Chapter 17
Ella
I’m enjoying running. It’s almost as thrilling as cardio, in terms of endorphin release.
Once I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I started to feel a very specific kind of thrill.
The first time I ran, I felt so much guilt.
This time it is more like a game, and there is no reason to feel bad.
Aiden gave me permission, and I know that at any moment, any of the three of them could show up.
I book a flight to South Korea. I stay in a luxurious Seoul hotel. I indulge myself in all manner of Korean food, attend a dance class at a studio, and watch tourists trail back and forth from the DMZ.
Then I fly to Thailand, lie on a beach in an archipelago so beautiful and so complex I feel as though I could be lost here forever.
There are a lot of places on this planet where you could truly disappear, I think.
They say it can’t be done, but a fistful of American dollars in a remote enough location and I have a feeling I could become nobody at all.
When I get tired of enjoying myself on beaches and indulging in rich cultural experiences, I go to London for some drizzle and stone. It is there, after a cream tea, that I feel a gun pressed into the small of my back as I am cleanly ushered into a black cab.
“Come with us, please,” an Englishman says.
I do as I am told, because I obviously have very little choice. I could gamble on them not shooting me dead on the street, but these days that seems to be less of an outlandish proposition than it used to be.
I don’t recognize the men who get into the cab with me. There are four of them. One driver, obviously not really a cab driver, one passenger in the front, and two at either side of me in the back. They’ve all got big, broad, heavyset builds.
I wonder if Aiden changed his mind and sent some freelancers after me.
I kind of doubt it. But it’s not something I’d entirely put past Leo.
He’s smart enough to outsource some hunting.
Maybe this is his idea of pageantry. Or maybe he wants vengeance for the cabin incident.
He likes to forget that he stuffed me in a car trunk for quite some time before I cuffed him and left him to sober up.
We go to a hotel in a big, impressive building surrounded by other big, impressive buildings.
Clearly we are in the part of the city where people have generational wealth.
I am ushered indoors to a place that looks like a cross between a hotel and an office.
There’s a clinical tidiness to it that makes me wildly uncomfortable, on top of being kidnapped by armed men.
It also smells like fish and cucumbers, but that’s a secondary issue.
“Upstairs, please,” one of the men with a gun says.
They’re all wearing pretty nice wool coats and scarves.
I wonder if they’re military of some kind.
Either ex, or wannabe, would be my guess.
More likely ex, because they’re quite disciplined.
They’ve been stoic and silent this whole time apart from asking me to get in the car and asking me to go up the stairs.
We reach a door with a notably blank name plate. It’s very odd. Someone went to the trouble to screw a brass plaque there, but not to put anything on it. How mysterious.
The guy I am with taps on the door three times.
“Send her in.”
The man opens the door for me and ushers me into the room. I find a typically English space waiting for me. Lots of fancy chairs. The sort of thing BP kept around in some of the spaces when he wanted to seem fancy.
Okay. This is really feeling like it could be Leo’s work.
But it’s not Leo who I find waiting for me.
It’s not someone I know at all. He has a mustache like someone out of the 1950s, and fine brown hair styled the same way.
He has muddy brown eyes, and the smooth skin of a man who has had facial work done.
He’s wearing a three-piece suit with a tweed vest, and when he speaks it’s with an English accent.
“Who are you?” I ask the question before he can give me whatever spiel he was planning on giving me.
“My name is Eric Mandeville,” he says. I am almost entirely sure that is not his name. “And I have some questions for you regarding the Levin boys.”
Ah, goddammit. I can’t escape this situation. All the money in the world is not enough to get away from it. Obviously I’ve been followed by more than Leo and Luke and Aiden. They’re not going to be happy when they find out about this. This is going to really piss them off.
“I don’t know anything about them. At least, nothing about the ones who are still alive.”
He smirks quietly in a way I find grotesque.
“That’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
I reply with a question.
“Why were you fucking Aiden Levin on an island in New Zealand?”
Well, that’s a bold and rather rude question.
“Because New Zealand is made up of only islands. If you’re going to fuck someone, you have to do it on an island,” I deadpan.
