by McLean, Jay
Ashton’s gaze lifts when the salon doors slide open. It’s only now I see her eyes—red and raw, and it’s clear she’s been crying. Rage replaces the envy, and I go to her, pull her to her feet and wrap her in my arms. Ignoring the sounds and movements of the busy salon, I whisper in her ear, “What did he say to you?”
From the corner of my eye, I notice Suit stand up.
“Nothing.” She pulls back to look in my eyes. “What’s going on, Nate? What does he want?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly, settling my hand on her face. I run my thumbs across her cheeks and wipe the fresh tears away. “Whatever it is, it won’t involve you. I’ll make sure of it.”
Big blue eyes blink up at me. “I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to you—”
“Nothing will happen.”
“I can’t go back there.”
An unsteady breath leaves me. “I’ll never let that happen.” I press my lips to her forehead. “Lo prometto.” I promise.
“Nathaniel,” the Suit says, stepping up to us.
I keep my anger in check and square my shoulders before turning to him. Then I take a step forward, and then another, forcing him to move back—away from Ashton—until the backs of his knees hit one of the chairs in the waiting area. I tower over him. “You don’t get to come into my friend’s place of business and threaten her or make her feel uncomfortable.” My fists ball at my sides. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
The fucker smirks, and it takes everything in me not to wipe out his entire face with my fist. Or blow his fucking head off right here and now.
For Ashton.
For Bailey.
Fuck.
“I came to see you,” he says, straightening to full height that has his dark gray eyes still inches below mine.
Being this close to him, I realize he’s old enough to be Bailey’s dad. If he’s manipulated her somehow, I’ll kill him twice. “So you’ve said. What do you want?”
He runs his hands down his clothes, adjusting his suit. “I want you to come for a ride.”
I scoff. “No.”
His smile reaches his eyes, and I hate everything about him. “I think I might have something you want…”
Bailey.
I stay quiet.
“Or I could have about twenty agents from the white-collar crime unit go through the finances of this place. Shut it down. Leave your friend here high and dry for a few days, maybe even a few years.” His grin widens. “But, according to our records…” he says, looking over my shoulder at Ashton, “she’s a lot more than your friend, isn’t she?”
My eyes drift shut.
“I’ll do you a favor,” he adds, grasping my shoulder tight. “I won’t make a scene.” I force myself to look right at him—into those eyes that had studied me when I stood in the elevator, too busy looking at the ghost of my past to care about his existence. “A black SUV will come by in about ten minutes. Get in it. I’ll be waiting.” And with that, he raises a hand, his stupid smile meant for Ashton. “Thanks for your time, sweetheart.”
* * *
It took me all of the ten minutes to calm Ashton down and convince her that everything was fine, that nothing was going to happen to me, and that I’d be back… for her. The moment I get into the black SUV and the door closes behind me, the guy flashes me his badge. I glance at his name—Lester Perceval—then back at him. Name like that, no wonder he’s power-tripping. Probably spent his entire life getting the shit beat out of him, not much different than good ol’ Detective Jackson Davis.
“Thought you might need some proof,” he states, shoving his ID back in his pocket and adjusting his jacket.
I keep the smart-ass comment about his name to myself. “Suit like that, I had no doubt you were some form of law enforcement.”
He quirks an eyebrow.
I shrug. “What do you want with me?”
He sighs, getting more comfortable in his seat. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“You’re a mind reader now?”
He shakes his head, a heavy breath deflating his chest. “Let’s talk in my office.” He offers me his hand, palm up. I keep my eyes on him. “I need your phone, Nathaniel.”
“It’s Nate,” I spit, annoyed at the too-many syllables leaving his mouth. “And no fuckin’ way am I handing over my phone.”
“I don’t want to go through it,” he replies. “I need you to switch it off.”
I glare at the back of the front seat where the driver stares ahead, not once making a move to even look back at me through the rear-view. “Why?”
“I assume your guy, Tiny, has tracking on your phone?”
“So what if he does?” I ask, slowly turning to him. “You don’t want him to know where you’re taking me to what? To kill me?”
Lester Perceval has the audacity to laugh. “I don’t want to kill you,” he says. “As much as it pains me to say, I need you alive.”
“Bullshit,” I scoff.
“Nate,” he says, his tone as hard as his stare. “I couldn’t give a shit about your little street thugs running drugs or you laundering money through that little salon or gym of yours. And I definitely couldn’t give two fucks about your illegal MMA fights. I’m the motherfucking FBI. What we’re doing here—it’s bigger than you. And the way you’re looking at me, I suspect you have no idea just how big it is.”
11
NATE
The agent’s office is a small room behind a solid door with boxes upon boxes of files scattered throughout. Unlike Parker’s apartment, there are a few details of his personal life around. The guy doesn’t have a ring on his finger, but going by the crayon drawings on the wall, he has at least one kid or maybe a niece or nephew he’s fond of. The idea of Bailey having a kid with this guy causes bile to rise to my throat.
Him?
Of all the guys in the world, she chooses him.
