, open the door, and crouch in front of her.
She turns and finds respite in glinting seas—two bodies of water at rest like the calm before a storm.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Antonio says with no hesitation.
“Why do I believe you?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
Okay, Antonio Moretti.
He stands, and Alex runs her hands over her face and gets out of the car.
She’s always found it rather blasphemous that Ivan’s “office” is in a church. He’s not religious in the slightest, and it’s not as if the people praying on the first floor cancel out the corruption in the basement.
Alex and Antonio enter through a wide corridor adorned with wooden crosses, dismal paintings of religious figures and scenes, and other bronze, antique objects before turning a corner to the nave.
There are unlit candles and white flowers everywhere, and even more paintings.
“Who needs cameras when you’ve got all these people staring at you?” Alex jokes. It definitely goes over Antonio’s head, so she points to one particular icon of a man holding an open book and a feather, as if he’s taking notes to pass judgment.
They go down a steep staircase to another door, guarded by a gray-haired man with a gun at his side.
Alex smiles. “Hey, Serg.”
“Didn’t expect to see your pretty face so soon. What brings you here?”
“We’re here to see Mr. Komarov,” Antonio announces.
“We’ll catch up later, yes?” Sergei beams at Alex as she passes him, but there isn’t even a hint of happiness while he searches Antonio.
“Watch where you put your hands, my guy.”
Alex contains her amusement. “Yeah, Serg. You might be going a little overboard.”
“You leave this here,” Sergei says, removing Antonio’s gun and stepping aside. He opens the door and promptly closes it after they step through.
“Hm. Nice friend you got there,” Antonio says, brushing himself off.
“Why’d you say it like that?”
“I didn’t say it like anything.”
“Antonio.” Alex stops walking and grabs his arm. “That was shady as hell. What, you think he’s my sugar daddy or something?”
“Doesn’t matter. Not my business.”
“Oh, as if I could just let it go now.”
Antonio shrugs and continues walking. “Well, you have to. We’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
“You really think someone whose age starts with a five would be my cup of tea?” she asks, disregarding his request.
“At this point, I have no idea what you’d…put in your cup.” Antonio mumbles the last part, though it sounds as if he didn’t mean to say anything at all.
His veiled remarks are fascinating—and great distractions from this last turn they take.
“That’s it.” Alex nods her head toward a brown wooden door.
This is it.
She trudges ahead and speaks with a guard before putting her hand on the knob and signaling Antonio over.