Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
S arah
For the second time in as many days, I wake up staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. It takes a minute for my groggy brain to scroll through the assortment of jumbled memories from the last few hours of my life.
I’m in a mob boss’s… guestroom? In his Fort Knox status apartment, after having been kidnapped and thrown into the truck of a car .
I shake my head and fan fresh air towards my face at the memory of the cramped, dark space. I would have done anything to get out of that fucking trunk. Nothing good happens in tight spaces.
I reach towards the nightstand for my phone before remembering that I don’t have a phone anymore. I don’t see a clock, but the bright sun outside my windows tells me it’s already well past my normal wake up time. Once I swing out of the plush bed, my feet sink into the soft, thick carpeting. I pad in my bare feet over to the door and try the handle. Locked.
Of course it is.
I avail myself of the facilities again and then start to pace around the room. On my third lap, I decide this is ridiculous. The bedroom has large windows with an amazing view of the Hudson River. I pull back the curtains and settle into the patch of sunlight warming the carpet. I stretch out my arms and legs before working on a series of twists that relax the muscles in my back. The yoga routine is familiar and comfortable, a relaxing muscle memory activity. I’m trying to get the best out of dancer pose when the stupid hulk-sized t-shirt flops around in my face again. This is dumb .
I pull the shirt off and toss it on the bed, the fabric releasing a burst of spicy, woodsy cologne as it goes. I slept in just the shirt, his shirt apparently, so now I’m sitting naked in a puddle of sunlight like a cat on a warm winter day. In other circumstances, it might be considered pleasant. I resume my stretches and yoga and am working through a downward facing dog pose when I hear a deep, masculine voice behind me.
“I didn’t know nude yoga was a thing, but I certainly approve.”
I shriek, falling into a startled tangle of limbs. Standing, I face him but cover my breasts with my crossed arms. “What the fuck are you doing here? Get out!”
“It’s my house,” he purrs, stepping closer.
“Give me that shirt,” I order, pointing at the bed.
“Not a fucking chance, kitten.” He creeps closer.
I step back. I can feel his eyes running up and down my body, leaving a trail of wildfire in their path. I take another step back, until my ass bumps against a small set of drawers.
His eyes—deep brown and flecked with gold in the morning light—don’t leave mine. I keep one arm across my breasts while the other blindly flaps around behind me, reaching for anything that could be a weapon. My fingers wrap around a thick leather book.
“Get out!”
“No.”
“I mean it!”
He gives me a sinister smile. “Me too.”
So I throw the book at him. Literally.
He dodges it expertly and we both turn to see what exactly it was that I threw.
“Did you just chuck a Bible at me?” Vincent looks at me with a quirked eyebrow.
I look from his now amused face, to the book, and back. Not sounding as brave as I’d like to, I crack an awkward smile. “Begone, Satan!” I try to yell it, but it comes out sounding like more of an odd question instead.
“My brother is going to be very mad you threw his Bible on the ground, kitten.” He casually picks it up and puts it on a nightstand.
“Now,” he says, unbuckling his belt and slowly, dramatically pulling it from every loop, “where did we leave off last night?” He fixes those beautiful, dark, terrifying eyes on me.
I do the only sane thing. I run.
I dart past him, out the open bedroom door, and dash past the sofa we sat on last night.
His arms wrap around my waist, squeezing air from my lungs on a yelp.
He chuckles. “Skittish little kitten, aren’t you?”
He throws me over his shoulder and stalks deeper into the house. Past the bedroom I slept in, up a short flight of stairs, and then I’m flying through the air, landing in a heap in the middle of a bed covered with soft, thick blankets.
That smell like him.
Oh my god.
“What the?—”
I’m cut off by the ringing of his phone. He curses in Italian. At least, I think it’s a curse. It sounded like a curse, in any language. After a terse conversation, he drops the phone back into his pocket.
“To be continued, kitten,” he says, turning for the door.
“Gotta go whack somebody?” I clamp my hand over my mouth as soon as it slips out.
Looking over his shoulder, he says, “Don’t be ridiculous. I have a guy for that.”
Then the door slams shut behind him. I stay frozen for a breath before he returns to drop a well-used duffle bag at my feet before disappearing once again.
My duffle bag. The one I had at the theater, and that I last saw when I dropped it into the trunk of Robert’s car.
My brain goes into a revolving panic of every mob cliche I’ve ever seen.
Please don’t have a head in this I say, sliding open the zipper. It’s… clothes. And toiletries. My clothes and toiletries. From my apartment. I shiver.
He was in my house.
How the fuck does he even know where I live? I still haven’t bothered getting a New York driver’s license, so he didn’t read my address. Christ, how did he get it from Robert’s car? A whole new wave of panic rushes over me. I notice a slip of paper that doesn’t belong. It’s a note, in neat, black handwriting.
Stop worrying. Your friend is currently fine. Shower, get dressed, and remember, you’ll never make it out the front door, though it’s adorable when you try.
Great. Reassuring notes from my kidnapper. This is not my life. I start to feel the edge of panic creeping in. I take deep breaths and count to ten.