Maybe because he’s safe… like I was supposed to be.
Perceval sits on a cheap chair behind his desk, watching me. “You like it?” he asks, pointing to the drawing pinned to the wall.
I shrug. “It’s probably not a good idea to be bringing guys like me here.”
“Like you?”
I run my thumb across my bottom lip and look closer at the drawing. It’s a dog—or maybe a cat—holding an umbrella. I hide my frown behind my hand. “The bad guys.”
He leans back in his chair. “You’re not a bad guy, though, are you, Nate?”
“You don’t know me,” I murmur.
“You’re right,” he agrees. “I don’t know you. And I’m hoping that’s not going to be an issue for us.”
“What do you want?” I snap, my lack of patience forcing me to tap at my pocket.
“I have your phone,” he reminds me.
I nod, even though I wasn’t looking for my phone. I was searching for my pills.
For the second time in as many weeks, the man in front of me pulls out a mugshot and places it on the desk between us. “Who is she to you?”
Instinctively, my fingers curl around the bottle in my pocket while I stare down at the picture—a Jane Doe according to the name on the placard. Brown eyes stare back at me, cold and empty, void of any emotion. Her hair’s down, ratted in knots, and her skin is ashen, her cheeks hollow. It’s clear—from this picture alone—that she’d lost a hell of a lot of weight since she’d been with me, and the thought of her not eating, not taking her meds, creates an ache in my gut. I note the date as approximately a year ago, and a part of me is grateful she’s doing better now… at least I think so. I make sure my expression gives nothing away when I look up at Perceval. “Who is she to you?”
Ignoring my question, he says, “I saw you at the apartment. I saw the way you looked at her—”
“I didn’t look at her like anything,” I cut in.
“You sure about that?”
“Shouldn’t you be more concerned about what I was doing there?”
&nb
sp; He sits forward now, his forearms on the desk. “I assumed you were there for Parker.”
My breath halts.
“But that’s irrelevant right now. I need to know about her.”
I shake my head. “You’re the one walking her into an apartment. You tell me.”
“Are you the one who gave her the bracelet?”
We’re going in circles. “What do you want?”
“I just told you.”
“You said this was big... is it about—” I stop myself there, right before I say her name aloud. He might not know it. She might not have offered it. I look back at the photograph: Jane Doe.
“She’s here, you know.”
I blink, hold my breath.
Perceval taps a few buttons on the phone in front of him, and when it connects, he says three simple words that destroy me: “Bring her in.”
The door clicks before I can react, and then my gaze locks on the set of eyes that have haunted me for years.
I’ve thought about this moment, dreamt about it more than I can count.
And I’ve counted…
A lot.
2,582.
That’s the number of tiles on the bathroom wall she was so obsessed with.
323.
That’s the number of fall leaves hanging from the ceiling.
1,430.
The number of days we’ve been apart.
It’s also the same number of times I’ve whispered ti amo into the darkened corners of my bedroom when my regret became too much to handle. When the memories of her consumed every beat of my heart, every cell flowing through my veins. When I’d imagined her next to me, whispering my name, telling me she loved me as her fingers stroked through my hair, easing the stress of my life and lighting the darkened pain of my past. I knew it then—in those minuscule moments we shared—my heart, my soul, my everything belonged to her.
Per sempre. Forever.
“There’s that look again…” Perceval sings, breaking into my thoughts.
“What look?” I choke out, unable to pull my stare away from Bailey.
“That same look I saw outside her apartment… You’re looking at her as if you’d give her your last dying breath.” He pauses a beat, and when he speaks again, his voice is deeper, more intimidating. “So I’m going to ask you one more time, Nate. Who is she to you?”
Bailey speaks for the first time—her voice, her words—a fucking dagger right through the spot that beats only for her. “I’m no one. Especially to him.”
12
BAILEY
I make it three steps out of the office when I hear the first crash, followed by the yelling and screaming. “Fuck,” Agent Brent Neilson spits. “Stay here.”
He’s quick to barge through the door, and from where I stay rooted, I see Nate fisting Agent Perceval’s collar as he holds him down on his desk, one hand raised. He’s yelling, words too fast and too loud for me to understand. I press my back to the wall and my palms to my ears, blocking out the sounds. My eyes shut tight, and I try to level my breathing. Try to steady my pulse. But it doesn’t work. Can’t. I’m brought back to that moment. A different basement. Nate’s not there, even though I’d waited for him. Days passed, turned to weeks, months, years. He never showed. They came for me, dozens of them, all in black, with guns pointed, flashlights so bright they made it hard to see. Then came the yelling, the orders.
“Put your hands up!”
“Hands where I can see them!”
“On your stomach!”
“Face down on the ground!”
My ears rang with the loudness of their demands, and it was all too much… so many voices, so much movement at once, and I couldn’t get my bearings, and so I got to my knees and muffled their actions by covering my ears and closing my eyes.
I would not cry.
I would not show my weakness.
