Chapter 12 #2
She curled up in a corner of the back seat, forcing herself to breathe slowly. She had had nightmares for years after she first met Bastien, and she learned many ways of coping with them. Box breathing, meditation, visualization, would normally stop her panic attacks. Nothing was working.
She looked ahead, but there was no end in sight.
The tunnel went on forever, time had begun to lose its meaning, and she was breathing too fast. Luc was facing forward, unaware of her distress, and besides, what good would it do her?
They were trapped, and she couldn’t catch her breath, and she could feel the damned tears slide down her face.
She tried closing her eyes, but that made things even worse.
How many times had Bastien held her while she fought off the effects of a nightmare or a panic attack?
Now he would probably kill her if she made a fuss.
In fact, he was probably already planning to kill her, and he’d never know that it was the mother of his children, the woman he loved, the—
“Grow up, chérie!” Bastien snapped from the driver’s seat. “It’s a fucking tunnel, not a torture device.”
“I…don’t…like…enclosed places,” she choked out.
“A grave is worse.”
His words were so callous they shocked her, right out of her hyperventilating. “You bastard!” she gasped, as feeling began to return to her tingling face and hands.
He laughed. “And here I thought you were so fearless. Trust me, I’ll do you a great deal more harm than this tunnel.”
“I wish you were dead.”
“Of course you do, mon ange,” he said calmly enough. “But if I were dead, we’d smash up against the tunnel and the other cars and it would take forever to rescue you, if you even survived the crash…”
“Jean-Marc,” Luc said reprovingly. “Can’t you see she’s having a hard enough time as it is?”
“There’s no room for weakness in this life. If a tunnel has her weak and blubbering, then how will she react to Como? She will be of no use to me.”
“I’m not blubbering,” she snapped, wiping the tears from her face. Too late, she realized they’d been speaking in French, and she held herself very still, waiting for the axe to fall.
But apparently, they hadn’t noticed. “She’ll be all right,” Luc said earnestly. “It’s just a phobia.”
“I can’t afford phobias.”
“Then don’t take her to the gala,” Luc lashed back.
“If I don’t, she is of no use to me, and I’ll have to get rid of her. Como is so crowded I’d have a hard time getting rid of her body.”
Stop it! she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t afford to make another mistake. She was going to lose it. She was going to start screaming at them, she was going to…
The bright light of day shone in the windshield, and they were out, into a bright, sunny afternoon. In Italy.
She sank back against the seat, shaking. She’d managed to live through it.
“You see,” Bastien said. “Your little pet has survived. For now.”
“She’s right, you are a bastard, Jean-Marc.”
And to Chloe’s fury, he just smiled.
It was late when they approached a city, and she looked up from her seat in the back as Bastien parked the car.
They’d pulled up to a small, seedy-looking hotel and Bastien climbed out, stretching after hours in the cramped car.
She couldn’t help but watch, and she cursed herself.
No matter what he was calling himself, the man had a beautiful body, tall and lean and strong, and she watched him move with just the tiniest trace of sexual interest. Maybe she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life in frigid celibacy, no matter how much it felt like it now.
“Make sure she doesn’t say anything,” he said in French to Luc, and Luc nodded, turning to give Chloe a reassuring smile.
“We’re stopping for the night,” he told her. “It would be too late when we arrived in Como to get settled.”
‘Where are we?” she asked in a small voice.
“Outside of Milan,” Luc said, but Bastien frowned.
“You don’t need to answer her questions,” he said in French. “She doesn’t need to know anything.”
“She needs to know where she’s going and what she’s doing,” Luc replied in the same language. “How else is she going to be of help?”
“She just needs to be quiet and do what she’s told. Though she’s not the most obedient of creatures.”
Chloe kept herself from snarling in annoyance.
The fact that she could understand every word they said was one of her few advantages, and she wasn’t going to give it up readily.
They hadn’t really said anything of use—she had no idea where they were going apart from the fact that she was going to need an evening gown, and she’d like to see Bastien try to come up with one.
