Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
GREG
My head was pounding, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Where was I? I was sitting in an extremely uncomfortable chair.
How did I get here? I leaned forward, intending to get out of the chair, but my forward motion was stopped by something wrapped around my torso.
I put my hand to my chest and felt a leather strap going across it.
I moved my hand down my torso and found three more straps holding me in place.
“What is happening?” I whispered.
“Ah, you’re finally awake.”
I went rigid. I knew that voice. Paul Jameson. I’d met him at Café Roma. The memories flooded back and my lip curled up in a snarl. “You son of a bitch. You drugged me, you coward.”
“Tsk tsk. That’s not very polite.”
“Fuck polite. You don’t deserve politeness.”
A hand grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. I saw a flash of steel and felt the edge of a knife blade press against my throat. He leaned in close to my face, his pale-blue eyes wide with rage. “I’d watch my mouth if I were you,” he said through clenched teeth.
I went very still. My heart was racing, and I felt sweat trickle down the back of my neck. But I still stared right at him. If he was going to kill me, he was going to have to look me in the eyes.
He finally let go and pulled the knife away. “You’re not at all what I expected. I suppose that comes from hanging around your thug of a boyfriend.”
I wanted to burst out laughing, but I managed to keep silent.
Tony was the sweetest, kindest man I knew.
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes as the thought came to me that I might never see his beautiful face again.
No. Stop thinking that way. Tony will find you.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart.
The sound of something dragging across the floor drew my attention, and I finally looked at my surroundings.
I was in what appeared to be an empty bedroom, judging by the closet on the far wall.
There was a single window covered with a dark cloth.
An air mattress covered with a sheet lay in one corner.
The only light came from a bare bulb overhead.
The dragging sound I heard was Paul pulling an electronic keyboard mounted on a metal stand across the room. What. The. Fuck? He adjusted the instrument’s position until it was centered right in front of me. I stared up at my captor. “What the hell is this?”
“Surely you recognize a keyboard when you see one.” I wanted to slap the smug expression off his disgusting face.
“Of course I know it’s a keyboard,” I snapped. “Why is it here?”
“You’re going to play for me,” he replied simply.
I was speechless for a long moment. “Play for you? Are you serious? You have me strapped to this chair, and now you’re demanding I play the piano for you?”
“That’s right,” he said, his lip curled up in a sneer. “I even made sure your arms were free so you could play. I have been following you for months. You play for everyone else but never have time to play for me.”
I felt like I was going crazy. “I never even met you before today! How could I not play for someone I don’t know?”
“I’ve been at City Lights every Saturday night since you started working there. Every time I asked for a song, you didn’t have it.” His aggrieved expression and whiny tone would have been hilarious under different circumstances. Now he just looked like a lunatic.
I clenched. “I don’t have every piece of music ever written memorized or on my tablet.”
He propped a tablet against the music stand on the keyboard.
“That won’t be a problem today.” He brought the tablet to life.
On it was a piece of music whose title was vaguely familiar.
He turned on the keyboard and pulled up a second chair I hadn’t noticed.
He sat directly across from me. “Now play for me.”
A burst of anger blew through me, and I thought about refusing until I caught sight of the knife laying across Paul’s lap.
In that moment, I don’t think I could have hated anyone more than I did him.
I pressed my lips together and looked at the music in front of me.
I focused my thoughts on Tony and began to play.
I played one piece after another. Many of them I’d never heard or had known existed.
I couldn’t begin to know where he’d gotten the music.
I’d lost all sense of time in the darkened room.
I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious.
I didn’t know what part of the city I was in.
The street sounds were muffled, so I couldn’t tell if we were in a busy part of the city or not.
I finished another piece and put my hands in my lap. My wrists and arms were aching, mostly from tension and the unnatural position I was sitting in.
Paul straightened up. “What are you doing?”
“Taking a break,” I replied. “My wrists hurt.”
He glared at me, and I thought he was going to demand that I start playing again.
Finally, he shrugged. “I’ll allow it.” He looked at his smartwatch.
“We’ve been here for over three hours. I knew planning this for when your boyfriend’s personnel extraction team was out of the country would give me all the time I needed to make you mine. ”
My blood ran cold. “What are you talking about? How would you even know that?”
There was that fucking smug smile again. “I planted a listening device in his office. All I had to do was wait for a call to come in. Now his interfering hacker brother is away, and he has no one to try to track me down again.”
“Again?” I croaked. In a flash of insight, all the pieces fell together. “You were Jeremy’s stalker,” I whispered. “Tony’s company caught you, and you went to prison.”
“Yes,” he growled, his face an ugly mask of rage. “He took one man away from me. He won’t do it a second time.”
I let out a shuddering breath. Paul was doing this to get revenge on Tony. “What are you going to do to me?”
The insane light was back in his eyes. He tapped the tablet screen, bringing up a new piece of music.
“You’re going to play this for me.” He gestured to the air mattress on the floor.
“When I’m satisfied that you’ve done it justice, I will make you mine.
” He caressed the blade of the knife. “And then I will take you away from Mr. Anthony D’Angelo, forever. ”
My mouth went dry and my hands started shaking.
He was planning to rape and murder me. And I was helpless to stop any of it.
I had to stop that train of thought. I couldn’t lose hope.
Tony had resources this piece of shit didn’t know about, and I knew he was looking for me.
I just had to hold on to the hope that he’d find me in time.
Paul pointed at the keyboard. “You’ve rested long enough. Play for me.”
I looked at the music and wanted to vomit. He wanted me to play “All I Ask of You,” the main love song from Phantom of the Opera.
I had to force my fingers to play the notes when what I wanted to do was pick up the keyboard and hurl it at Paul.
I knew I made mistakes. I could tell by Paul’s expression.
But the longer I played, the angrier I got.
By the time I played the final notes of the song, I was seething and not exactly thinking straight.
“Not good enough. Play it again,” Paul demanded.
In my rage, I threw away all caution. “Fuck you! You don’t deserve my music!”
He shot up from his chair to loom over me. “I deserve it all!”
“You deserve nothing!” Then I picked up the tablet and threw it across the room.
The screen cracked and the light went out.
In the moment of Paul’s shocked silence, I thought I heard a noise outside the door.
Conflicting emotions rose within me. Did he have an accomplice? Or had Tony finally found me?
Paul’s scream of fury and frustration echoed in the small room, shattering my hopeful longing. He picked up the knife, which had fallen when he jumped off the chair, and took hold of my right wrist in a crushing grip. “If you won’t play for me, you won’t play for anyone!”
He raised the knife high, intending to drive it into my hand. I tried to pull out of his hold, but he was too strong. “No! Please, no!”
There was a sharp crack, and a neat hole appeared in the center of Paul’s forehead. His head snapped back and his body jerked away from me, freeing my wrist. The knife slipped from his lax fingers and clattered to the floor.
A moment later, Tony was at my side. He put his arms around me and murmured, “I’ve got you.”
I stared at him in shock, unable to believe he was actually here. Then I turned my face into his neck and wept.