Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
It took a moment for my rattled brain to understand what was happening.
One second, I was staring up into Luka’s dark eyes, trying not to lose myself in the smoldering heat of them, and the next, I couldn’t focus.
The concussive blast left me confused and disoriented as I blinked rapidly, staring up at the twilight sky, flat on my back again in the grass.
“Get up,” Luka commanded, roughly pulling at my arms. “Come on.”
My fight with him was forgotten. Now, we were in this together. I clung to him as I clambered to my feet and then used his arms for balance as I tugged off my heels.
“Good call,” he muttered before grabbing my hand and dragging me along behind him. Still trying to get my bearings after that blast, I followed his lead, trusting him to get us out of here alive.
All around us, people were screaming and running. Mostly staff, judging by the uniforms. The smoke billowing out of the building and rolling toward the dark sky helped fill in the gaps. A bomb had detonated inside the palace. With my family. And his.
“My sister! My brother!” I tugged at his hand. “We have to check on them!”
“My sister was in there, too.” He touched my face. “The building is on fire. We’re not going back inside to get burned alive.”
“But—.”
“I said no!” His grip tightened. “This way.”
I wanted to fight him, but he was right. It would have been suicide to run back into the building. The dense smoke filling the air made my lungs burn and eyes water. The heat from the towering flames flared across my skin, causing me to recoil in fear.
Keeping close to Luka’s side, I ran with him across the grounds of the mansion. Eventually, we reached the front and found dozens of people crying and screaming and shouting for help. I searched the crowd for my family and spotted my sister and brother.
Tearing away from Luka, I ran to them. “Dafina! Skender!”
“Oh, my god! You’re okay!” Dafina crushed me in her embrace. Her arms trembled as she clung to me.
“I’m okay.” I pushed her away to arm’s length and looked her over. “Are you okay?” My gaze settled on her belly. “The baby?”
“Fine? I think.” She curved both hands around her middle in a protective gesture. “We were almost out the door when it happened. I got thrown onto the steps. But otherwise, I think I’m fine.” She looked over at the hulking father of her baby. “Dus blocked most of the blast.”
Considering he was the size of a truck, I didn’t doubt it. He curled his beefy arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. Certain she was safe, I turned my attention to my brother. “Skender?”
“Huh? Yeah.” He shook his head. “I’m fine. I think. My ears are killing me.”
I noticed a bit of blood trickling from his left ear and reached over to touch it. “I think you might have ruptured an ear drum.”
“Yeah?” He touched the same spot, his fingers coming away bloody. “Yeah. I think I did.”
“Did you hit your head?” His confused reaction worried me. “Maybe you have a concussion?”
“I don’t think I did.” He touched his forehead. “No, I was right behind Dafina. I hit the door and then crawled out. The explosion was behind us. Grandfather…”
As his voice trailed off, I followed his suddenly somber gaze.
There, laid out on the gravel drive, was our grandfather.
Two of his bodyguards stood over him. The men had stayed in the shadows most of the night.
One of them shucked his jacket and bent down to place it over our grandfather’s upper body and face.
“Is he…?” I couldn’t even say the word.
“Yes,” Skender said soberly.
“The blast?” Dafina asked.
“Or his heart,” I said, thinking it could have been any of a dozen different things that finally killed him.
“Is she smiling?” Dafina asked with disgust.
I finally spotted my mother when one of the bodyguards moved. She stood over our grandfather, staring down at him with the most unhinged smile I had ever seen. It had never been a secret that she hated her father-in-law, but to loom over his dead body grinning like a psychopath? It was chilling.
“Elona,” Luka called my name as he approached in a no-nonsense manner. “We’re leaving.”
“But the police? They’ll want to interview us—.”
“Zec will handle it.” He gently grasped my upper arm. “It’s time for us to go.” He glanced at my brother and sister and then to Dusan. “Take them to one of your safe houses.” He looked over at our mother and scowled. “You’ll have to take her, too.”
Dusan seemed less than enthusiastic about that, but he didn’t argue. “Fine.”
“Come on.” Luka tugged on my arm. “We need to leave now.”
“Wait.” Skender stepped closer, trying to shield me from Luka. “You’re not taking our sister anywhere.”
