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“Just how old do you think I am, brat?” he growled.
“I dunno. Old. Like, fifty?” she teased.
“I’m thirty-four!”
“Yeah. Ancient. Uh-oh, now your face is going purple. I don’t think that’s a good sign.”
“You know, I think you’re right. I think I should eliminate all the stress from my life.”
Uh-oh. She wasn’t sure about that look on his face. Alejandro almost seemed like he wanted to eliminate her.
“Now, now, let’s not be hasty, okay?” she said nervously moving along the sofa.
“Be careful, Pequeña. My patience only goes so far.”
Yeah. She got that. Loud and clear.
“I’m going to call Aaron to come and check your toe.”
“Who is Aaron?” she asked.
“He’s a doctor.”
“Do we have time to wait for him?” She had no idea what time it was, but he had a meeting tonight and they had to get Snuggly and Roger.
Shit. And her phone.
“I need my phone to contact my friends, they’ll be worried. It’s still in my locker at the restaurant.”
“I’ll have someone retrieve it for you.”
“Now?”
“My men have more important things to do. They’ll get to it when they can.”
Ouch.
She wanted to argue. But there was something in his face that warned her not to.
“Can I use your phone?” she asked. “I know their numbers off by heart.”
“All right. You can call one friend, but keep it short. I’ll be here the whole time.”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “I thought I wasn’t a prisoner.”
“You’re not. You’re my guest. My protected guest. And anyone who tries to come for you before I’m ready to let you leave . . . well, let’s say that I wouldn’t take kindly to that. Understand?”
She swallowed. “Sometimes you can be a really scary guy, you know that?”
“Only sometimes? It seems I’m losing my edge.”
He got up and moved to his desk. She couldn’t quite see what he was doing which was frustrating as heck. But he returned with a small phone. It didn’t look like a phone he would own.
Burner phone?
Made sense.
She figured Immy was the best person to call. Also, she was probably the only one who’d answer a call from an unknown number. They’d all tried to make her more guarded, less naive.
But that was just Immy. She was sweet and trusting. And at some stage, they’d switched from trying to teach her to protect herself, to instead making sure that she was always protected.
“Hello?” Immy asked cautiously.
“It’s me. Cat.” Suddenly, she realized that she couldn’t let Alejandro know anything about Immy. Not if she wanted to protect her.
Fuck, this was all so damn tiring. He claimed she was a guest, but she couldn’t leave. She’d agreed to come with him for her own reasons, but would he have forced her if she’d said no?
Had she had a choice?
No.
Panic started to unfurl. Why hadn’t she thought this through? She thought she was so smart when, in reality, she was a fly going up against a jaguar. He was swift, deadly, cunning.
And she was a total idiot who was going to get trapped in a web and eaten.
And she knew that jaguars didn’t make webs and that her metaphor wasn’t working.
But she was finding it hard to breathe.
So say your safe phrase.
Sampson had insisted that she have one when she’d started this endeavor. A phrase that would bring the others here to find her. Rescue her.
But could they go up against a jaguar? She didn’t think so.
“Cat? Cat, are you there?”
The relief in Immy’s voice had tears entering her eyes, but she blinked them back. She was being overdramatic, right?
She hadn’t been treated that badly.
You were locked up and fed disgusting food.
Yes, but that was all Bernie. Not Alejandro.
Who was she kidding? Alejandro De Leon wasn’t a good man. He might be sexy. Sometimes, he might seem protective, like he cared.
But he wasn’t a good man.
He wasn’t some romantic bad boy hero who could be tamed. The one everyone swooned over and wanted to redeem.
He was simply a bad man.
Then again, she wasn’t going to pretend that she was all good. She had her bad side as much as anyone else.
And she knew she wouldn’t say her safe phrase, because if she went down that was on her. She’d never drag her friends down with her. It was her job to protect them.
As much as they might protest that.
“Yeah, it’s me. You doing okay?” she asked.
“Am I doing okay? What do you mean, am I doing okay? Cat, we were all going out of our minds here when you didn’t reply to any of our texts.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I think I must have left my phone at work. It was a late shift. Maybe it slid out of my pocket or something? I need to go back and get it, but I just woke up. Bad headache.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Have you got some medication? What do you need?”
