Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANNA
Magda told me to clean his office. Not entirely. She told me to clean the hallway leading to his office. It was pretty much the same thing.
“Signor Martello is out for the day,” she told me by way of an explanation before continuing with her cooking.
The sun was out. The light streaming in through the kitchen window dazzled, highlighting Magda in front of the black-and-brass Aga cooker.
She was far too busy adding spices and tasting her pasta sauce in the heavy Le Creuset pot to give me any attention.
I was beginning to like her. She hadn’t fired me for taking a plunge in the boss’s bathtub.
Even though she must have found my clothes.
I watched her stirring in the pot, trying to piece together her intentions. Why would she keep them, though?
I was still mulling over my idiocy when Magda asked me in a tone layered with annoyance, “Allora, why’re you not there?”
My nails bit into my palm, but outwardly, I hoped I showed a poker face. “I could cook.” Drop some extract into his dinner. If it wasn’t pineapple, move on to the next latex allergy, or add them all in one go and…
She gave me a condescending look. “Can you cook Italian?”
“No… but I cou—”
“I’m cooking Italian. That’s what signore likes.”
“I can make a dangerous paella.” No one could accuse me of lying.
She gave me a glare before shoving me away. “Go. I don’t have time for this.”
She didn’t mean any harm by it. I knew that.
But she cramped my plans. I would have preferred to cook his meals.
I wasn’t an assassin or anything. I did do days’ worth of research, and my research had told me there was a twenty to forty percent chance of the son having an allergy if the father was allergic.
Those were odds I would take. If I wasn’t allowed to cook, I needed to find another way.
She told me to clean the hallway leading to his office. I followed the hallway to his office.
A full wall of arched windows greeted me, framed on either side with dark wooden bookshelves from floor to ceiling.
There was something about this room that worked on my nerves.
From the dark wooden desk in the middle to the wall units and windows, the layout was eerily similar to my distant memory of Papá’s office.
Once I’d seen it, I couldn’t erase it from my mind.
It played in my emotions like an intense composition.
I hadn’t played or listened to music in eleven years, but in my mind, ghost fingers played an invisible piano, and the composition was Asturias (Leyenda) by Isaac Albéniz.
The beat took me over. The music climbed the walls, hung on to the ceiling, and shot into my veins like sharp icicles and hot lava at the same time.
My body moved before my mind could comprehend.
I walked slowly, then paced quickly in line with the composition pulsing in my head.
My fingers were inquisitive. Roaming the open shelves and grazing the line of books.
Some of them were old, worn, and in Spanish.
I gave my head a shake. It didn’t mean anything.
My breathing slowed. Fingers halted. On the fifth shelf from the bottom, the second column from the window, they touched something that brought my blood to a chilling plunge.
I’d stopped myself from remembering everything past that atrocious day when Papá died.
The days before, the days after, or even the day itself were like memories flushed underwater.
So vague they left me wondering if it had ever been real, a made-up fantasy, or a nightmare.
But there was one thing I remembered. A star, the size of my palm in crystalline. Cold to the touch. Warm with memories.
Si no puedes encontrar una estrella, busca lo suficientemente lejos hasta que la encuentres.
Like a dead engine coming to life, the words fell into place in my memory.
Papá would often say that. Most of the time, it was when I was sad or confused.
If you can't find a star, look far enough until you do.
That was his way of telling me there was always hope.
I just had to look hard enough to find it.
My fingers shook as I traced the outline over and over.
I’d never emptied the house. My days had been full, balancing between Mamá’s breakdowns and Mara’s grief.
Papá’s sisters had tidied up and removed our belongings, but I’d never gone in to check before the house was sold.
They’d told me they’d never gotten the floors completely clean.
What kind of people didn’t mind buying a house with crime stained on the floor?
The music thumping in my head turned into sharp thuds.
What was going on—was something going on— or— was— no!
I released a sharp breath and took a step back.
This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t turning into my mother.
I stared at the star as if it were a living, breathing thing.
Everything I thought I knew blurred. I reached for the star again.
Soothed my hand over it. I was so swamped in my fight for control, it took me some time to notice the door I had closed behind me was open.
The music in my head sagged to dead silence.
Thump thump. My heartbeat raced. I stood frozen, duster in one hand, the crystalline in the other.
He was a statue in the doorway. One hand on the handle, the other in his pocket.
His presence was intimidation of the highest order.
Colossal. His body. His gaze. His everything.
The only thing that moved was the tension in the air. Coming for me. Suffocating me.
I was a fool. This man was a different breed from his father. I had the uncanny feeling that I was his prey. I fought the instinct to dash out of the room. The room I wasn’t even supposed to be in.
Questions, doubts, and fear. Everything stacked in my mind like building blocks.
My shoulders shook as I sucked in a deep breath.
He didn’t move. It felt like he’d forgotten to breathe.
The longer he hovered around the doorframe, the more I wondered why he didn’t just leave or come in.
A few minutes crawled by. Then, with a heavy sigh that almost sounded angry, he stepped inside the room and closed the door with a soft thud that I felt all the way to my heartbeat.
The room’s last bit of oxygen snuck out.
He didn’t greet me. He didn’t even look my way. But when he moved, I broke out into a cold sweat. Flipping around, I gave him my back, my fists clenching around the shelf.
My heart raced, ready to escape out of my rib cage.
The faint creak behind me to the left ran all the way to my veins.
He must have taken a seat behind his desk.
No wonder I never heard him. He moved as silently as the air itself.
He was so big that if he stood next to me, he’d drown me with his height, yet he moved with the grace of a tiny cat.
Isn’t that how all predators would move?
Chaos burst into my mind.
