Chapter 4
Georgia
There’s no one in there. The kitchen is empty. It’s the swaying of a tree outside the window that’s making the shadows. The noises seem to be coming from the front hallway, maybe from the door. I sneak further along and round the doorway into the small foyer.
The front door is wide open.
And a man stands there, silhouetted against the light and caught with his hand on the handle.
I thrust at him with the knife but shudder to a stop, tilting up the knife at the final second.
What if this is James and Raina returning?
He chuckles as he reaches for me—this is not James, oh shit, oh shit—then he lunges and tries to grab my wrist. I whip up my other arm, swinging the hammer, connecting with his forearm with a dull smack.
“Bitch!” His curse is quiet if angry. As I move backward, I’m slicing at him, over and over, carving the air into a shield of lethal steel.
A shocking realization galls me—I’m loving this.
I’m anticipating the thrill of wreaking hurt.
I want this. I need this, though my heart is in my throat, pumping away, choking me, and if this goes balls up… I’m dead.
He stumbles back into the wall and I just miss his arm.
Smiling, gritting my teeth, I go to step in. One quick lunge at his chest or face and—
“Mine, Georgia.” Another man is behind me, and he sweeps me backward and I see it’s Rafael as he takes my place at the front. With a quick flurry and a twist of his body, he carries the intruder to the ground then kneels on him and gets his arm in a lock.
From the pained screech, it’s threatening to break some precious part of the man.
Rafael though. He’s here.
I should run.
In the few seconds it takes me to decide this, Rafael has cuffed the man, straightened, and pushed me into the wall, flipping me around to face the wallpaper. I grunt as I’m squashed into wall. He’s trapped and twisted my wrist. Pain shoots up my arm and I drop the knife.
“Hammer too.”
“Fuck you.” I do it, though, I open my fingers and it falls, just missing my freaking toes. I squint past him to see, surprise, surprise, that it’s Dave on the floor. He turns over and tries to rise using just his legs, gathering them under him.
“He’s leaving. The other one.”
Swearing, Rafael kicks out and connects, sweeps Dave’s feet out from under him and he lands awkwardly.
“Stay the fuck down,” he growls. He turns back to me, still keeping me pressed to the wall.
“And you. You are coming with me. This is your friend’s place, yeah?
We clean it of all your belongings. Leave it the same.
And we go. You, mister. I let you go, asshole,” he tells Dave. “So behave and you survive.”
It’s strange but with the adrenalin pumping through me, with the mix of fear and elation, and the jumping around I had to do due to my instinct to survive? It’s revived me like crazy, a hundred times more than lazing about on the beach achieved.
I’m shaking but I’m also yelling hell yeah at myself.
Or maybe it’s because his body is pushing into mine. His hand is on my wrist, his heated breath on my hair as he murmurs instructions. I squirm and feel my ass move against his body, listening to how that makes him stop breathing.
Oh. That’s how it is? Or am I reading too much into this? I can feel a hard ridge pressing into my butt. “Is that a gun in your pocket?” I ask quietly. “Or are you just pleased to—”
“Fuck. Not the time. Shut up, Georgia.”
Inside, I’m laughing. I’m definitely high on adrenalin…and on something else. I pant softly into the wall, excruciatingly aware of desires stirring in my body, all because a man is holding me.
I don’t get my question about his dick answered as we prowl about rearranging the house and returning money to the pile I stole from.
Putting away dishes, too, while dear, perverted Dave lies hogtied and blindfolded in a corner.
I don’t try to run. I’m sure I would only get a few paces out the door, at the most, before being tackled.
When we return to the BMW Rafael drove here, Dave has been sort-of freed. He’s been left in the shadow of the houses with the cuff keys where he can grab them, if he tries very, very hard. He also has a sign stuck to his back with THIEF written on it.
I’m wearing a black dress Rafael had the foresight to get for me so I didn’t have to steal more of Raina’s clothes. No underwear, because he says he forgot. That part I’m dubious about.
I buckle the seatbelt, note that Rafael has engaged the child locks so I cannot suddenly open the door. Not that I want to. Yet.
I enjoyed this. Though I am shivering from the aftermath, I feel a subtle excitement still pulsing in my veins. I hold my cold hands together in my lap to calm the shivering. The engine rumbles to life—no EV quietness with this car.
