Epilogue
Georgia
The plane flight to London is smooth. The stopover in Dubai is normal, but with Rafael watching me, doing anything except boarding the next flight proves impossible. That London is the last place I want to be is not something I can tell anyone with links to the CNC Fraternity.
I should get away from him. After what happened in Australia, I have zero need for a male presence, least not for sexual reasons.
Except he is so damn fine. With that gray T-shirt defining his chest muscles and stretching over his biceps, sitting next to him and not staring at his arm is difficult whenever he uses his phone or picks up a drink.
Maybe I can recover. I want to get back to normal me. I do.
“Georgia, the car is here.”
Normal. Before the touch of a man’s hand made my heart race for all the wrong reasons.
“Oh?” I start back into reality, where I’m standing at the top of five mildewed stone stairs that lead down to the pavement outside a doctor who just coaxed me into saying…things. A bronze Aphrodite sits beside my shoulder. So British.
I wince, remembering myself trotting out descriptions of what those two men did to me…over and over. Apparently, he has been approved by the fraternity, so it is okay, according to them. If not according to me.
“Georgia?” Rafael is before me, and he’s touched my elbow. I stiffen and look at his offending fingers, but he only continues to touch me.
“Yes? Do you think you could unhand me?”
“Unhand?” he scoffs. “No, because you told me some touching was considered good by that doctor. You said that a few minutes ago. Remember?”
Irritated at him pointing that out, I move my arm away then descend the steps and eye the people and cars in the street.
All of them seem to have a purpose to their presence in this weather-dulled city that’s stuffed with tall buildings, monuments to history, pigeons, shops, and more history.
Opposite, a park reigns over the street like a long-lost paradise, as out of place as a dinosaur.
The greenery entices—a haven of peace compared to my surroundings.
Two stone lions lie on plinths to either side of the beginnings of a path that winds through the shadows beneath the flourishing oaks.
So very British.
It’s autumn, and the rainclouds above us, in the dull sky, are thinking about watering our heads.
“Would you like to walk in the park across the road before we return to your rooms?” Rafael asks, politely.
My rooms, meaning those at the hotel where even the staff seem paid by the fraternity. As if.
I need to start determining my own destiny.
“Sure.”
So I spend the next ten minutes strolling with my Latino guard with the handsome face, drop-dead body, and drop-dead skills with guns, while scheming how to grab a passing taxi and abscond. I fear his reaction time will make that impossible. Scaling down the side of my hotel is probably harder.
When we emerge on the other side of the park, I’ve flip-flopped and decided to try the hijack a taxi or Uber option because I have no cash or cards or phone, when a shiny black Porsche glides up beside us and stops. In the bus stop designated area. Only a Porsche driver would do that.
The passenger window slides down and the driver leans across.
“Get in, Georgia. You’ve got men following you with bad intentions.”
“What?” I’m zeroing in on his identity even as Rafael grabs my sleeve and drags me back. Fuck me, it’s him?
“Who is this?” Rafael slips his hand under his jacket, ready to draw a weapon.
“I’m Alden.”
I wrench my sleeve free and lean in Alden’s window. “You asshole! He’s lying, Rafe.” A random stupid thought intrudes: Why did I call him Rafe? I never do that.
“About his name?”
Shit, I’ve confused Rafael. I start to growl an explanation, but he slaps his hand over my mouth and pulls me back, again. “Let’s walk calmly a—”
Lunging further over the seat and accidentally gunning the engine, Alden interjects, “I’m trying to save you! Get the fuck in before they get here.” He shoves open the passenger door.
Two men are running in our direction from the park. Joggers? No. They’re in suits. Twenty yards ahead, a man threads, with a hurried stride, past a woman with a pram.
“In!” Alden repeats. “Both of you.”
“We’ve no back-up, and there’s a van coming.” Rafael checks our front, back, and the park. “Whoever they are, choose fast. Them or him.” He releases me.
I got this.
“Him. You, back. Me, front.” Before he can object, I glide into the front passenger seat and slam the door. Alden shoots me a measuring look, barely waits for the rear door to shut, and accelerates into the stream of traffic.
Curses are thrown in our wake by the men chasing us.
I put my hand into my jacket pocket and carefully position my fingers around the handle of the wrapped object. The doctor had a few good possibles. Thankfully, my missing finger is on my left hand.
Meticulous, as usual, Rafael fastens his safety belt before he leans forward between the seats. “Explain what just happened.”
Alden slows to a stop at a traffic light, glances at me, at Rafael. “I’m Alden, brother of the man who sent some killers after Georgia, a month ago.”
