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I closed my eyes, imagining he was there with me, but I couldn’t get the dream to take hold. It was too quiet. The moon was behind the clouds and the air wasn’t cold enough. I worried that the memory would start to fade. I worried that the distance between us would grow. We didn’t have enough time together. Just a few weeks. Maybe that wasn’t long enough to bond us together when we had been separated for months? What if they were all wrong? What if he didn’t come back for me?
***
IT WAS LATE, BUT EVERYONEelse was gone. Lilly had left hours ago. I suspected that she was working on her boutique idea, but she never gave me an answer when I’d asked her about where she’d been spending all her time. I would have pushed her, but if she meant it to be a surprise for her family, I didn’t want to ruin it for her.
Gabriel had taken Mrs. Calegari to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend. She had a cousin who owned a house there and was supposed to stay for the week. Gabriel said he’d be back in a few days. He’d taken several trips the last few months but was usually only gone for a day or two. Earlier this month he’d stayed away longer, for about a week. He acted more and more like Dante everyday, from his domineering attitude to his travels. Either that, or I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
The house was quiet without all of them in it. I ate a sandwich for dinner, watched a movie, made sure the alarm was set, and called the men in the black car who drove me around and watched the house like hawks.
“Who’s this?” I said when one of them answered the phone.
“Manny,” he answered.
Manny was okay. He was one of the few who talked to me like I wasn’t someone’s property.
“I’m going to bed, Manny. Have a goodnight.”
“Yes, ma’am. You, too.”
I hung up, feeling like an idiot. Calling people to tell them I was going to bed. I thought it was crazy, but when Gabriel left, he insisted on it. When this was all done with, I had a lot of things I was going to hang over his head for a very long time.
Provided we were still on speaking terms by then.
I put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth and crawled into bed. I never fell asleep easily. Usually, I had to keep myself busy until I was too exhausted to keep my eyes open. That night, however, my eyes got heavy after just a few pages of the book I was reading. It must have been the solitude that brought me peace of mind for a change; a chance to be alone with my own thoughts, thoughts that were never very far away from him
***
IAWOKE TO COMPLETEdarkness and rough hands all over me. My feet were being held down while someone else held my arms back. I struggled. I fought by twisting my body around. I barely got out a yell and someone shoved something round and chewy into my mouth right before they covered my eyes with a blind fold. I shook my head from side to side to get them to stop, but after a few seconds I gave in. All I achieved was to give myself an ache in my neck and they were too strong for me anyway. One of them held my head still. A blind fold wasn’t enough. They covered my headwith some kind of sack.
My heart raced uncontrollably. I was being kidnapped. What happened? How had they gotten into the house? Where were they taking me? I tried desperately to fight them off, but there seemed to be so many of them. My feet were quickly tied together so I tried to buck with my entire body. Then my hands were tied together and some long sack was slipped over my entire body like I was in a cocoon. With the amount of hands holding me down, I wasn’t almost completely immobile.
I was picked up and carried off, slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. What happened to everyone? Where were the men who guarded the house? Where was Manny? What happened to the alarms? They were silent alarms possibly. Maybe someone was coming. The police would be notified. One of Gabriel’s employees would come, surely?
They carried me away from the house and to, I assumed, a car outside. I heard their feet, felt the air change. I wiggled harder, but whoever was carrying me tightened their grip. I couldn’t move too much. My air was cut off from the pressure on my stomach. Struggling too much started to hurt too much as well.
Was this it? Was this how my life was going to end? I heard feet shuffling and tried to figure out how many people there were, but my fear and the blood pounding in my head made it hard to focus.
I was lowered into what had to be the trunk, but before I could get my body to move the way I wanted it to, the trunk lid slammed shut.
Where the hell was everyone? With all the security measures Gabriel had in place, how had someone gotten into the house?
I was going to die. Suffocated in the trunk of a car. Taken to some field, shot in the back of the head and left to die there. Or even worse, buried in a shallow grave, not to be found again until the farmer tilled his soil for the next planting season.
Screams raged from my throat, but the ball gag suppressed them. I wanted to pound on things, kick the trunk lid, but with the full-length body jacket, I was immobile. My heart hammered in my chest so fast I thought it would burst. I knew my screams wouldn’t be heard, but I made them anyway, until I got tired. It was the one thing I had control over - scream or don’t scream. I wiggled until I maneuvered my body into the most comfortable position I could find.
I needed to rest. I didn’t know if I had hours, days, or just minutes left to live. Or... there was a chance that... I wouldn’t be killed at all? Maybe, I would be held for ransom? Locked away until Willis paid for my release?
Willis! Willis would come for me! He was wealthy. He had resources. Willis would do everything he could to find me.
And the Calegaris. Lilly would come home soon. She’d wonder where I was. She’d look for me. She’d call Gabriel and the police. There’d be video footage! Dante had told me about the surveillance cameras. My kidnapping would all be on video. As soon as they came home, as soon as someone saw the video footage, they would come for me.
If I wasn’t dead already. If they had any clue where in the world to look.
Oh, God. I was going to die. I knew it.
Dante sent me to his home to be safe, but they’d found me. Whoever “they” were - Bailey’s cohorts. Delacroix? I didn’t trust that man and I questioned my brother’s judgment where he was concerned. My quiet, happy world had been invaded by murders and predators.
Never mind the good I could find in Dante. He left me to keep me safe, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t the only one who could hurt me. There were others in the dark, other people who didn’t want me, who didn’t love me. People who wouldn’t give a damn whether I lived or died, and those people now had me shoved into the smelly trunk of a car.