“Thank you. That’s twice, now, you’ve rescued me. Though we should’ve castrated Dave.”
“You’re welcome. And do you have any idea how much a man bleeds when you do that?”
I eye Rafael. Oddly specific knowledge. “Where are we going?”
He accelerates and turns onto the street, tires cracking, and the ocean murmurs a goodbye to me when I wind the window down halfway. Going to miss that sound.
“Back to the Somersby Estate so that you can join me in helping Benjamin Somersby figure out who slaughtered his son Joseph and a whole yacht-load of people, then trafficked you to those maniacs in Australia.”
Blinking, I slowly think this through. For a while my tongue seems stuck in my throat and doesn’t want to help me speak. “Wait. Wait. You don’t mean the whole boat? Everyone else died?”
“I do. There are a lot of questions.”
So I was the lucky one? “That gives a whole new meaning to luck,” I murmur to myself.
“Questions,” he continues, “like why you drove off after the Porsche crashed and I killed three men for you.” He sounds irritated.
“For me.” I angle an eyebrow. But…again, what the fuck? “And we’re certain everyone else died? Joseph is dead?”
“Yes.” He nods. “Weeks ago, Somersby says. The cops kept it quiet. Well, it was more than just the cops.”
It would have to be. If the Prime Minister sneezes here, the press gets a hold of it.
“And yet you told us you were abducted while out bike riding in Australia.”
Oh. Crap. “I told Juniper and Aaron that when I was chained to the wall in a room with them. I…I had just met them. I didn’t want to seem like some spoiled rich kid.
They were the first people I saw down there, in the House.
” And I was this university student kidnapped off a posh yacht in the middle of a party with upper class twats snorting drugs and having orgies.
Except, were there orgies? My memory is spotty.
“So you lied but then you kept on lying.”
I shrug. “I’m sorry. It was easier.” Dead straight it was. Being trapped with serial killers kinda stresses a person. I bit back that smartass answer, even though it’s true.
“Okay.”
Time ticks past and I decide, maybe that other pathway is safer. So I dare to ask.
“I was thinking, might be best if you take me to the Australian Embassy instead?”
He glances over. No answer? I should insist. My stomach tightens with unease.
I can ask again in a few minutes, and if he still refuses to answer, I will know. Know what? That Rafael is dangerous?
This disaster I was caught up in is nothing like what I thought it was.
Nothing at all. I’m still sorting through the unexpected set of revelations, when he pulls the car to a halt on the side of this road heading out of Clampton.
He creeps the car under some overhanging branches and undoes his seatbelt.
Then he gets out and walks around to my door, opens it and undoes my seatbelt, pulls me from the car.
“What are you doing?”
Moonlight and the shadows from the trees create a black-and-white chiaroscuro puzzle on his face, lending him a sinister air.
From behind, a car zooms past and he’s lit up but it’s so fast, the transition too fleeting, and he returns to darkness.
Can I trust him? He’s protected me from harm on the whole journey—during the raid on the house in Australia, on the plane, in London, and he stopped Dave from grabbing me, though I almost had that sorted.
He’s not explaining why he’s parked here, but the passing traffic isn’t going to stop and check what is happening, and I’m almost ready to doubt his motives.
Running from him is never going to be successful.
Then he starts to unbuckle his jeans belt and I watch, open-mouthed, unsure if this is what it seems to be.
“I don’t think I’m ready to—”
He slips the belt free from the loops of his jeans, pushes me back toward the open car door.
“No? Same. But you have made me angry. I don’t like getting angry at women who do absolutely stupid things. You endangered your life and mine, and probably fucked over my family too.”
“What?” I’m even more confused. What’s his family got to do with this? The fraternity? No, he must mean his actual family. “How did I do—”
He gives the belt a swing, loops it double in his hand.
Oh no. Shit. I think I figured this out. “Hey, you can’t do that.”
“Lie on the seat, facedown. It’s this or worse.”
Really? I frown and fold my arms. “Fuck off, Rafael.”
First time I’ve used his name like that. Earned it, he has.
My heart thuds, tells me not to provoke this man. But I’ve already done it, haven’t I.
Fight or flight? I’ve gone with fuck off instead. My fingers knead my arms.