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But the swiftly moving footsteps came closer, echoing hollowly through the station. Eva bit her lip, pulse beating wildly at her throat as sweat trailed down the valley of her spine.
Any second she was going to be discovered. And then what would she do? There was nowhere left to run except onto the tracks.
Suddenly she heard the familiar rumble of the train thundering through the tunnel, the volume rising before the brakes squealed. She could no longer see or hear her pursuer, but she could sense the presence of someone not far behind her, and more sweat trickled down her rib cage from beneath her breasts. Panting from the chase, she pressed her back against the column and watched the doors of the subway car slide open, aching desperately to be inside, heading away from her tracker.
She waited a beat, two, slowly slipping off her shoes and gripping them in her hands, ready to make a run for it at the last possible second.
Just before the doors to the train could slide shut, she bolted, running faster than she ever had before. She slid into the subway car so quickly that she toppled into the far wall of the empty car, then collapsed into a seat, panting.
Heart still crammed in her throat, Eva peered through the window onto the platform. The man stared back at her from far too close to where she’d been hiding. He had long dark hair, pulled off of his forehead in a ponytail, and his ruddy face was partially obscured by dark sunglasses and a scraggly black beard.
Tough was the first thought that came to her mind.
He’ll kill me, was the second.
Though she was certain she’d never seen him before, something about his face tickled a fragment of a memory she’d buried long ago. She cringed as he made a move toward her, but the doors slid closed before he could reach the train.
Sighing with relief, Eva sunk into the seat, while the man still watched her from the platform, stone-faced. As the train pulled away, she thought of Antonio. She had always made fun of him for his tireless efforts to keep her safe. Only now did she suspect that there had been no reason for jokes or laughter. None at all.
She put her face in her hands and cried in a way she hadn’t since her brother’s funeral.
* * *
He watched his man Luca emerge from the subway entrance without Eva Fiorini and fought the urge to stub his cigarette out on the Cadillac’s leather seat.
The coward had let her get away. Fucking Luca was too worried about getting caught by the police and not nearly worried enough about disappointing his boss.
Maybe it was time for him to have a lesson in what it meant to cross a man such as himself…
Taking his pound of flesh out of the guy hustling back to the car wouldn’t bring him any closer to recovering all the things the Fiorini family had stolen from him, but it would take the edge off. That edge had gotten sharper the past few days as he’d watched Eva run around town without a bra under her whisper-thin shirts, practically inviting every man who passed her by to yank her skirt up around her hips and take her against the nearest wall.
Her true colors were showing at last. She was as morally corrupt as every other member of her family, people who had cheated and lied their way into their fortune, all while pretending that their hands were clean.
It shouldn’t have come as any surprise. A rotten tree will only bear rotten fruit.
Still, a part of him mourned the loss of the little girl he’d watched grow into a lovely young woman, even as he looked forward to showing Eva what happened to bad girls who didn’t play by the rules.
Chapter Ten
Jack
As Jack strode through the sea of cubicles at the Fiorini Group, returning from a financial meeting with a few other executives, he could’ve sworn he heard Eva’s voice calling to him.
He’d foolishly thought once he’d bedded her, his mind would settle.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
“Jack, please, I really do need you.” One of the interns popped her head up from her desk. Julie.
Not Eva. Not even close. Jack sighed inwardly. Julie was first in her class at NYU but had absolutely no ability to do anything on her own.
The other executives in the vicinity rolled their eyes. Mike O’Halleran, the VP of Sales, gave Jack a nudge as he came to a stop beside him.
It was a running joke that Jack was the subject of all the female interns’ office romance fantasies. He’d never done a thing to promote it. But where most of the other executives hated his Head Asshole routine, the young women seemed to get off on it. They liked the thought of being bedded by the bad-boy billionaire, he supposed.
He had a momentary th
ought of Eva asking him to punish her, and tamped it down as he came around to the red-haired intern’s cubicle. “What can I help you with, Julie?”
