Page 154 of Lethal Obsession

“That’s five minutes,” his voice rumbles against my cheek.

Fuck.

I sit upright, suddenly feeling utterly nauseous. Alexei squeezes my hand. “It’s going to be fine.”

I meet his eyes, shaking my head slightly. “Is it,” I mutter.

Bracing myself, I hit the call button.

My father answers on the first ring, his expression grim. “Why are you calling on this line?” Then his eyes shift sideways to Alexei and take on an extremely dangerous, if familiar, dark stare. “And why the fuck is he with you? Where are you calling from, Ofelia?”

“Roman.” Darya, standing behind him, puts a steadying hand on his shoulder, though her expression is no less concerned.

“I’m okay. I’m safe. We both are.” To my surprise, my voice is quite steady. “So I don’t want you to worry.”

“I asked,” Papa says very deliberately, “where the fuck you are. I would like an answer.”

I glance at Alexei, unsure what to say.

“Don’t look at him,” Papa snarls. “I’m the one asking questions.”

“Roman—” Darya begins.

“Back it down, Roman,” Alexei cuts across his sister. He speaks in the flat, hard tone I’ve heard too many times, and I don’t need to look at him again to know his face is wearing the iron-cold mask he employs to cover any emotion. “We made this call. We can shut it down just as fucking easily.”

I would find my father’s apoplectic expression almost amusing under other circumstances. As it is, I’m not entirely sure he isn’t going to blow an actual heart valve.

“Alexei!” I shake my head at him, frowning.

His mouth hardens, but he subsides.

“Ofelia.” Darya takes advantage of the momentary silence to address me directly. “Why don’t you start by telling us how you came to be there with Alexei? Did something happen to you?”

Oh, God, I love you, I think, my heart twisting with gratitude at her sympathetic tone and the lifeline she’s just thrown me.

“Yes,” I gulp, struggling to speak through the sudden rush of emotion. “Yes, something did happen. But I don’t want you to worry, okay? I’m fine. I really am.”

“Ofelia,” my father growls warningly, but at least he’s looking at me instead of Alexei now, and to my relief, I see his hand steal up to hold Darya’s. He’s always calmer when she’s touching him.

I take a deep breath. “Yesterday, some men tried to kidnap me on the street, in Granada.”

Darya’s hand flies up to her mouth.

Every last hint of color fades from both her and my father’s faces.

It makes me sick to watch, but it can’t be helped either. This has to be said.

“It’s a long story, but the short version is that they’d been spying on me for some time. They planned to use me as bait, to get to Alexei.”

“Who, exactly, are they?” Papa asks, dangerously quietly. His and Darya’s eyes swivel hard left, narrowing on Alexei with twin precision. “And why,” my father continues, “did they choose Ofelia as bait?”

I slide my hand over Alexei’s out of sight of the camera, warning him against answering. “Because they knew Alexei and I are together.”

The words come out surprisingly easily. And once they’re out, I find it oddly simple to continue, despite Papa’s and Darya’s blank looks of shock.

“I recently spent a week with Alexei and told someone about it. Unfortunately, her phone was bugged. Yesterday the people who bugged it launched a coordinated attack that took out both of my security detail, then snatched my friend and me outside an ice cream place in Granada. We managed to escape on the outskirts of town. I got clear and made it to some friends of Alexei’s, who brought me here, to him.”

Papa’s eyes shift from me to Alexei and back again. “I am going to ask this again,” he says tightly. “Who are they, and where, exactly, is here?”