“I’m not leaving her here, and she’s not going with you.”
“Why not?” I asked, thrown by his suddenly possessive behavior.
“I’m not taking a chance with my soon-to-be wife. Not after tonight.” He narrowed his eyes at my sister and then turned his ire toward the burning mansion. “You’re coming with me so I can keep you safe.”
Before I could mount any sort of protest, a speeding car skidded to a stop nearby. Kristo jumped out and shouted. “Take it. Get as far away from here as you can.”
“Come with us.” I clasped my friend’s hand. “You can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”
“I’ll be fine.” Kristo gently withdrew his hand from mine and then tenderly touched my face. “Go with Luka. He’ll keep you safe.”
“Come on.” Luka roughly dragged me toward the car and all but shoved me into the passenger seat. He slammed the door shut, shouted something at Kristo and then slid into the driver’s seat. “Put on your seatbelt.”
I didn’t argue. I probably should have. This lunatic was basically kidnapping me from the site of a bombing.
This man has lost his mind.
And I’m even crazier letting him steal me away.
As he sped away from the destruction, all I could think about was a text message Skender had sent me the morning of the engagement dinner. What had he said? That he was going to fix things?
Was this his doing? Had he decided to take a page out of the playbook that had ruined our childhood? To use a bomb like the ones our fathers had used to terrorize each other?
No, he wouldn’t.
Would he?
I don’t know him.
Not anymore, not after the years he’d spent as a hostage, separated from us. He seemed to be even-tempered and practical, but what if it was all a facade? What if he had been plotting this entire time?
Does he actually hate me? It was my fault he was a hostage.
Yes, our grandfather had failed to keep up the payments, but our mother hadn’t been able to afford them either.
If she’d still been married to Brett, if they hadn’t divorced over her treatment of me, maybe Brett would have paid to keep Skender in Houston.
“Are you okay?” Luka glanced at me with concern. “You’re quiet.”
“What am I supposed to say? We almost died. Now you’ve kidnapped me.”
“I didn’t kidnap you! You came willingly!”
“Dragging me away by the arm is what you consider willing? I’d hate to think about what your ex-girlfriends say about you.”
“Contrary to how I’ve behaved, I’m not a bad person,” Luka insisted. “You might even like me if you get to know me.”
“Hard pass,” I grumbled, thinking that getting to know him was the worst thing I could do.
“Elona, we’re going to be married. At some point, you’ll have to let down your guard so we can become better acquainted.”
“We are not getting married!” I gawked at him. “We just narrowly escaped being blown up. The last thing I want to do is tie myself to your family.”
“You think I want to be tied to yours? At any rate, the bomb was probably meant for your family. Whoever planted it would have had a million chances to kill me. You and your family have been exiled for years. It’s their first chance to hit you when you’re all together.”
“For what reason? We don’t have anything. No power. No money. Nothing. You saw to that when you threw us out of Albania!”
“You have a name! And the list of people who want to kill your grandfather is a kilometer long.”
“Well, then, I guess they got what they wanted!” I didn’t feel even the briefest pang of sadness or grief for my dead grandfather. If anything, I felt relief.
Luka expertly changed lanes, but I still put a hand on the dash to steady myself.
I noticed something sticky on my eyelid.
I reached up and felt the smear of blood beneath my fingertips.
Cursing under my breath, I flipped down the visor and checked my reflection in the mirror. Blood dripped down my forehead.
“Are you hurt?” Luka seemed sincerely concerned.
“Yes, but it’s not from the bomb.” I followed the trail of blood with my fingertip to the wound on my scalp. “I got hurt yesterday.”
“Hurt? How?” His gaze skipped from the road to me and back again. “Elona?
“My mother,” I finally admitted. “She was angry, and she attacked me.”
He didn’t react with shock or even surprise. “Has she always been violent?”
“Yes.” I didn’t see any reason to lie.
“Is that why you moved to Dallas with your stepfather after the divorce?” His question threw me, and I made a surprised sound. Did he really not know? “Zec gave me some background,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to—.”
“Listen, there’s not enough time in the world to dig into that.”
“I’d like to know. If it will help me understand you and be a better husband.”