Count to ten, and then get your shit together. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
I take the duffle into the bathroom and stop cold.
Holy fuck. Anyone who says crime doesn’t pay has never been inside this bathroom. It’s all white marble and gold accents, with a shower big enough to make it a group project and a bathtub that might actually just be a recessed hot tub hooked up to the tap. It reminds me of some sort of spa or luxury resort. The towels are folded neatly on a heated shelf, conveniently reachable from both the tub and the shower. I drop my bag on the vanity, pick out my shampoo, conditioner and soap, and slip inside the glass walled monstrosity.
I stare at the mess of knobs and dials. There are two shower heads, plus almost an entire wall of jets, most of which are directional. I grab a random knob and twist. After a brief pause, I’m doused in an icy downpour from the shower head and the entire wall. I yelp and start turning dials until the water turns hot and steam begins to curl. I slather some conditioner to soak into my still bun-ed hair. It looks ridiculous the next day after sleeping in it, but the gel and hair spray are still going strong. When the conditioner has finally won the battle of wills against the gel, I slowly release my hair and shampoo it, twice, before the product is out of my hair. I work another handful of conditioner into my hair and go to work on scrubbing my body.
There is a small shelf lining the back wall, filled with an assortment of tinted glass bottles, most labeled in Italian.
I sniff one. Peppermint. Then eucalyptus, lemon, tea tree, menthol, cedar, pine, cloves.
Oh my god, the mob boss has a thing for essential oils?
I laugh—of fucking course. Why not? Then I liberally sprinkle peppermint, lemon, and eucalyptus around the shower floor and enjoy smelling like I’m in a fancy spa about to get a massage.
Not kidnapped by the fucking mafia boss and geeking out in his shower. The incredibly attractive, terrifying mafia boss that spanks me to within an inch of my sanity and makes dark threats that should shake me to my core but instead set my clit on fire and my pussy throbbing to be filled. Stretched. Fucked.
How is this my life?
“How would you even know?” I say out loud. “Oh great, now I’m talking to myself.” Crazy me has a point though, both in my virginity, and in the shit show that has become my life.
Sighing, I decide I need to try out this bath situation, because I’m still sore and achy from performing, running, and being stuffed in a trunk. You know, just another Saturday night in the big city.
I rinse off, then wrap up in one of the towels so I don’t drip everywhere. The tile floors are heated, which is amazing on my always sore feet. I open the taps and watch the water rise, swirling as it enters the tub. I notice a jar of Epsom salts nearby and add a generous scoop before carefully stepping into the piping hot water. I hiss when the water hits my bruised ass before sinking in and allowing the warmth and salt to ease the aches away from my body.
I start trying to sift through the confusing web of thoughts and emotions that are rattling around my brain. My inner voice, the smarter one that usually keeps me out of trouble, is having an absolute meltdown. It’s screaming at me to run, to hide, to fight. I like to believe it’s my mother’s spirit that powers that voice. I sniffle. All these years later, her death still crushes me.
My mother had been a ballerina, but became a ballet teacher after an injury. Her career was over before it ever got started. When I was maybe eight, I started to realize that she always wore long sleeves in the summer and heavy makeup before she came out of her room. I was sick one night and she fell asleep in my room.
I saw the black eye the next morning, since she hadn’t had time to put her makeup on yet. It was one of those things that once I noticed, I never stopped noticing. Kind of like how you’d never recognize a Toyota Camry until you had one, and then you’d see them everywhere all of a sudden. I started to notice the sharp tone of my father’s voice, the little insults he’d give her. When she’d limp and say it was because of a fall. When she’d water down the vodka. When she’d always stand between my father and me, especially after he drank.
On my twelfth birthday, I tripped and dropped the cake I was bringing to my father in his lap.
“You useless bitch!” he yelled at me.
I was stunned.
He slapped me across the face, his police academy ring splitting my lip. He stormed out of the house. My mother walked in from the kitchen just in time to see me on the living room carpet, blood dripping into the pile of birthday cake on the floor.
Late that night, my mother woke me.
“Shhh, shh. You can’t make a sound. We’re leaving. Now.”
I slipped into sneakers and grabbed my backpack.
“Quiet, pack some clothes.”
We crept through the house, headed to the back door, me with my stuffed backpack and my mom with her overnight bag.
I heard a door fly open upstairs.
“Where the fuck are you?” I heard my father yell. I heard him thumping loudly down the stairs. My mother opened a hall closet, the sort you’d put winter coats and the vacuum cleaner and the other odd junk you didn’t want seen in, and pushed me inside.
“No matter what, stay here. Stay quiet, baby.” She pulled the jackets in front of me and closed the door. I peeked through the slats.
“What the fuck are you doing down here?” My father slurred his words, his eyes glassy. Then he saw our two bags dropped in the hallway. “You think you can run out on me? Take my kid from me?” He backhanded her, and she landed on the floor a few feet away.
When I saw her reaching for the gun he kept on his work belt by the door, he bellowed, “Fucking bitch, don’t even try.”
She pulled on the gun but couldn’t get it out of the complicated police holster.
My father wrenched it from her hands.
I’ll never forget what it sounded like when the gun went off.