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Chapter Fourteen
Heidi
If the window wasn’t an option, maybe I could go out the roof. I was beginning to think it might be easy, given how close I was to climbing the walls.
No phones. No weapons—not unless a giant dildo counted as a weapon. Maybe I could beat him over the head with it, if I could get him to stand still long enough.
The bedroom door opened, and I seriously considered making a grab for the giant dildo, but it wasn’t Amadeo who walked into the room. It was a woman. The woman with blonde hair, hazel eyes, and lime green fingernails.
“Whoa,” she said, looking first at me, then around the room.
“You’re gorgeous,amica, and either Deo’s a real slob, or way to go, gorgeous stranger,” she said, winking at me.
She had a warm and likeable energy radiating from her, but still, I wasn’t letting my guard down. I wasn’t even sure what that looked like after having my guard up most of my life.
“Who are you?” I asked, watching her warily from the sitting area.
“I’m Greta,” she said as she came toward me and plopped down on the sofa like she’d been here countless times.
Oh.Amadeo’s lover? Girlfriend?
My eyes flickered to the overturned duffel bag, and my cheeks suffused with warmth as my mind conjured images of Amadeo’s big hands using the rope from the bag to tie the woman up. I wasn’t at all prepared for the hot jolt of desire that shocked through me, nor the prickling discomfort of jealousy that followed it.
I thrust the thoughts and feelings aside and focused on the woman’s lips. He was my bloody captor, not my lover.
“I work for the Lucianos,” she said.
I ignored the ripple of relief I had no business feeling.
“I’m also Raven Luca’s best friend,” she continued.
This woman seemed too… easygoing in comparison to the serious intensity I saw when I’d seen Raven work at the hospital.
“Why are you here?” I asked, standing awkwardly on the Aubusson carpet in my bare feet and yesterday’s clothes while this woman reclined on the sofa, looking like she’d just walked off the runway.
“Well,” she said, crossing one long leg over the other, “I’d like to say I’ve come to put your mind at ease, but since that’s not an easy thing to do after a person’s been kidnapped, I imagine I’m just here to keep you company.”
“If you work for the Lucianos, I think your ability to put my mind at ease may be limited,” I said, but even so, I took two steps forward and sat down in the wide armchair opposite her, perched on the edge of the seat.
“I get what you think of Deo—probably the same thing you’re thinking about me—but things aren’t always as black and white as they seem,” she said with a shrug.
“Let me guess, Amadeo might murder and kidnap people, but he doesn’t go around kicking kittens, so he’s really a good man deep down?” I could feel the tiny spark of hope in my voice as I said it and wondered where on earth that had come from.
“Good?” Greta laughed like the notion was absurd. “No,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. “Definitely not in the traditional sense of the word. But he is the kind of man who spent weeks rubbing elbows with the scum of the earth just to put the fuckers in the ground. Those are the kind of men he hurts; those are the kind of men he kills. The same kind of men I kill. And the same kind of men Raven would kill.”
She looked at me for a moment like she was waiting for a response.
“They’re the kind of men you don’t want breathing air, Heidi,” she said when I remained silent. “So, you should be damn grateful there are men like Deo out there who don’t mind getting their hands dirty.”
“Regardless of what else he may or may not be, he’s still the man who’s keeping me here against my will.”
Greta shook her head as she uncrossed her legs and stood up. “He’s keeping you here for your own protection,amica.But you’re right,” she said. Then she turned away and walked across the room to the door.
If she kept talking, I couldn’t hear her.
She turned back to face me at the door.
“It should be your decision,” she said, and then she opened the door and stood aside.