In this moment, I really miss Ethel. Ethel would solve this by biting him. I wish I hadn’t run away. I thought there was somewhere I could go that all of this would melt away. They’re getting worse.
I had three men who wanted me, but I was engaging with all the worst thoughts I ever had, and I was pushing them away whenever they tried to help me.
I couldn’t just let myself believe I was actually loved, and now I’m here with a man who chose Eric as a fake name quizzing me about my sexual adventures.
“He paid me,” I say. “A lot of money.”
“He paid to sleep with his dead brother’s girlfriend? What a sick bastard.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t ask about his inner motivations.” I sound bored. I’m not bored, I’m just very annoyed. More annoyed than afraid, even though my life is clearly at risk. Apparently the Levin men are not the only guys I am unable to shake.
“You did good work for BP, and it seems like your connection with the Levin family is in good stead to be leveraged again,” Eric says.
I am getting very, very tired of men seeing me as some kind of assassination adjacent fuck doll. I am even more tired of a lot of international travel and being kidnapped. It really takes it out of you. People don’t talk about that enough.
“Oh, yeah?” I give him a noncommittal response that I hope he will interpret as a cue to stop talking. He does not take the cue.
“I believe so. And as you are taking money for sex, it seems like it would still be your bailiwick.”
“I’m not interested,” I say. “And I’m going to go.”
“That’s going to be difficult.”
“Why?”
“Because I have armed men outside the door,” he says.
Fortunately, or rather, unfortunately, I am accustomed to being kidnapped. I sigh and sit down.
“I’m hungry,” I say. “I want a grilled cheese.”
Eric rings a little bell, and a man in a butler’s suit shows up through a door I didn’t notice because it looks like a bookcase. Very cool. I wonder if there are armed men at that door. I doubt it, somehow.
“Bring the lady a cheese toastie,” he says. “And some tea. And probably coffee, because she’s American and they rarely drink tea properly.”
“I like to steep my tea for several weeks in the nearest harbor,” I say, making a deep cut historical joke.
“You’re quite sassy,” Eric Mandeville notes.
“Cake would be nice too,” I say. “It’s just the little things about hosting, you know?”
“Of course,” he says, his eyes shimmering like a mud pool. “I should have thought to make more generous accommodations for someone who was so close to BP for so long.”
“He’s dead, and I have independent means of making money now. If this is about him, I am not interested.”
“I think I could interest you,” he says.
“I assure you, you cannot.” I’m accidentally speaking the way he does now. There’s something about an accent like his that compels my brain to mimic it.
“You have been used as a honeypot all too many times. But that does mean you are good at it. You have the ability to make any man think you adore him. I imagine you could make me think you liked me, if you were to stop sneering.”
“I’ve earned this sneer, and I have a thousand other facial expressions you would find just as hurtful, I promise.”
The thing about honeypots is that it’s actually very hard to force someone to participate.
I liked Teddy genuinely. And I didn’t even know I was being set up by BP, because he was able to manipulate me from a distance.
I thought I was meeting Teddy organically.
And I thought I was… I had no idea that it was all a ruse.
This direct approach is never going to work. And this man does not have any of the influence over me that BP did. So I’m going to have my grilled cheese and wait for this guy to work out why this is a bad idea on his own.
The butler brings his version of a grilled cheese. It has a lovely caramelized onion in it, which is absolutely delicious. It has a fancy cheese of some kind that I can’t identify, but fully enjoy, and a side of tomato soup.
Eric entertains himself with an E-reader while I sup, and turns on a television program that happens to be an old British comedy in which a husband and a wife turn their suburban acre into a self-sufficient farm, much to the horror of their fancy neighbors.
I, I discover, am having a nice time. This probably indicates something broken deep inside me, but so far I am not being assaulted or insulted, so I’d call that a win.
“So are you planning on keeping me here until I agree? Or are you fine to let me think about it, or, what?”
“If we can’t convince you to help, we can always use you as bait.”
“Oh, that’s fun. We could do a hostage video.”
“You’d prefer to be a hostage?”
“I’d prefer to have another cream tea. The one I had was delicious. And if the cream teas are anything as good as the grilled cheese, I think I am in for a treat.”
Leo