“I don’t need you to understand me, and you’re never going to be my husband.” I was glad that my focus was on the cars in front of me. There was something about the way he spoke that made my stomach feel funny and my heart stutter. I found myself wanting to open up to him.
“When my mother and Brett divorced, I was struggling with some issues at school.” I decided not to tell him the whole truth.
“Brett wanted me to come live with him in Dallas so I could start over fresh. My mother disagreed until he offered her the house, free and clear. She got the deed, and he got irrevocable guardianship over me until I turned eighteen.”
“Your mother sold you for a house?”
“Like I said,” I grumbled. “There’s not enough time to dig into that.” I noticed we were driving away from the city, into the countryside. “Where are we going? A safe house?”
“That was my plan, but considering we were attacked despite all the security, I think we should find somewhere else.”
“We should ditch this car,” I suggested, thinking of all the John Le Carre novels I’d read as a kid and my current obsession with Slow Horses.
“They might be tracking it. Our phones, too.” On instinct, I reached for my purse but realized I’d left it and my smashed-up phone back at the wedding venue.
“I don’t have any money or ID or a phone. ”
“I’ve got money.” He retrieved his phone from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Power this off for me?”
“Yeah.” I took the phone and glanced at the notifications on the screen as I powered it down. There were messages from a woman named Liliana, each one more desperate than the last. Remembering what I’d seen on my phone back at the dinner, I bit my lip. Should I say something?
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lied and placed his phone in a cup holder. A moment later, thinking better of it because we were counting on each other to stay alive, I confessed, “During the dinner, when my phone kept going off, it was an unknown number.”
“Okay?” He waited for me to tell him something useful.
“When I swiped my screen, there were dozens of photos of you and some women.” My face burned as I remembered the filthy images. “Dancers, I think. Um, the exotic kind.”
He swore in Albanian, letting loose a string of filth. Then, clearly embarrassed, he said, “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have seen that.”
“Well, I did, and it’s not something I can unsee.” Feeling a little annoyed, I asked, “Was it your bachelor party?”
“I didn’t have one.”
“So, it was before you and my sister got engaged?” I asked hopefully.
“No,” he admitted. “It was in Houston. The night of that disaster at your mother’s house.”
“You cheated on my sister.” I stated it plainly, letting it hang in the already tense space between us.
“To be fair, she cheated on me, too.”
“Yes, but you didn’t know that.”
“And she got pregnant,” he added, as if that somehow made the situation better for him. “I didn’t get anyone pregnant.”
“That you know of,” I replied, wondering how careful he had been. “Have you even been tested?”
He scowled at me. “I’m not a complete and utter asshole. Of course, I got tested when I got back from Houston and repeated the tests last week. I would never expose my wife to anything.”
“But you’d cheat on her?”
“No. I would not cheat on my wife.”
“But you’d cheat on your fiancée?”
He blew out a noisy and frustrated breath. “I made a mistake. Okay? I fucked up. I can’t change that. It’s done.” He glanced at me, his expression earnest and sincere. “I won’t cheat on you when we’re married.”
I almost believed him. “Well, we aren’t getting married, so you don’t need to worry about that.”
“You agreed to marry me back at the mansion. We are getting married,” he insisted. “As soon as possible.”
“I agreed under duress seconds before a bomb exploded. You’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming to the altar now,” I warned. “Considering I outweigh you, that’s not likely.”
“Don’t do that,” he growled. “Don’t denigrate and insult yourself.”
“Why? Because that’s your job?” The memory of the awful things he said to me still burned bright and hot.
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Should I?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I’ve done nothing to earn your forgiveness.”
Memories of my torrid fantasies flashed before my eyes. Instead of telling him all the sordid ways he could that forgiveness, I said, “Well, keep me alive and you might.”
We settled into silence as he drove. I couldn’t get my bearings. It had been so long since I’d lived here, and I hadn’t even so much as looked at a map of my homeland since taking world geography in high school. I thought we might be going east, but I wasn’t sure. “Are we headed to the coast?”
“There are a lot of cheap hotels there. Places to hide.”
“Until?”
“Until it’s safe.”
Safe for you or safe for me?