4. Ivy
IVY
I hear the water running in the bathroom. He went back in there a while ago, after letting me think over the whole “going home” thing, as if there’s anything to think about, like he’s giving me any say in this.
So that’s the next step in his plan. Abducting me.
At least I have a minute to think now. Maybe the first real minute I’ve had since waking up cuffed to this damn bed like his prisoner. How did I let this happen?
I flex my fingers around the metal of the cuff to test it for maybe the twentieth time since I woke up.
Solid. The headboard is strong, too. It doesn’t give when I pull on it.
He planned for this. He planned for me, which means he’s been thinking about this from the beginning.
He wouldn’t have handcuffed me to the headboard if he didn’t know it was strong enough to hold.
That should worry me more than it does. What worries me instead is the thing I can’t stop going over in my head. It’s been nagging at me since he caught me from behind and put me down with a needle instead of a bullet.
He could’ve killed me. He didn’t.
I replay it in my head the way I replay every encounter, breaking it down into components. The grab from behind. The arm around my waist. The needle in my neck.
At every step, he had the option to use lethal force. At every step, he chose not to.
It wasn’t because he couldn’t do it, either.
The way he moved, the way he controlled me while administering the sedative?
That wasn’t amateur work. That was training, and years of it.
He fights the way I do, with economy and precision.
It means he’s been in this world as long as I have. Maybe longer.
This man is dangerous. There’s no question about it. When I sprayed him in the eyes and kicked his wounded leg—a move that would’ve put most men on the ground for good—he got back up. He fought blind, in pain, bleeding through his bandage. Still, he overpowered me.
I don’t lose fights. I’ve been trained by some of the most brutal men in the world. I’ve been put through scenarios that would break most people, but I came out on the other side sharper every time. He put me on the floor and cuffed me again like it was routine.
He’s skilled. He’s a professional. He’s someone who knows exactly how much force to use and when to use it.
And he has chosen, more than once now, not to use it on me.
That’s what I keep coming back to. Every single thing I’ve done to him would justify retaliation, including when I lunged for a gun with every intention of putting a bullet in his skull. In my world, you respond to violence with greater violence. That’s the rule. That’s how I’ve survived.
But he didn’t do that. He settled for restraining me. He ordered me a goddamn cheeseburger.
Who the hell does that?
The water shuts off in the bathroom. I hear him moving around in there, shuffling a little in a way he won’t when he’s in front of me.
He wants to be sure he doesn’t show weakness.
I hope every step reminds him I am not the woman he thinks I am.
I am not someone who can be drugged and cuffed and fed into compliance.
Except those fries tasted exactly right with the mayonnaise, and he knew they would. I have no explanation for that.
The bathroom door opens, and he limps out, moving carefully but not dramatically. He would probably rather chew his tongue off than admit he’s in pain. How do I know? I’m exactly the same way.
He looks at me, then at the window, where the first hints of a gray sky are starting to show behind the curtains. It’s late or early, depending on how you look at it. Either way, it’s been a long night for both of us.
“We need to sleep,” he tells me. “We’re flying back home in the morning.”
At first, I can only stare at him. “I am not flying anywhere with you.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning. Right now, we need to sleep.”
“I’m not sharing a bed with you, either.”
Something shifts across his face. It’s something between a smile and a pained grimace. It makes my chest do that tight thing again that I don’t understand and don’t want. “You used to love sleeping next to me.”
Hatred isn’t something I can afford to bring into a job with me.
I used to be better at compartmentalizing, back when I faced countless men brought in to train me.
Brutal men who never bothered pretending they didn’t love inflicting pain.
They taught me to fight and endure as much as they taught me to control my emotions, since letting the hatred through made me weak—easy to beat.
“I don’t know you,” I grit out, smothering the flash of hatred that wants to burn me to a crisp.
His blank-faced certainty makes me hate him more.
“You did. Used to curl up against my side with your head on my chest. That’s how you were sitting when your brother first caught us.
Right next to me, tight against my side, with your head on my chest after you fell asleep while we were watching a movie. ”
He runs a hand over the back of his neck, grinning. “It drove your brother crazy. He walked in, saw us together, and punched me in the jaw without saying a word.”
The way he says it, it’s a fond memory. Like getting punched in the face by someone’s brother is something to smile about. The casualness of it, the warmth underneath it… none of it fits.
“I don’t have a brother,” I remind him. I’m starting to get sick of repeating myself. “I just don’t. Please, stop this.”
“You do have a brother.” He comes to the foot of the bed, arms folded.
Maybe he doesn’t want me to notice how he won’t put much weight on his injured leg, but I do.
I make a note of it the way I make note of everything else about him I might be able to use.
“His name is Liam. He’s been tearing himself apart for twelve years because he thought you were dead.
As soon as we found out you weren’t, I got on a plane.
That’s how much you matter to him—to both of us,” he adds.
“If I mattered so much, where the hell is he now and where was he for the last twelve years?”
The question comes out harder than I meant it to. It’s the one thing I can’t get past. The one piece of his story that doesn’t hold together no matter how many times I think it over. If I have a brother who loves me, who claims to have searched for me, where is he?