Should I walk out? Throttle him with my bare hands or ask for his allergies?
The mechanical beep of the computer starting up sounded like a gunshot.
I need to get the hell out of this room.
I dusted shelves that held no dust, with slow and unhurried movements as if I were under the scrutiny of a predator.
Moving away from him, I worked the shelves closer and closer to the door.
My pulse raced so hard it felt like my entire body was beating to the rhythm.
Paranoia took over, and I felt him watching my every move.
Basta ya. I gave my head a shake and turned to the side.
His focus was on me with unblinking intensity.
My breath shallowed. Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I yanked my head back to the shelves.
The books in front of me were one blurry mess.
I might as well have been in outer space because gravity had deserted me.
Time crawled. A drip of sweat pooled from the back of my neck down my back.
I drew a slow, uneven breath and shifted my gaze to him.
Again and again. Each time with the same result.
His unrelenting attention was on me. He looked at me as if I were a ghost full of memories.
Something he both desired and wanted to fling out the window.
The heaviness of his stare brought me down like concrete.
I wanted to escape it. He didn’t even try to.
Why is he watching me?
I shifted again, and this time, I held onto his stare. One hand tapped rhythmically on the desk, while his other cupped his cheek. I’d thought his eyes were blank, but for a beat, I noticed something. Regret. Pain. Before it flashed and melted away into darkness.
The tension cracked inside me. A grunt, a moan, a sob… I didn’t know what it was, but something spilled out. He startled. Hand falling off his face and wrapping around the arm of the chair, he dropped his gaze like he hadn’t realized he was looking at me.
With a sigh of relief, I turned away and moved to the other shelf. What I wanted to do was abandon the whole thing and flee the room. Even his house. But that would make me a coward, and I wasn’t a coward. No somos cobardes.
The shrill sound of the phone broke the silence. Just as suddenly, it stopped. I didn’t hear a conversation. I turned again despite my mind yelling at me, idiota. He was back to staring at me. The phone in his hand.
?Dios mío! I was a fool. What if he suspected me?
The tension was cracking me open. Basta ya.
I was on my feet and moving toward the door when his voice slid across the room.
It was low and smooth. A warning by itself.
It caught me so off guard that I missed his words entirely.
I stared at the door. Agitation ground on my nerves. What the fuck had he said?
He repeated himself. “Under me.”
My breath left me in a gasp. Anger coiled in my stomach. I turned around.
“?Qué cono estás pensando?” The snap in my words couldn’t have been heard in any other way than how I had meant them. I took a deep breath. No. The only thought in my head still was, what the fuck was he thinking?
He didn’t even blink. I counted my blessings that he didn’t understand Spanish, and since he wasn’t dead yet, I softened my tone and asked through gritted teeth, “What?”
He pointed under his desk.
Oh! Embarrassment heated my skin and crawled up my neck. “I’ll get the vacuum cleaner.” And Isidora, because I wasn’t shutting myself alone in a room with him again.
“Now.” He nodded toward my hand. I followed it to the duster in my hand.
I gritted my teeth. The front of his desk was closed.
I’d have to creep past him to get under it.
I didn’t want to go near him. Being alone in a room with him was already a bad idea.
Going any closer would be like approaching a lion inside a cage.
One that had its paws out, nails scraping on the floor, eyes on its next meal.
My gaze shifted to the star. An image of Papá slotted into my mind.
Unconsciously, my hand reached for my chest. As if rubbing it would ever soothe the pain.
?Joder! I loathed this man for taking him away from me.
I put one foot stiffly in front of the other and moved toward him.
He leaned forward. I mistook him for a gentleman.
Thought he might get up and walk away. All he did was flip the frame on his desk flat.
I’d have to dig into that later. But at least he rolled his chair out of the way.
Dropping to my knees, I crawled under his desk.
I had to blink several times because my vision clouded with fear.
I fought to find a rhythm to my breathing.
When I finally managed to focus, all I could find was one lonely plastic shell.
One of those things that wrapped around a battery.
Puto gilipollas. He couldn’t have picked that up himself?
I hated giving him my back. I was wearing jeans.
Long. ?Gracias a Dios! But they were too snug.
The heat on my ass could have been his gaze, but it could have also been my embarrassment, fury, or my stupid imagination.
I picked up the shell and did a quick check.
Nothing was amiss. I could have looked through a magnifying glass and still not found a single cobweb.
Internet and telephone cables ran under the desk in a cable port, and I gave them a quick dusting.
Hopefully, it disconnected something, and then he’d have bigger problems than a stupid plastic shell.
“Qué demonios?”
What the hell? I jolted to my knees, knocking my head on the desk in the process.
Had he touched my hair? He was leaning on his chair, elbows resting on his knees, watching me with unblinking intensity.
This close, his scent filled my nostrils, bringing with it the unease of the night before.
His eyes were the color of the Alboran Sea.
It pulled me in and warned me off at the same time.
A shiver ran through my body. This man was so fucking dangerous.
Something crowded the space between us, and I didn’t care for it.
My frantic eyes searched the edge of the desk and found a metal lever folded beneath it, to extend it or something. Was it that? Had my hair snagged in it?
My body hummed with agitation. I was too overwhelmed to come up with a single coherent thought. Regroup and come back. With a vengeance. Crawling out of the cramped space, I jumped to my feet. Muttering something about getting the vacuum cleaner, I dashed out of the room.
My heart thumped like a drumbeat all the way to the storeroom. I found the vacuum cleaner and brought it back, together with Isidora. I told her that he had asked me to come into the office to clean some cobwebs, and I needed her help to move the desk.
But when I came back, he wasn’t there anymore.
Neither was the picture frame on his desk.
The only thing there was a set of batteries.