Chapter Seven
Gavino
I gave her about fifteen minutes to make sure she wasn’t going to come back.
Then I freed myself and grabbed a quick shower. Luckily, I didn’t have a knack for fashion like some of my brothers. So when I liked something, I bought several of them. I had plenty of identical T-shirts and pants to put on before I grabbed my spare key and rushed out of the building.
I made my way around the corner, getting a bagel with egg, cheese, and bacon and a large coffee.
I drank the coffee on the walk back to my place, then ate the bagel outside before tossing the evidence in the hall trash chute before making my way back into my apartment.
I folded the blanket she’d woken up under, putting it on the back of the couch. I twisted the sleeve of saltines so they didn’t go bad. Turned off the coffee pot. Put a new trash bag in the garbage. Brushed my teeth.
Then I set my alarm and dropped into bed.
This was Manhattan.
A broken wrist was something you went to the hospital for, but it wasn’t something they prioritized.
Caitlin would be in the waiting room for hours before she even made it back to get a scan and a cast. And I’d never been in a hospital that didn’t take a dog’s age to get you your discharge papers.
I was looking at a solid five-hour nap before she was even making her way back.
I hadn’t texted my brother to tell him not to show up as planned. Because depending on how this went, I did want a way out if she pulled out the damn rope or something.
That meant I had, what, twelve hours or so once she got back to figure out why the hell she thought I made her father disappear, what she knew about him and his associates, and any other details that might help me figure out this mystery.
Because, suddenly, I was invested.
A day ago, I barely remembered the name Daniel Hall, let alone gave a shit what happened to him.
But his pretty daughter was in my apartment having panic attacks and breaking her own damn wrist in anger about his disappearance.
Now I was locked in.
I needed to know more about him, about his life outside of his career, about his relationship with his daughter. Who clearly knew he worked with my Family, even though he was sworn to silence about the whole thing.
I’d like to say it was Daniel I was thinking of as I drifted off to sleep.
But it was his daughter at the forefront of my mind. Looking desperately like she needed someone to wrap their arms around her and tell her everything was going to be okay. Even if it was a lie.
Not me.
I wasn’t a hugger.
I wasn’t someone known for handing out kind lies.
So when my mind flashed to the mental image of her pressed close to me, her face in my neck, her sweet, powdery scent overwhelming my senses, I went ahead and figured that was a fluke.
As was the way my dreams were plagued by images of her. Not even easily dismissible ones. Like her bare body under mine, over mine, bent over in front of me.
Nope.
My ass dreamed about moving around the kitchen in the early morning hours, bodies doing a dance of familiarity as we moved around to make our morning coffee—her teasing me about my lack of cream or sweetener, me ragging on her about all the syrup, milk, and sugar.
And that dream went ahead and transformed into one where we were sitting on the couch one night, her huddled in a blanket, curled up against me, drifting off to sleep while I read my book.
I jerked awake and stared at my ceiling.
Who the fuck dreamed about domestic acts?
Sex was right there for the taking.
She was gorgeous.
I wasn’t uninterested.
But, nope. I dreamed about reading and coffee.
“Christ,” I sighed, getting up and turning off my alarm.
I puttered around for a little longer before finally dropping down into the chair.
Why?
Who the fuck knows.
I was having a good time, I guess.
Did that make any kind of rational sense? Nope. But it was what it was.
Besides, it wasn’t like I was suffering.
Sure, my ass hurt from sitting on the chair for so long. And there was a pinch in my lower back that reminded me I wasn’t as young as I once was, but other than that, I was good. There seemed to be no reason not to let this play out.
I slid my legs into the zip ties and slid the cuff around one wrist. But I kept the piece of cut duct tape in front of me until I heard footsteps coming closer.
Only then did I put the tape on and bind my wrists.
Loosely. Because I didn’t want to be stuck the next time she went and sliced off a finger, or got so anxious she got dizzy then fainted, whacked her head off the counter, or something.
I heard the crinkle of a bag, then my key in the lock.
Then there she was, looking paler and more red-eyed than when she’d left. She had two bags in her hand and a cast on her dominant wrist.
“Don’t gloat,” she warned as she pulled off the tape.
“I didn’t say anything.”
She brought the bags over to the table, pausing to sniff the air. Likely smelling the cologne I’d put on after my shower—a habit I was so used to I did it without thinking.
