Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
NICO
It couldn’t be her.
I knew my reality had shifted the moment I stepped into my home.
The house sat dark and empty, as all houses did when the master didn’t have a soul.
But that wasn’t what made my body hum with acrimony like the quiet tension right before a storm hits.
I’d walked from room to room trying to find whatever was amiss.
I found nothing that wasn’t ordinary. But when I stopped at the edge of the carpet in the living room, lined exactly five feet from the wall, I knew it.
It slipped into place like a missing puzzle piece.
The room was too neat. It wasn’t unease.
It was fucking memories of someone with OCD I’d like to erase from my DNA.
I’d forgotten I’d asked Magda to hire more help.
She was too weak to run the house on her own.
Besides, the woman was a joke. I invited no one to my home, but she kept it running as if the next unexpected guest were inevitable.
If I hadn’t been attached to her, I might have fired her.
But I couldn’t handle the guilt. Not when my conscience was already drowning under its weight.
She must have finally listened and hired an extra.
That had to be it. I’d wasted too much of my time hiring the first girl, checking her credentials and giving the green light.
I’d left this one in Magda’s hands. She was capable enough.
But she’d have to tell her I didn’t like everything overly neat.
Neat, because I craved order, but not too neat because I hated my fucking sperm donor.
Having my house just a bit messed up was a fuck you to him.
Instead of settling into my office to finish the shit ton of paperwork I had to do, I broke my routine and headed up the stairs. When I entered my room and stood on the threshold of my bathroom, it all made sense. It wasn’t the house. It was the intruder in it.
My bathroom lay in onyx light. The masterpiece sitting in my bath veiled within it.
But she must have made a deal with the moon because one thin strip slipped through the slatted blinds and highlighted her crown of tight mocha coils like a spotlight on stage.
Just a glimpse. Not enough to confirm this nagging doubt stabbing into my conscience. But enough for the unease to linger.
The last time I’d seen that crown of curls, it was racing toward an elevator. I’d let her go then. If it was her… if it was really her… I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it again.
I hovered in the archway, torn between wanting to confirm my doubt and walking away so I could class it as a guilty delusion. It was surreal. So much so that it put me in a trance of disbelief.
Before I’d given them permission, my feet moved. I rounded the bath, keeping my distance, taking a seat across from her. This girl— this woman— fuck, how could anyone penetrate my emotional fortress? Impossible.
She was shrouded in darkness, but it did nothing to hide the outline of a slender face, narrow shoulders, and the soft rise of her breasts. She had fallen asleep or was in deep thought, utterly unaware of how she’d gripped me merely with her presence.
While I’d been carrying this guilt for a lifetime and avoiding any confrontation with it, the object of my conscience had waltzed into my home and waited for me. In my bath. Naked.
Stiff as stone, I watched her, hovering between wanting it to be true and dreading it.
If I switched on the lights, I could confirm it.
I should get it over with. By the time I reached that decision, she was already aware of my presence.
I felt it in the stillness of her breath and the tension that wafted out of the bath.
I was slow. I felt like I was in a drug-induced haze. Then she sprang out of the bath but hit her ankle. Before I could react, she cursed. One word, so familiar. It slammed my chest full of memories. Then she was gone.
?Joder!
My insides twisted.
Sunshine. Beachside property. Learning the magic of numbers inside an office. Two girls out on the beach. One of them, a teenager. A hand on my shoulder. You’re distracted again, Nico.
I sprang into action.
I raced after her, switching on lights and following the trail of water to the basement. It disappeared beneath a bedroom door. I pulled the handle down with force. It rattled but remained closed.
I wanted to kick it open, burst in, and—and what?
I stumbled back. Gave my head a shake. I was allowing emotion to control me. The last time I did that, a man ended up dead.
I fought to calm my breathing and only then noticed my heart was racing.
I rebuilt the Fibonacci sequence. The first numbers were too easy.
Flowed automatically. When I fell into the phase where I had to reconstruct patterns, my racing heartbeat slowed.
I released my grip on the handle and backed away.
Retract. Think. Plan. I drew a ragged breath and dragged my hand through my hair.
This was nothing. Could well be my imagination.
The absurdity of that was almost funny. I could trace the shape of her body, the tightness of her curls, with my eyes closed.
It was her. But maybe, by some miracle, it was a delusion.
It wasn’t. The images from my security camera proved it. A dark silhouette moving around the house, opening doors and drawers while innocently fluffing pillows. The air in my office was suffocating. The memories excruciating.
This was no maid. She was here to spy on me or to end me. And if it was Juan Vales’s daughter, there was only one reason for her intrusion.
I touched the frame on my desk and traced the figure in it. I hated that my fingers shook. If she’d come into the office, she would have found things.
Fuck. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.