Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Present day…
Atlas kept one arm wrapped around Lily as they left the hospital. As she’d expected, reporters waited like the hungry predators that they were.
But it wasn’t just reporters outside. Hospital guards. Cops. Some of Atlas’s own security personnel.
The sea of faces passed Lily in a blur. Her mind was spinning, her chest aching, but she made sure to keep her game face on. Long ago, she’d learned to wear that face. The wrong emotion, the wrong expression could lead to chaos.
She was too good to make amateur mistakes.
So why did you strip in front of Atlas? Why are you riding off into the darkness with him right now without a single protest?
Her chest felt hollow when she thought of Benedict Swain. The detective was dead. Not like he could have survived those flames. Soon enough, the wreckage of the little cabin in the woods would be searched. His remains unearthed. There would be more grieving. A funeral.
She’d always hated funerals. Ever since she discovered how much her mother enjoyed them. Black had been Magnolia’s favorite color, and she looked extra fragile when she had tear tracks on her cheeks.
Desmond stood at attention near the rear of the limo. His gaze swept the crowd, and she knew he was searching for threats. Desmond Yoruba had been working with Atlas for years. Actually, they’d been friends long before Desmond had become Atlas’s head of security. They’d met at college.
Desmond, a Nigerian immigrant. A man who’d been forced to be a child soldier and see traumas no one should face before his family had been able to rescue him, and they’d fled to the US.
Desmond had grown up to be determined, deadly, and to be the right hand of one of the most powerful billionaires in the world.
A billionaire who just happened to be the son of a serial killer. And a billionaire who’d been kidnapped and nearly murdered that night.
Only for his head of security to sweep in with a brigade of armed personnel. She did wonder, if Desmond and those armed guards had found Atlas’s attacker in that cabin, what would they have done?
Killed him on the spot.
“How do you know Lily Gallo?” A desperate shout from a nearby reporter. “Atlas, Atlas! Are you romantically involved with Lily Gallo?”
No, not yet. Though they had seen each other semi-nude so…
“Were you together when you were taken?”
No, I was just doing my due diligence and surveilling him. I saw the attack from a distance and ran to help.
“What do you have to say to the man who abducted you?”
The questions fired from the crowd.
She didn’t think that Atlas was going to stop and respond. What would be the point of that? But…
Just as they reached the open door of the limo…
Atlas paused.
She saw Desmond shake his head in a short, negative gesture. A clear warning to Atlas. But Atlas chose to ignore the warning.
“I do have a message to deliver to that piece of shit,” Atlas announced.
Oh, no.
“You had your shot at me,” Atlas said, voice clear, unflinching. No, more than that, threatening. “Now it’s my turn.”
She glanced back at him.
A cold, dangerous smile curved his lips. His dimples flashed, but instead of reassuring her, those dimples sent a shiver down her spine. The truth was, when Lily saw those dimples, she thought of a shark. Weird but…
By the time you saw a shark’s teeth coming at you, it was far too late to flee.
By the time you saw Atlas’s dimples…
The danger is already right in front of you.
“Do you believe your attacker will come at you again? Is that what you’re saying?” The words fired from a redhead in a black suit.
“What does Lily Gallo have to do with your attack?” A hard question from a man in jeans and a blue polo.
Atlas had his hand on the curve of Lily’s back. The spotlight was dead on them. She’d always hated the spotlight. And being trapped in a barrage of reporters was truly a scene straight from her nightmares.
There had been another moment in her life far too much like this one. When she’d left the hospital after her poisoning, after seven days of clinging to life, of fighting, only to finally walk out into the world again…
A frenzied swarm of reporters had been waiting for her. Their questions had blasted at her.
“Lily Gallo! Lily Gallo! What’s it like to know your mother nearly killed you?”
“Lily! Is it true that your mother is a serial killer?”
“Can you ever forgive your mother?”
The voices from the past blurred with the shouted questions of the present. You weren’t supposed to have to ever relive the same hell twice, but this certainly felt like the same nightmare to her in that instant.
Her heart raced, her breaths came too fast, and—enough.
She didn’t have to answer their questions.
This wasn’t her press party. Atlas had been the target.
Atlas had also been the one to get his limo parked out front when he could have gotten the limo brought to the rear of the hospital.