But she shook it off as the scent wafting from one of the bags drifted over to me. Something carb-rich and umami. Chinese food, if I knew my takeout. And I did.
“Simple fracture?”
“Yeah. I’m in this for six weeks. Then I’m going to need physical therapy.”
“I’d apologize for my hard head, but you were the one who punched me.”
Caitlin sighed and dropped down into the seat. “Can you just… not right now?” She went to bury her head in her hands, remembered her cast, then just hung her head instead.
“What happened?”
She shook her head, not wanting to talk about it as she squeezed her eyes shut. The image must have been tattooed beneath her lids, though, because they shot back open and she sighed.
“An ambulance was coming in as I was leaving.”
“Bad?”
“Really, really bad,” she said, pressing a hand to her mouth. “And he had his teen daughter in the ambulance, and she was screaming and crying and…”
And she was thinking of her own missing father, thinking I had him in some dungeon somewhere, having hot pokers jabbed into his body or something. I was suddenly regretting the teasing about the torture the night before. She was probably picturing all that shit happening to her old man now.
“Was he conscious?” I asked.
“What? Yeah. Yeah, he was trying to tell her to calm down.”
“Then he’s probably gonna be all right.”
“There was so much blood,” she said, swallowing hard.
“He was breathing. He was conscious. He was present enough to try to comfort his daughter.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, taking a few deep breaths.
“Did you get some meds?”
“Yeah.”
“You should take them.”
“I need to eat first. I get sick if I take pain medicine on an empty stomach.”
She stood and reached for the to-go bag, pulling out several cartons of—yep, I called it—Chinese food.
She walked away, digging around in my cutlery drawer, and coming back with two forks.
Neither of us said anything as she opened a container of lo mein, twirled a fork in it, and shoved it into her mouth.
I swear you could see the stress leaving her shoulders at the first bite.
Somehow, I bet she was one of those women who—when they weren’t in a hostage situation—danced a little when she got her food.
She ate four forkfuls before she grabbed the extra fork, twirled, then held the food out toward my mouth.
I opened, let her slip in the fork, and nipped the noodles out, my gaze on hers.
Sure, I could have reminded her she could free one of my hands and I could feed myself. I didn’t do that right then, though. And I decided I could go ahead and analyze that later. Right then, some part of me was enjoying the attention for some reason.
It made even less sense when you knew I was one of those people who got nauseated when I saw someone feeding another person when they were capable of feeding themselves.
Or when couples sat on the same side of the booth.
Or made out in public. Wore matching outfits.
Used cutesy nicknames. Had couple social media accounts.
Basically, I was the exact opposite of a hopeless romantic.
Did I like it in my books? In years or decades-long yearning, in long looks and barely-there touches, in grand gestures and romantic declarations? Sure. I wasn’t a fucking robot. But the real-life shit? That just wasn’t for me.
So, no, I shouldn’t have enjoyed being fed.
But here we were.
It didn’t help that Caitlin flushed and tucked her hair behind her ear when I gave her too much eye contact while it happened.
It wasn’t long before the lo mein was half gone, as was the sweet and sour chicken. Which she plunged into the sauce with reckless fucking abandon.
When she was full, she put the cartons into the fridge and came back with two glasses of water. When she held mine to my lips to sip, she watched my throat as I swallowed. Then swallowed hard herself.
Seeming to sense what was happening, she put the glass down hard, making herself jerk, then reached for her pharmacy bag, grabbed her bottle, and shook one pill into her hand before taking it.
“You should take the ibuprofen again for the swelling. Your fingers look a little fat. You don’t want to have to go back tomorrow to get them to cut it off when your fingers go blue.”
She looked down at her hand, sighed, then took her glass with her back to my bedroom.
Five minutes passed.
Ten.
Twenty.
I didn’t move, not yet. Maybe she was just having another panic attack. Or wanted a few minutes to try to shrug off the scared, anxious, in-pain version of her and adopt the abductor.
When nearly an hour passed without a single sound from that end of the apartment, though, I started to free myself.
Then I carefully made my way down the hallway, peeking around the corner of my room.
That’s exactly where I found her.
Passed out at the foot of my bed, her fucked-up wrist cradled carefully to her chest, her breathing deep and even.
