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“Fuck!” I snatch back my hands and cradle my injured digit to my chest. It throbs, the pain seeming to shoot all the way down to my toes.
But I don’t nurse it for more than a few seconds. Time is of the essence.
There’s another door beside the elevator, which I assume leads to the fire escape. But I can do no more than rattle the handle because it’s locked.
Next, I attempt the one that leads to the roof deck. Surely there’s a fire escape from up there. But it, too, is locked now.
I whirl, looking around wildly, searching for another way out. Then I run around trying every door I suspect is an exit. All locked.
For a moment, I can’t catch my breath. Every muscle in my body is threatening to shut down, leaving me weak and trembling. If Noah returns to find me like this, he’ll know that I know who he is.
What will he do to me then? I guess that depends on why he has me here in the first place. If I have to guess, he knows his father came to see me that night.
Suddenly, a little bout of laugher bursts from me. I warned Dad about men like Leonardo. Dangerous men. Mobsters.
“Should we be selling to a known criminal?” I asked him when I saw the invoice on theAlabaster Queen, a piece that was stolen fifteen years ago and resurfaced at Maxton House.
“It’s all about the art, Em,” Dad said. “There are no crooked deals. Just art.”
“He’s part of the Gianni family,” I’d reminded him. Oh yeah, I’ve heard of them. The Gianni’s control what comes in and out of the New Jersey underworld, which means that, to an extent, we have to fall in line with their rules. “They kill people for looking at them funny.”
Dad had chuckled. “That’s not exactly true. Either way, if we want to keep certain aspects of our business operational, we don’t have a choice. Besides, he’s a paying customer with a lot of money.”
It didn’t sit well with me, even when Leonardo expressed interest in my own paintings and bought several for his home. The way he stared at me made me uncomfortable.
I disliked Leonardo because he was a dangerous man and fell in love with his son for the same reason.
“Stupid woman,” I mutter, my gaze still scanning the room for any possible escape.
That’s when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. The window washer. Ottis lowers himself on the chair, stops it, and sprays some foamy solution onto it.
Oh my God. That’s my way out.
“Help!” I slap at the glass in front of him. “Help me! I’ve been kidnapped.”
The man doesn’t even blink. Instead, he continues his meticulous cleaning—spraying, then wiping the liquid off with a wide squeegee.
I expected him not to be able to hear me through the thick glass, but he can’t even see me. Smart glass, Noah had called it. He said the windows were made specifically for privacy. Deep down, I hadn’t believed him. Oh, I imagined they made it hard to see, but not to this extent.
Well, they might be opaque, but I’m not giving up.
Taking the desk chair, I throw it against the window, making sure the metal legs make hard contact with it. It bounces off the glass so violently, it tears out of my hands and skids all the way to the couch.
I grab it and try again. And again. It doesn’t break. I’m standing there panting and sweating and haven’t effected a single hairline crack. Not even a scratch.
And still, the man on the other side of the glass remains unaware of me.
But there’s no time to consider the fact that I’m trapped, a lamb awaiting the slaughter, because at that moment, the sound of the elevator pinging somewhere in the distance has me frozen.
Heart racing, I right the chair and throw myself over the back of the couch and lie on it.
Noah steps into the loft and pauses as he catches me sitting up, stretching my arms wide, and yawning as if I’ve just woken up.
“Hey,” I say, desperately trying to inflect a sleepy haze into my voice. “You’re back.”
His eyes narrow so minutely, were I not so horribly aware of who he is, I might not notice it. But I am aware. Keenly aware.
I can spot the narrowing, just as I do the darkening that excited me before, because I didn’t know what it truly meant.