A month? Was it a whole month? My gut churns and claws at itself. Killers? If they’d only been killers, I would be under the ground by now.
“I don’t believe you.” I slip the point of the scalpel into his side, feel it penetrate the cloth of his shirt as if it were made of butter, see him wince. I smile at the blossoming of blood on the ivory-colored cloth. “Why are you doing this?”
“I just rescued you, and you cut me?”
Rafael is frowning. I ignore him.
“Your family sent me to be tortured by the most evil of men. They’re dead now. Tell me why I shouldn’t make you dead too.”
“I’m not my brother. I don’t kill women who say no to me.”
He thinks that is why Joseph tried to dispose of me. He doesn’t know. Or he is still lying.
“If you knew your brother is willing to murder over something so trivial, why didn’t you go to the cops? Granted I did kick him in the balls.”
“Ouch,” Rafaels says, maybe just to remind us both he’s also in the car.
He laughs, takes a whole long-ass minute to run his gaze from my breasts down to my legs.
I swallow my irritation at what that does to me, and a memory sweeps in…
Lying on my stomach and waking in his bed to his gray eyes looking down at me while he inspects my body.
“All of that, you’ll have to wait to hear, but if you shoot me or stab me, you’ll never find out why.”
The last month of rape and cruelty crashes in. My head throbs in time with the changing lights. I switch the scalpel to his neck, snarling, “Lost something on the floor? Light’s green.”
He grimaces and presses the accelerator. The scalpel draws a red line on his neck, and he barely misses an old lady leaving the crossing.
Rafael whips his arm around to my front and pulls me into the headrest, hard. He’s pinned my scalpel-bearing hand to the seat.
He’s inches away, mouth tight, expressionless. “Be still, Georgia. Let go of that knife. Keep driving, Alden.”
“Of course.” Alden smiles. “Now the fun begins.”
I wriggle, but his arm is iron, locking me into place.
“This isn’t for you, mister. It’s for us.” Rafael’s grip crushes my wrist, and I hiss at the pain then open my fingers.
“Why? Why are you helping him?”
“I’m not. We are in this car. You’re endangering everyone. He’s under control so there will be no more cutting him. Understood?”
I heave in a shaky breath, swallow, and feel his taut muscle against my throat. “Okay.”
“Good. Thank you. Now behave.” He releases me.
Behave. How fucking dare he say that. Takes me a while to really calm down and realize he is right. If I’m to knife Alden, I’ll do it later.
Without fuss, as if it’s nothing, I fleetingly touch my throat where his arm rested. I’m not turned on. I’m not. That would be so fucking stupid.
If only my clit wasn’t broadcasting, liar.
Whatever, I tell it back. And now I’m fucking crazy. I ease my thighs apart and look out the window.
“No one is following us, as far as I can tell,” Rafael says.
I shrug one shoulder. “I knew that.”
“You didn’t.”
I open my mouth to snap something smartass but choose not to.
There is a strange, tense undercurrent to this exchange. I’m annoyed but now it has nothing to do with Alden. Though he is giving me puzzled glances.
It’s five or six minutes of no conversation or threats before I ask the obvious. “Where are we going?”
“A house in the countryside.”
I can’t help worrying, but at least I have Rafael back there, waiting like a psychotic superhero to leap into action. The car purrs onward. It’s when we’re an hour outside London, having turned onto a small leafy lane, that his advice proves to be prophetic.
A man in a green balaclava steps from the right hedgerow and flips out a strip of spikes, dashes backward. The Porsche runs over it, pops its tires, and slews into a road-grinding zigzag then a screeching, ferocious spin that slams me into the side pillion.
Pain explodes sparks in my head. Then the world goes fuzzy.
Rafael
Multiple air bags inflate instantly, filling the interior as we shudder to a halt in dust and flying plant stalks.
Trusting this Alden is not something I was ready to do, especially with Georgia coming out of her timid shell and jabbing him with what is possibly a scalpel. So, I am ready for something to happen.
Not that the car having its tires retired is on my cards, but hey, I’m ready. The gun I picked up at the doctor’s surgery is under my hand—the weapon comes courtesy of the fraternity and that ASS agency. They don’t trust anyone either, even if they are spread thin.
With an inch of air to spare between me and the metal, and the side airbag deploying, I escaped being concussed as we carved through the hedgerow and into the adjoining field.
After pushing back the airbag, I lever and shoulder open the side door by brute force, watch Alden crawl out into the churned-up dirt.