The man had donated a wing to the hospital, she knew he could have gotten the administrators to help him make a quiet exit.
But, no, he’d wanted this scene. He liked the spotlight. She hated it.
He’d also deliberately sought the attention of the reporters because Atlas had wanted to issue a public challenge to his attacker. A very bold and dangerous move.
This was his show, not hers, so she shot forward and ducked into the car. Ducked, dove, whatever. She got inside, and, rather surprisingly to her, once she leapt in, Atlas followed.
“About damn time,” Desmond groused. He slammed the door shut.
She’d thought Desmond might get in the rear of the limo with them, but, as if the driver had just been waiting for Atlas to get inside that vehicle…
The limo immediately pulled away.
“You turned to ice in front of the reporters. Did the scene bring back too many memories?”
She perched on the leather seat. A mini-bar waited in the back of the limo. Soft lighting trailed from the limo’s floor and near the ceiling. At least a dozen people could easily have reclined in the rear of the limo.
But it wasn’t a dozen people. It was just her. Just Atlas.
He lounged in the seat right beside her. Taking up way too much space. His leg brushed against hers, and the move should have annoyed her, but, oddly enough, it didn’t. He felt strangely warm. His crisp, masculine scent teased her nose. And, as before, she felt drawn to him.
Why?
Was it because of the darkness she carried? Was she just responding to someone who might be…
Just like me?
Oh, great. Her mother would be laughing herself silly. Saying that Lily was truly after a soulmate that she would never find.
Atlas spoke slowly, thoughtfully, his deep voice rumbling and seeming to sink into her very skin, “After you were poisoned, you came out of the hospital, terrified, far too thin, with heavy shadows beneath your eyes and skin pale as a ghost. The reporters filmed every second of that hell for you.” His arm stretched out on the top of the seat. “What were you then, nineteen? Twenty?”
Her breath shuddered out. She suspected he knew the answer, but she still replied, “I was eighteen.” Just old enough that the reporters had thought they didn’t need to go as easily on her. Her story was too sensational for easy. “I’m surprised you are aware of what happened that day.”
“I looked for the videos. I watched them. I watched you.”
“After I tried to get interviews with you?” Again, he was being thorough.
“Sure.” A casual answer. But…one that she feared held the hint of a lie. But, why would he have watched the videos about her before she’d ever approached him?
She looked back through the window on the right. The reporters were still filming them. Some just with their personal phones. Others with their camera crews because Atlas was big business. People like Atlas weren’t supposed to be taken by killers.
Then again, people like Atlas weren’t supposed to threaten killers in front of a hungry press, either. “Was that wise, do you think?” Lily tucked a lock of hair behind her left ear.
“Finding old videos of you? Watching them on loop? Probably not. However, those videos told me a lot about you. Like when you tuck hair behind your left ear, you feel threatened. You make that move when you’re trying to buy yourself a beat of time.”
Lily stilled. “I didn’t realize you were a behavioral expert.”
“I’m not. I am a Lily expert.” He shifted position, moving his arm from the top of the seat. “Should we discuss our ground rules?”
The limo was driving down the street. It swept past the streetlights.
Past the heavy buildings of downtown Dallas.
A massive city. Sprawling. Over 1.3 million residents.
The city teemed with life at every possible hour.
So they weren’t sweeping down deserted roads.
Cars and people were everywhere. Vehicles buzzing past.
Yet that world seemed incredibly distant. She and Atlas were secluded away from everyone else. Maybe that was good. Maybe that was bad. Lily cleared her throat. “Before we get to rules, I need to stop by my rental house and pick up my personal belongings.”
“Desmond is on the case. He’ll have everything you need brought to my house.”
Her brows climbed. “I haven’t told Desmond where I was staying.”
“You didn’t need to tell him. I did it.”
She nodded. “I get it. Fine. You’re the all-knowing Oz. You dug into my life. Wanted to learn everything about me because…” But she stopped.
His expression was shadowed in the dim lighting that filled the exterior of the limo. “Please, do continue. Don’t leave me in suspense.”
“You were trying to decide what sort of threat I would be to you. So you tried to learn my weaknesses. Probably my strengths, too. Got to know those, don’t you? The better to defend against them.”
“Lily, Lily, Lily. You act as if we are enemies.” A pause. “Is that what we are? Do you always get naked with your enemies?”