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“Nothing, not a word,” I heard Carlo say behind me. I turned to see him walk back into my office. “Not even a thank you for the meal.” He chuckled.
“She’s consistently rude then,” I replied, smirking at him.
Carlo left to make some calls, report our findings back to Carlotti, and I returned to my paperwork. Revenge would wait. However, as before, I couldn’t concentrate.
“Fuck’s sake,” I said, slamming my clenched hand on my desk.
There was nothing for it; I had to see if I could get more information from Revenge. I grabbed my gloves and hood and left the office, careful to lock the door behind me. Carlo had a key, but after catching a previous housekeeper snooping, my office was off limits to any staff.
I walked through French doors and the sun blazed through the canopy of trees that generally kept the rear of the house cool in the summer months. I raised my face and closed my eyes, catching some of those rays on my skin. I could do with a dose of Vitamin D, I thought. I was becoming reclusive, a night owl since most of my work involved being out in the evenings.
I slipped on the gloves as I walked and pulled the hood over my head, leaving my face exposed for a moment. Revenge didn’t call for her lover at the sound of the padlock and chain rattling this time. Although I could hear her gentle sobs. I rolled down the mask and stood by the second gate.
She looked up at me. “Please let me go,” she whispered.
“I will, soon. I need to know why you can’t be returned to your father,” I said, keeping my voice soft.
Revenge simply shook her head. “If you know my father, you’ll know he isn’t a nice man. I dread to think what he will do to you.” A fiery tone was creeping back into her voice and I smiled.
“I highly doubt he knows where you are.”
“He’ll have people looking for me.”
“Then perhaps we need to get you back sooner.”
Her previous fire was snuffed out. “He hates me. He has always hated me. He tells me constantly how awful my mother was, that he killed her. And I hate him in return. Enrico was going to save me. We were going to leave and…”
“And?”
She shook her head, and I wondered if she regretted that she might have said too much.
“And you were going to collect a ransom to live off?” I added, gently. Without looking up, she nodded. “What are we going to do with you?” I wondered if she knew there was no ransom.
Revenge stood and walked to the gate. Her hands wrapped around the bars and her eyes widened. “I can give you half of it,” she said, eagerly.
I laughed. “There is no ransom.”
“What about your fee then?”
“Revenge, do you think your father will give you the money to hand over to me? Or will he deposit the money in a bank account of my choosing? This isn’t the Wild West. Is that what you thought would happen?”
I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Had she really known Enrico, she would have probably discovered that he’d have high-tailed it with the cash long before she even made it through her front door.
Whereas her knuckles had been white as she’d gripped the bars, the pink returned to her skin as she lessened her hold.
She visibly shrunk as reality sunk in. “I thought Enrico would be the ideal person to help me even though he was so much younger than me. I know what I’m about to say is wrong, but he isn’t the most intelligent and that’s why I chose him,” she said.
I laughed out loud. “He spiked your drink, brought you here because he thought he’d killed you,” I confessed.
“And you thought you’d cash in on me?” she asked. Her tone of voice had softened as if she genuinely wanted to know the answer rather than to accuse.
“No, Revenge. Before I could get any answers as to why he had you unconscious in his car, he was off.”
“So here I am, really captive,” she said. She chuckled with a bitter tone.
“I can always return you,” I goaded.
She let go of the bars and turned, walking towards the bed. “No, I’d rather stay, although I’d like to get out for fresh air every day if I could.”
