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When the shoulder widens at the edge of the mountain, I pull off. He pulls behind me and we sit in our cars in a standstill when my phone rings from somewhere below the passenger seat. I find it and accept the call.
“Please let me go?”
“The Bugatti has a full tank of gas. You can’t outdrive me. Get out of the car.”
“You’re a bossy fucker.”
“Fine. You call the shots. If you don’t want to talk to me, I can call Igor, or I could call your father. What would you like me to do?”
“You haven’t told anyone that I left?”
“No.”
“Right, you don’t want them to know you failed like all of the other bodyguards.”
“That’s not it, Lilia.”
“Whatever you say.” I’m short on options. I hop out of the driver’s seat, hoping that if Erik has to look me in the eye, he won’t be able to deny me the chance of freedom. He gets out of the car and extends his hands wide. They’re empty. Good.
“Stop right there. All I have to do is tell my father I got away from you.” I flash my phone at him. “You’ll be fired. Or my father may have already heard that both cars took off. Igor won’t have an explanation. That’ll do it.”
“I could just tell Pakhan we went for a joy ride.”
“Joy, yeah. That mysterious thing I don’t ever get to experience.”
Does Erik cringe? I point to his car. “Turn around, say you never found me. Let me live a life where I can make decisions for my myself.”
“I actually want that for you.”
I scoff. “You care what I get to do with my life? Okay, then we’re good. We can both get in our cars and never see each other again.”
A faint ding causes Erik to pull his phone from his back pocket. “It’s a text from your father asking what’s going on. He knows that you and I left in separate vehicles, and that we’ve stopped on the side of the mountain.”
It’s nice of Erik to read the message to me, but he doesn’t tell me what his response is. He just types, waits for another ding, then throws it off the cliff.
“What did you just do?”
“Your father has trackers in the phones.”
“Yeah, so why did you get rid of it?” Erik’s eyes go dark and while I’m still standing there stunned, he rips handcuffs from his back pocket as he rushes me. Before I can get back to my car, he’s slapping the hard metal against one wrist, gripping my flailing arm with his free hand, and capturing it in the steel restraints.
We’re face to face, my arms bound between us. My phone got knocked away in the struggle. His breaths are heavy, his jaw set, and his body towering over me.
Why did some deep, depraved part of me like the struggle? Why do I like his hands gripping my wrists when the handcuffs would suffice? My father should have let me date.
His voice is low and controlled. “You want to go rogue? I’ll help you. But no one can know where I’m taking you.”
“I have a perfectly good plan, and being kidnapped isn’t part of it.”
“It’s only kidnapping if it’s against your will.” He steps back, one set of fingers still wrapped around my wrist.
I yank my cuffed hands up. “I want freedom, not to be shifted from one master to another.”
Seven
Erik
IhatedrushingLilialike that but I had no choice.