As far as she knew, she would accompany him to some kind of ceremony where he would accomplish something, and then they would leave.
It all brought back that night so long ago, when he’d dressed her in elegant black and escorted her to a horrifying bloodbath. Would this night in Como be the same?
She would be na?ve to think his mission involved anything but murder. Could she stand by and let him do it? In their tumultuous past, he’d only killed people who deserved to die. Maybe he had his sights on a third-world dictator or an evil Russian oligarch. Even so, could she let it happen?
“Get out of the car, bébé,” he said to her then. “I’m tired and I want to sleep.”
She obeyed, gutless wonder that she was, keeping her head down and her expression to herself. She really wasn’t cut out to be a docile hostage anymore.
The lobby of the tiny hotel was small and overstuffed, and the woman behind the counter looked to be a hundred and three years old. It smelled of garlic and mold, and she shivered slightly.
“We’ll take two rooms,” Bastien told the old lady in his perfect Italian, another language she wasn’t supposed to understand, and Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. At least they were giving her a room of her own.
He concluded his negotiation, then turned to her. “It’s time for bed, chérie,” he said with his false affection. “Room 5 at the top of the stairs.” He handed her the old-fashioned key.
She’d understood that much, and she started up the dark, winding stairs, dragging her suitcase behind. Luc stepped forward to help her but Bastien stopped him, threatening another snarl from Chloe. When this was over, she was going to make him pay for a thousand things.
When this was over. Would there ever be such a time?
Would the two them survive? The room was small and dark, even with the lights on, and she looked at the bed warily.
It was a double bed, bigger than the cot she’d been subsisting on, and dropping her suitcase, she went to sit on it.
It wasn’t bad—not too hard and not too soft, and she looked forward to stretching out tonight—
The door opened and Bastien walked in, and she cursed herself for not remembering to lock the door behind her. “You’re in the wrong room,” she said coldly.
“No, chérie, I am not,” he said, locking the door behind him with his own key. “I’m tired. Take off your clothes and get in bed.”
Fear danced around her nerve endings. “Fuck you,” she shot back.
He merely looked bored. “Not tonight. I’m too tired. The bed is big enough for two of us, if just barely. Do as I say.”
She wanted to protest, to plead, but he was looking implacable. And tired. She didn’t know whether she believed him or not when he said he wouldn’t touch her, but she had no choice. “Where’s the bathroom?” she demanded with little grace.
“At the end of the hall. This isn’t the Hilton.”
“You could have fooled me,” she muttered, dumping her suitcase on the bed.
She was travelling with one nightgown, but she certainly wasn’t wearing it for him.
She would wait until she had Bastien back before she wore it—it was too lacy and virginal for a man like Jean-Marc.
Instead, she grabbed the flannel boxers and t-shirt she usually made do with.
They’d both belonged to Bastien—she always raided his drawers for sleepwear—and maybe he’d recognize them.
Whether he did or not, they provided loose, sexless clothing, perfect for sleeping, and she believed him when he said he had no interest in fucking.
His beautiful dark eyes were shadowed, his mouth grim, and she had the good sense not to argue with him anymore.
The bathroom was tiny but adequate, with a separate shower room, and she made herself ready for bed, wishing she dared take a shower. If she knew…Jean-Marc…he’d come right in and get her. She padded back down the dark hallway, her discarded clothes over her arm, and opened the door.
He was wearing the boxer briefs—at least that didn’t remind her of what once was.
Bastien slept naked, his warm skin pressed against hers.
The bed that had looked roomy when she first came in now looked positively tiny, and Bastien was a big man.
She was no sylph either. It was going to be a cozy night.
“I can sleep on the floor,” she announced as she closed the door behind her.
“You can sleep in the bed,” he replied, and for a moment, her heart leaped in gratitude, only to come crashing down when he added “with me. Lock the door.”
She was reluctant to do so—it would make it that much harder to escape if she needed to. Who was she kidding—he would catch her by the stairs. There was no escape in sight.