I went to the head of the bed, pulling the comforter down and over her, lowered the light, then made my way out of the room.
I figured she was out for the long haul.
So I washed the forks and the coffee cups from earlier, then made a fresh pot and sat sipping it and reading one of my books while she slept.
But for maybe the first time in my life, I couldn’t get sucked into the story. I kept just staring at the page, rereading the same lines over and over without retaining anything.
I got up, went into my office to grab my phone, and checked to see if I had any messages or missed calls from my brother, who might have some insight on Caitlin’s father. But there was nothing except a text from one of the wives asking me to swing by for family dinner over the weekend.
Not having Zeno’s tech experience, I was useless when it came to figuring something out about Daniel.
Eventually, with nothing left to do, I made my way back to the kitchen, set myself up, then waited and waited and waited.
Eventually, I must have nodded off because something made me jerk awake.
And there she was.
She had creases from the blankets on her face and the golden morning sun glowed behind her.
She slow-blinked at me like she was trying to piece something together.
“Meds hit you hard, huh?”
I rolled my neck, wincing at the sharp pain up the back from my head falling to my chest in my sleep.
“I don’t know what happened. I was a little lightheaded, so I sat down. Then… morning.”
She glanced toward the window, staring at the light as if it were a problem she was trying to solve.
Then she made her way toward the kitchen, going through the motions of making coffee.
“What…” she said, making me glance over to where she was standing, staring down at the clean forks and mugs.
Well, it looked like the jig was almost up.
She glanced over at me, then past me at the living room, her gaze focused on the folded blanket, then the cleaned-up saltines.
But I was pretty sure it was the book that did it. I hadn’t realized I’d moved it. It was sitting on the arm of the couch.
Her gaze cut to me, her eyes huge.
She looked down at my ankles, at my wrists.
But then she zeroed in on my mouth.
My mouth… without the duct tape.
She yanked open the drawer near her, reaching inside and grabbing a steak knife.
“You got up.”
Her voice quivered.
“It’s been, what, thirty-six hours. You didn’t think it was weird that I hadn’t pissed myself yet?”
She flew at me, knife raised.
Going behind the chair, she had to drop the knife to tighten the cuffs. Which she did. To the point of pain.
“Relax,” I said, as she grabbed her knife and came around me. “Don’t you think if I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it either time you passed out?”
“You were walking around while I was sleeping?”
“And while you went to the hospital. Went to get breakfast. Had a shower. Got a nap in. Did some reading.”
“I don’t… your ankles.”
“Want to see a magic trick?” I asked, slowly rising so I didn’t scare her and make her skewer me with that damn knife. I knew from my cousin Salvatore that a knife wound was often more gnarly than a bullet. I didn’t need firsthand knowledge.
I straightened as much as the chair would allow, then lifted the legs out of the zip ties.
“Sit back down,” she demanded, backing toward her backpack, her gaze never leaving me. She didn’t even blink.
I sat.
Then I watched her come toward me with the damn rope.
I wouldn’t say I was proud of the thoughts that flashed across my mind when she dropped down to her knees in front of me. But I was quickly distracted by her hilariously horrible knot tying.
There was no rhyme or reason to it. She just looped and tightened and knotted at random.
And she couldn’t tighten anything properly with her busted wrist. But I had to give her credit, it would be significantly harder to get out of the rope than the zip ties.
“There,” she said, a little breathless when she got to her feet and backed away from me. “No more escaping. No more creeping around, going out to eat, showering. No food or water. Not until you tell me what you’ve done to my father.”
“I’d be happy to. If I did anything to him. I didn’t.”
“Fine. Then one of your lackeys or whatever did it for you. But I know you’re responsible.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because he had your name—”
Her voice was rising toward a scream when there was a rapping at the door, making her gasp and jump.
Her gaze cut to mine, pretty eyes accusatory.
Like I’d set this up.
In a way, I had.
Leo just had impeccable timing.
When neither of us answered him, I heard the key in the door, then saw the knob turn.
“I brought bagel—” Leo started as he stepped into the apartment.
Caitlin whipped around, eyes huge, knife still in hand.
Then, without a word, without grabbing any of her shit, she ran out the doorway.
Leo’s gaze slid to me, taking it all in.
“Can’t quite figure out if I interrupted something consensual or not.”