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Raniero reaches up to grab my chin. Just like last night, he forces me to stare at him. The intimacy from earlier has disappeared and is replaced with anger. “No, they would have done worse to you. If Grant Jackson had threatened their families, they would have killed you in broad daylight and sent the video to your father. They wouldn’t have done their research. They wouldn’t have figured out the most painful way to wound him. They would have shot first and asked questions later.”
All my life I thought that my father’s job protected me from the worst of humankind. In actuality, it revealed it to me in its truest form.
“I am doing you a favor, Calliope. I am saving you from what can happen to you if your father gets you behind barsagain. I am saving you from living on the streetsagain. I am saving you from worse men than me finding you and doing unspeakable things to you.” He releases my face with a shove disparate from his fist tugging on the leash. “You’re a beautiful girl, Calliope, and I will spend the rest of my life ensuring that you stay that way. So don’t think about escaping and running back to your old life. You are mine now and soon you will bear my children and my name.”
“What about love?” I cut him off with a glare. “What about being with someone you care about?”
Raniero gives me a cold, cruel smile that speaks to the depths of his depravity. “I’ve been watching you for weeks. I know the deodorant you use. You know the kind, the clear Secret with lavender and vanilla. I know what your body smells like after a hard day’s work.” He tugs the leash tighter until I’m wincing as I step into him once more. There is no space between our bodies, just clothes keeping us separated.
“Once when I was in your apartment, I found a pair of your panties lying on the floor. I brought those to my nose and inhaled your scent. I knew right then and there that there was no one else in this world for me. You made me hard and you weren’t even in the room.” He’s so close that I can feel his warm breath on my face. “I love you in the strangest sense of the word. I love you like a man loves something he’s obsessed with. And one day, you will love me, too.”
A trickle of sweat beads on my back and slithers down my spine. I am horrified and aroused. But mostly, I’m terrified.
If this is a man that can break into my apartment, steal my clothes, and learn everything about me down to the deodorant that I wear, then what kind of person am I dealing with? Should I fight for my freedom or let him steamroll me like he is intending to do?
Do I even have a choice?
9
RANIERO
The first five days were the hardest. Christopher Ray came to the house a few hours after I’d kidnapped Calliope from the house. He wanted to ensure the realtor had locked everything up and that nothing was missing. Instead, he found her car still in the driveway and her purse on the kitchen counter. Assuming the worst, he called the cops.
Chief Jackson was deliberately directed elsewhere as the officers thought it best not to inform him just yet that his daughter had gone missing. Not to mention they told Christopher that a police report couldn’t be filed until she’d been gone for twenty-four hours anyway. “I’m not filing a report or nothing,” Christopher told the police. “I’m just saying that my realtor was here earlier today and now she’s not. Her stuff is here though and that’s concerning.”
Twenty-four hours later on the dot, a police report was filed by Chief Jackson. His officers realized that they needed to inform him of what was happening. Since Calliope’s real estate brokerage hadn’t heard from her, they needed Grant’s help locating her. All Grant could do was drop by her apartment and demand that she open the door. When she didn’t, he spent the rest of the night pacing around his living room and screaming at his girlfriend.
I had a man watching from the street and he said that Grant wasn’t even upset that his daughter was missing. The Chief of Police was angry that she was causing a scene that involved him.
The police searched the Ray residence for fingerprints. They found mine mixed among dozens of others and we were all brought into the station for questioning.
“I know you did it,” Grant snarled at me from across the interrogation table. It was the second time this year that I’d been hauled into the police station and it was getting tiresome.
“Did what?” I sounded bored because I was. Grant didn’t have anything on me. He couldn’t prove if I’d been at the open house because Christopher Ray was forced to inform the police that we were acquaintances. His wife had to come forward and say that she’d invited me over a few weeks before. They were my alibi.
“You have my daughter, don’t you? You said you’d hurt my family,” he accused.
But I shook my head no and crossed my arms over my chest. “No, I said I didn’thaveto hurt your family. Besides, maybe your daughter was just tired of putting up with your bullshit. I hear you’re a wife-beater, Chief Jackson. I bet if I asked her, she’d tell me that you beat her, too.”
His face exploded with embarrassment and rage. He slammed his fists down on the table for only a second before grabbing the metal chair and flinging it at the wall. “You fucking Italian thug. If I find out you took my daughter, I swear to God, I’ll—”
“—what?” I cut him off. “You’ll do what? You weren’t even close. Nobody is going to believe that you’re leading the missing person hunt when you arrested her just two years ago for some bullshit jaywalking charge.” I stood up with all the conviction of a wrongly accused man and demanded to be released. “Come back when you have some proof, Jackson. I’m getting sick of spending my afternoons with you.”
But everything was calming down, or at least I assumed it was. Nobody had called me in twenty-four hours and one meeting with the editor of the newspaper kept my name out of the press. I wasn’t on trial for anything; I wasn’t even a suspect anymore. Life was easy peasy with my stolen goods locked upstairs.
I needed a break from the life of a kidnapper and decided to make a trip into town. My house on the lake was only twenty minutes from the heart of Manhattan, but it made for a nice little drive. I had decided to have lunch with a couple of my brothers at a tap house that served bar food and craft beers.
Mateo was already at Tallgrass when I arrived. He had chosen a spot on the roof away from the other guests. A storm cloud hung off in the distance and there was rain on the forecast for later in the day, but for now, we enjoyed the sun that we could. “They got chorizo crab dip,” Mateo announces as I walk up. He flips over the paper menu while shaking his head in awe. “Fucking chorizo and crab, Nero.” Mateo had a flight of beers in front of him. Four mini glasses were filled from the lightest pale straw pilsner to the darkest stout on tap.
“Any of those good?” I ask as I sit down.
He grabs one of the beers in the center and shrugs. “A lot of IPAs,” he says as if that’s an explanation. But a minute later he chugs the whole thing like it’s a shot.
“I think I’ll settle for a Bloody Mary.” I grab the menu on the table and glance over it. Since we’re on the roof, our selections are limited. You can’t get soup when the waitress has to walk up three flights of stairs to get it to you.
Luca arrives a few moments later with his eyes glued to his phone. His fingers tap furiously on the screen and without looking up, he dodges other diners, waiters, and planter boxes on his way over to us on the other side of the roof. “I gotta town council meeting in forty-eight minutes,” he announces as he sits down. “Is that the Predator doppelbock? I want one.” He immediately starts to look around for a waitress, raising his hand to get some attention.
“Jesus,” I swear at him, “you’re so embarrassing to be with. And why are you drinking before a town council meeting?”
