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“Go to hell,” I hissed, taking another pointless step back.
He was ready though, muscles coiled, eyes watching. If I bolted again, I wouldn’t make it two steps.
“One day I’ll make a trip there, maybe, but not today,perla. Today, I have a job to do.”
“Kidnapping women hardly qualifies as a job.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose like he was staving off a headache, shaking his head at the same time. “You really need to rein in your claws before we go in there,” he muttered, nodding toward the enormous gray stone mansion.
Claws? “I’m not a dog. Or a cat.”
He laughed like that was somehow funny. “I was thinking more of a prim and proper Tasmanian devil.’
Well, actually, I rather liked that—not that I’d admit it aloud.
His smile fell away, and he was back to pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sit down,” he said, nodding to a bench in the gardens off the main driveway amid a cluster of Japanese lilac trees.
I shook my head. I wasn’t trembling, I realized. The man with the gun had walked away, and I’d… what? Relaxed? That wasn’t the word for it. I was still on guard, but it felt like I was waiting for an attack from the side or from behind, not from the man who stood directly in front of me. Which was ridiculous, of course.
“Sit. Down,” he said again. This time his lips moved in exaggerated enunciation, which made it feel like there were worms writhing beneath my skin. The exaggeration was common to people learning that I read lips. It made me feel like an infant with people speaking to me in slow, exaggerated tones. I didn’t think that was this man’s intent, but it had the same aggravating effect, nonetheless.
But rather than reveal the effect he was having, I huffed—exaggeratedly—and stomped across the grass to the bench, sitting down neatly at the edge of it.
He sat down right next to me, his thigh pressed up against me. I expected it to feel warm; what I wasn’t expecting was the way my thigh tingled all along where he made contact. I tried to draw myself further away, but I’d foolishly positioned myself right at the edge. Any further, and I would have fallen right off.
I moved to stand instead, but stopped. It would probably give him satisfaction to see me flustered.
“That asshole you’ve been fucking was tracking you,” he said. There was a certain twist to his lips as he said the word “fucking” like it repulsed him in some way. “Bianchi wanted to know where you were every minute of every day. So, that leaves me with two options: Either you’re in league with him, and I can’t let you out of my sight. Or, he’s stalking you, and you should be damn grateful you’re here with me because it might be the only goddamned place you’re safe.”
Safe? Nothing since I’d found this man in Elio’s dining room with a gun in his hand had felt safe. I opened my mouth to tell him he had a very skewed understanding of safety, but I paused.
He was a criminal, no doubt. But that didn’t mean every word out of his mouth was a lie. In fact, the best liars often relied heavily on the truth, did they not?—peppering in fibs only where necessary. It was possible, then, that there was some truth to what he was saying about Elio.
“How can I know you even retrieved that thing you claimed was a tracker from my shoe?” I asked. “You could be lying.”
His chest deflated even as it shook with a half-hearted laugh. “Do I look like a five-year-old who has nothing better to do than play games?”
I looked him over, but the perusal only served to make me painfully aware of the tingling in my thighs, the way it branched out, spreading until it set off sparks low in my abdomen.
But putting aside the innate response to his physical appeal, it did seem that “playing games”—as he put it—was beneath this man who carried around him a potent air of power and authority. So, why lie? He’d proven he could take what he wanted. The lie made no sense. Not that I had any intention of admitting it.
“You most certainly do not look like a child,” I said. "You look like a murderer. You look like a man who kidnaps women and keeps company with men who have no qualms with that.”
He nodded with no hesitation. “You’re right; my men are loyal to me. And they know if I’m keeping you here against your will, there’s a damn good reason for it.”
“A good reason?” I shook my head emphatically. “There is never a good reason to abduct and terrify a human being.”
“You hardly look terrified,perla.” There was a light in his eyes as he spoke that I couldn’t quite put a name to at first, but then it came to me. Respect. Begrudging, perhaps, but respect nonetheless.
All right. He’d never be able to convince me he wasn’t evil, but he seemed bloody certain Elio was evil as well.
“You were in Elio’s flat. You… tortured and murdered a man in his employ. Why?” The words felt ridiculous on my tongue. There was no excuse that could justify what he’d done.
“Those men—Elio Bianchi and Owen Thompson—fucked with my family, my flesh and blood, Heidi. So, whether you’re helping Bianchi or not, maybe you can understand why this man is a problem for me, why this would go a whole lot smoother if you stopped fighting me and helped me?”
My jaw dropped. Help him?
“You thought if you spouted the word ‘family’, I’d be helpless to fight the empathy that welled up inside me and I’d rally to your cause, however vague that cause might be?” I cocked an eyebrow at him, fighting down those very same empathetic feelings I was bashing. Or maybe it was sympathy? Because how could a woman who had no family truly empathize with a man who did? I shook my head. “Even if what you’re telling me—very vaguely, I might add—is the truth, how is any of it my problem?”