Nick doesn’t flinch. “He was grieving. We all were. There was an explosion on a boat. It was a wedding reception. Dozens of people died, including your parents. They were pulling bodies out of the water for days. One of those bodies was identified as yours.”
He pauses, and something dark crosses his face. “We buried you. Your brother thought he lost his entire family in one night. That’s what we all thought. We believed it because we had no reason not to.”
“And now?”
“Now we found out the truth. The Russos pulled you out of the water after the explosion. They took you. They could’ve brought you home, but they kept you instead. They gave you a new name. And about Liam not being here, trust me, he wanted to, but things are complicated at home.”
His voice is steady, but I hear the strain underneath.
“I’m not kidding when I tell you, as soon as we found out you were alive, I came after you.
Your brother is the one funding this whole trip.
He wants to bring you home just as much as I do.
That’s the truth. You can believe it or not, but it won’t change anything. ”
He goes silent. It’s the kind of silence that spreads through a space and fills it up until the air feels heavy. I hear the traffic outside, faint. Somewhere, a siren wails. Someone crosses the floor overhead.
“Nice story,” I finally decide.
He doesn’t move. He stares at me, waiting for more.
So I give it to him. “The Russos took me in. They took care of me. They protected me; they trained me. They gave me a purpose. Why in the hell would they lie about who I am? What would be the point?”
“You’re a smart girl.” The worst part? He says it without a single drop of condescension. “What do you think?”
I don’t answer him because I don’t have an answer, and that’s the problem.
The question isn’t why would they lie. The question is why wouldn’t they.
I know Vincenzo. I know how he operates.
Everything is leverage. Everything is a transaction.
People aren’t people to him. They’re assets.
Tools. Things to be used and discarded once they’ve outlived their usefulness.
I’ve always known that. I just never applied it to myself.
Nick doesn’t push. He doesn’t say another word, in fact.
He only moves to the other side of the bed, as far from me as possible without falling off the mattress, and lies down on top of the covers, fully clothed, with his hands folded on his chest. In no time, his breathing slows and evens out like someone who’s trained himself to fall asleep quickly…
or someone too exhausted to stay awake another minute.
I watch him for a while. His face, relaxed in sleep, losing its tight control.
He looks younger this way. Less guarded.
I didn’t notice the dark circles under his eyes before, and now they make me wonder how much sleep he’s gotten in the last four months, if his story about searching for me is true.
I could smother him right now with a pillow.
The thought arrives cold, clinical, the way all of my operational thinking does.
My right hand is free. The pillow is wedged between me and the headboard.
I would only have to press it over his face, hold it down, and wait for him to stop moving.
It would take a few minutes, maybe less if I use my body weight to pin him.
Except, he would wake up. He’d be awake the second I moved, because he sleeps the way I sleep, with one eye open and every nerve tuned to the slightest shift in the room.
People like us don’t sleep deeply. We can’t afford to.
I could try, but he would catch my wrist before the pillow touched his face, and then we’d be right back where we were before I wound up cuffed again.
With him on top of me, pinning me down, and those pale blue eyes looking down at me with something that isn’t anger.
So that’s out.
I need a different approach. Brute force isn’t working.
I’ve shot him, I’ve sprayed him, I’ve kicked his wounded leg.
He’s still here, still breathing. Still looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.
Violence doesn’t work on him. Not when it comes to me.
He absorbs it the way the ground absorbs rain.
It hits him, soaks in, and he keeps going.
That means I need to use the one weapon he can’t defend against.
Himself.
He has feelings for me. Real ones, deep ones. They’re the kind of feelings that make a man fly across the ocean and spend four months chasing someone he hasn’t seen in twelve years. The kind of feelings that let you take a bullet in the leg and stay in the city instead of running away.
Those feelings are his liability. And if there’s one thing Vincenzo taught me, one thing I know is true regardless of whatever else might be a lie, it’s that liabilities exist to be exploited. You find the sore spot, then you press on it until something breaks.
Nick’s sore spot is me. Whatever I was to him before, whatever he still thinks I am, that’s his weakness. If I stop fighting and start adapting, I can use it. I can earn a measure of trust and create an opening.
Then, when my chance comes, I’ll take it.
It’s manipulative. It’s cold. And it’s exactly what I’ve been trained to do. I’ve done it dozens of times. It never fails.
So why does the thought of doing it to him make something twist in my stomach?
I push the feeling aside, because feelings are liabilities, too. Whatever strange, unasked-for reactions my body keeps having around this man, they aren’t real. They’re the echoes of a life someone else lived. They belong to a girl named Laura, who died on a boat twelve years ago.
I am not her, if I ever was. I’m Ivy. And Ivy never lets feelings get in the way. I can’t afford to feel.
When I close my eyes, I let the exhaustion take me. It pulls me into a sleep that’s shallow and fitful, the way it always is. My cuffed wrist aches. The bed smells like him.
Before I go under completely, one last thought drifts through my mind. Nick’s question, the one I couldn’t answer and still can’t.
Why do you think?
I’m not sure I want to know the answer.