Through all the different commands, I heard his voice—Brent’s. ”Jesus Christ,” he said, his voice defined amongst all the chaos. “What the fuck is this place?”
There were drugs on every surface of that concrete cell.
Pills.
Coke.
Meth.
Weed.
All of it.
But they weren’t there for the drugs.
They weren’t even there for me.
Then the questions began…
A hand circles my wrists, tugging gently, bringing me back to the present. I open my eyes. Brent’s standing in front of me, his tone dripping with concern. “It’s okay,” he assures me. “Let’s get you out of here, okay?”
Nate stands behind him, his eyes locked on mine. “Bailey,” he breathes out. My name is both a prayer and a curse when he says it. The corners of his lips pull down when he tilts his head, assessing me.
I tug my hand out of Brent’s grasp. “Take me home,” I demand, but he knows it as much as I do. I don’t have a home. I haven’t had one since I was seven years old—since I lay under a tree surrounded by fall leaves waiting for the only person who loved me to return.
She never came back for me.
Neither did Nate.
* * *
“Do you want to drive?” Brent asks, dangling the car keys in front of me as we stand by a black SUV in the parking garage.
I cross my arms. “You know I don’t drive.”
He shrugs. “It’s like muscle memory. Like riding a bike. Once you know how to do it, you never forget.”
He does this sometimes, tries to inconspicuously pull information from me about my past, about who I am. He thinks that I lost some of my memory or that I choose not to remember my old life. I wish that were true, that I could somehow wipe my existence, but I remember everything. I just choose not to tell them every detail.
Brent cracks a smile. “It was worth a try.”
Nate stands beside him, watching our interaction as if it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. I hate that I know this—that my attention keeps getting drawn to him the way it does. I hate even more that Brent’s so damn kind he offered to give Nate a ride back to wherever he came from.
They didn’t tell me they brought him here. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come. I wasn’t ready to see him, wasn’t prepared for the warring emotions that instantly filled me. And now he won’t stop looking at me. Staring at me.
Brent opens the back door for me, and I make quick work of getting in and settling in my seat. The quicker Nate can’t look at me, the quicker I’ll be able to breathe again. A moment later, the back door opens again—the other side—and Nate starts to slide in. “You’re in the front seat,” I tell him, ignoring the sadness in his eyes at my words.
Fuck him.
I stare ahead, the weight in my chest lifted when the car door slams, and he reappears in the seat in front of me. He can’t look at me from there, and I refuse to look at the back of his head. Refuse to acknowledge his existence in my life. Something I’d been trying to do since I saw him standing in the doorway of his home, my hand pressed to the glass of the back window of a car with tears streaking down my cheeks, my throat aching with the force of my screams.
My cries.
All for him.
13
BAILEY
According to the conversation happening in the front seats, Nate lost his patience with Agent Perceval after I’d stormed out of the office. Nate demanded to know what they wanted with him, and Perceval only continued to ask who I was to him. When Nate asked for his phone back, Perceval refused. And that’s when the first punch was thrown.
For a long time, I believed I knew who Nathaniel DeLuca was, but I was delusional. I only knew the version of him that came home at night and created a fake life, fake love, in the four walls of that basement. I didn’t know who he was outside, what he did for “work.” I mean, not really. And he just proved that the version of him I’d created in my mind was a lie.
He’s a hothead with enough rage to beat up an FBI agent. Over a phone. Clearly, he doesn’t v
alue his freedom as much as any normal, sane person does. If only he knew what it was like to live for years without it…
Brent drops Nate off at a spot I don’t recognize and then takes me to my complex and walks me to my door. Or at least I assume that’s what he’s doing, until he enters the apartment as if he owns it, which technically, he kind of does.
I slump down on the couch, exhausted from my lack of sleep. I’d spent years sleeping on the cold concrete floor; you’d think a bed would be like sleeping on clouds. It’s not.
“You okay, Bailey?” Brent asks, handing me a glass filled with warm water. When he’d found me, he’d done the same thing, only the water was cold, and it hurt to swallow. From then on, it’s always been warm, just like his touch when he lifts my chin with his finger. His blue eyes meet mine, so different to the man who’d just set my heart racing. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him, taking the water and downing it in two gulps. With a heavy sigh, he sits down beside me. I ask, “Is Perceval going to tell him?”
He shifts, and I know he’s facing me. “About you?”
I keep my gaze down. “I guess.”
His exhale is a burst of hot air against my cheek. He’s too close. Not close enough. “We don’t know much about you, though, do we?”
I shrug, moving a few inches away. “Is he going to tell him about… about…”
“About how we found you?”
My nod is slow, and I blink back the heat behind my eyes, push down the knot in my throat.
I will not cry.
I will not show my weakness.
“You knew who he was when we offered you this deal, didn’t you?”
I close my eyes, keep the tears at bay, and nod again.
“Who is he to you?”
“He’s...” I don’t even know how to answer.
“Did he hurt you?”
His question rolls around in my mind, a tumbleweed amidst a tornado. I face him completely, my abandoned heart making my vision clear. “Yes.”