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“Yeah. Whatever. Just try not to do it again. I’ve got a really long day of trailing some gangbanger with Lewis. God, that man is a bore,” she complained.
“Now that’s bad luck getting paired with him.” I chuckled uneasily, although entirely grateful for the subject change. We drank our coffee together then, talking over mundane things like who would go to the grocery store and which bills needed to be paid before it was time to get to work. Thankfully, she seemed to have dropped the whole nightmare episode.
Together, we took the elevator down to the ground floor and made our way to the subway. Our commute was thankfully short, and we arrived at the office building in less than fifteen minutes. Walking inside, we traveled up the elevator to the penthouse offices, where we worked and watched over the city of New York. She sauntered off quickly, but stopped when I ran into our boss, Lynn Graves.
“Kassandra, what the hell are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be investigating Antonio Vitale?” Lynn demanded.
“I...” I started, seeing Nicole begin to grin off in the distance.
Shit. I needed to think fast.
“I didn’t find anything at the villa. Antonio got bored, so he sent me away. He doesn’t like doing business with a woman around, so I came back home,” I blurted. Lynn narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Crap.
“Huh. I seem to recall that you’re exactly his type,” she replied. “Come to my office later. File a report and we’ll talk about it.”
I nodded curtly, and she looked away, giving me leave to escape. Rushing off to my office, I shut the glass door behind me, leaned against it and sighed heavily with relief.
I shouldn’t have come here. I had made a mistake.
Slowly, I convinced myself to move away from the door and sit down at my desk. I powered on my computer and logged in, pulling up our database on international criminals. First, I checked the date. It was May nineteenth, just one day after Markos’ gathering. I hadn’t lost any time then. Next, I pulled up my own profile. There was a blurb that popped under my profile indicating that I was deep undercover and was expected to be for the next few weeks. Only somehow, I was back in New York. And I had no idea how I got there.
I was in deep shit. I had nothing to report to Lynn.
I’d been working my own angle on Markos. I hadn’t gathered anything on Antonio and I was going to have to pull something out of my ass just to please her and not get fired.
I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to my desk, groaning. Eventually, I pushed myself back up and reluctantly got back to work.
I pulled up the form in the system and began to fill in the easy parts. Names. Dates. Where I’d been and what I’d done, everything I could remember up to when Markos captured me. In an effort to come up with a plausible story, I made up quite a bit. I had attended a party at Markos Varela’s villa on Antonio’s arm. Markos had taken an interest in me and had me thrown out of his party when I rejected his advances. Antonio had backed him up and tossed me out on my ass.
I read it over and over, trying to memorize the story I’d mostly made up. Lynn would question me later and I couldn’t mess up the little details. I’d fuck myself over if it came to that.
My ears hummed for a moment, and I shook my head.
“I can’t wait to tie you to my bed and fuck that tight little ass again. I’m going to whip your disobedient backside and then, you’re going to beg me to taste your blood,” Markos growled.
I jumped up with a startled scream, pushing my chair backwards in the process. I looked around, trying to see where he was hiding but there was no one here. I was alone.
My blood raced, heated with fear.
Outside my office, through the glass wall, I could see other agents staring back at me.
Quickly, I sat back down and tried to act normal. If anyone asked, I’d just say I saw a spider or something. I stared at my keyboard, hiding my face behind the monitor as I flicked my eyes side to side.
He wasn’t here. I was safe. Why had it sounded like he had said that right next to my ear? Why had he sounded so close?
In an attempt at self-preservation, I focused on work as much as possible. I studied different reports on criminals or persons of interest for hours, until Lynn sent her assistant to fetch me. I logged off my computer then and followed him, trying to quell the anxious churning in my belly. Shoving my fingers in my pockets, I tried to appear normal and as though I wasn’t hearing strange voices in my head.
My ears whirred once more, feeling hollow and I pawed at them.
“I’m going to consume you, Kassandra. You’re going to be mine, forever.”
It was him again and I tried not to flinch. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be. He was somewhere in Mykonos, on his villa tending to his vineyard. He wouldn’t waste his time on someone as meaningless as me.
I was at work. I had to focus and ignore whatever was happening to me. I was just tired, or jet-lagged or something. It had to be that simple.
“Kassandra. Listen, I read your report and some things just aren’t adding up,” Lynn said curtly, gesturing to the chair in front of her desk. I sat down and nervously picked at my nails. Her assistant closed the door, rushing out to give the two of us privacy. I swallowed apprehensively.
She questioned me for what felt like an hour. What I saw at the villa. Why Antonio had brought me to the party in the first place. Detail after detail she pulled from me until I began to feel exhausted and I was beginning to question my own story. The longer I was with her, the more her face looked suspicious. Eventually she gave up and shook her head.
