by Bethany-Kris
Safe.
“You okay, Emmy?” he asked.
Emma shook her head under the bag.
No, she was not okay.
She was simply holding it together.
Calisto sighed.
“I’m sorry, ragazza.”
“I ran away,” she whispered. “It was my fault.”
“It was not.”
“Wasn’t it?”
She felt Calisto’s fingers sweep over her skin with tender swipes, almost like he was reassuring her that everything would be fine.
“It’s almost over,” he finally said.
Emma disagreed.
Feeling him touch her, hearing the concern echo in his voice, and then feeling the light press of his lips to the side of her head … Her heart was hurting for a whole new reason. The very same reason why her mind was confused, why her body hummed with satisfaction and pain, and why her tears finally began to fall.
No, she disagreed entirely.
Her hell had just begun.
“Wait a second,” Calisto said. “Just be still. I have to move something.”
Emma tried to pull the hood off her head, only to have her arm yanked back down.
“No.”
Anxiety thrummed deep in Emma’s blood.
“I want to see,” she said. “I feel like I can’t fucking breathe under here.”
“You can. They’re made for this. I need you to keep it on for a while longer. At least for one drive until I can switch vehicles.”
Emma frowned. “Calisto—”
“Emma, my God. For once, can you fucking listen to me? Just this once. It is for your own good.”
She didn’t respond.
Her irritation bubbled.
Emma heard the sound of a car unlocking and a door being opened. Calisto grunted something under his breath, followed by a cuss. Then, he was back at her side, and holding her wrist again.
She wanted his hand lower.
In hers.
Fingers tightened around hers, woven with hers.
Emma shook that stupid thought away, because that’s exactly what it was. Fucking stupid.
“I’ll help you up into the SUV, but you need to sit still, don’t touch anything, and keep the damn hood on. Please don’t argue, Emma. Just listen.”
“Fine,” she muttered.
Emma followed Calisto’s directions, stepped where he told her to, and then stayed still as she was lifted up and set back down. The plush softness of the leather seat beneath her said they were in a fancier vehicle.
“Sorry about the Mercedes,” Emma mumbled.
Calisto laughed, but even the sound was tired. “Where is it?”
Emma rattled off the name of the convenience store parking lot where she had left the Mercedes. “I also left the keys on the driver’s side wheel, under the side where it wouldn’t be seen.”
“That makes things easier.”
“Does it?”
“Sì.”
“My things are at a hotel. I had it booked for one more night.”
“We can pick them up,” Calisto said.
A door slammed right after he finished. Emma sighed and fidgeted on the spot until another door was opened, and the vehicle shifted enough to say that Calisto had jumped in the driver’s seat.
“Can I take the hood off now?”
“No,” he said, offering no other explanation.
Emma bristled. “But—”
“I have to make a call. Be quiet.”
As the SUV started to move, Emma tried to stay still in the seat while she listened to Calisto make his call.
“Donati calling,” Calisto said. Silence followed before he said, “Do you have a spare set for the Porsche? Great. You can pick it up.”
He talked about the Porsche, gave an address, and told whoever was on the other end of the call to pick it up as soon as possible and try not to be noticed too much. Once he ended the call, Calisto didn’t say a word.
Emma fiddled with the seam of the hood around her neck. It felt a little too tight for her liking, and she tugged on it a bit to loosen it.
“Stop fucking with that,” Calisto barked.
“It’s tight.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
Emma blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t like this.”
“It’s the hood, Emmy, or a view of the two bodies in the back seat. Take your fucking pick.”
She turned into stone.
“What did you just say?”
Calisto laughed bitterly. “Fuck, did you seriously think that I somehow managed to find out where you went, get to you, and whatever else I had to do without a few casualties along the way?”
Emma’s tongue felt too thick to speak.
“No,” Calisto said harshly. “I left a trail of dead bodies all over Vegas between yesterday and today. You are far luckier than I can explain, Emma.”
He’d killed for her.
And saved her.
All she did was scare him.
Finally, Emma found her voice.
“Stupid, you mean.”
“Desperate,” Calisto murmured.
Emma jerked in the seat when she felt his fingers come in contact with her cheek overtop of the hood.
“I think you were desperate,” Calisto repeated softly.
“I just …” Emma didn’t know what to say.
“You tried, look at it that way.”
“And failed,” she said.
“But you did try.”
“It wasn’t worth it, Calisto.”
Calisto chuckled. “Depends on how you look at it.”
“I can’t see much right now.”
His fingers stroked her cheek again.
“I can, Emma.”
Emma blinked rapidly and sucked in a huge gulp of air when the hood was finally pulled from her head. It took her a second to focus in on her surroundings, and realize that she was sitting in a familiar car.
Calisto’s rental Mercedes.
Glancing to the side, she found Calisto watching her from outside of the car with wary eyes. He leaned in the door a bit, keeping one hand on the car and the other on her jittery leg.
“Hey,” he said.
Emma wet her dry lips. “Hey.”
“You picked a good spot to drop this car.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s one of the only places that doesn’t seem to be open twenty-four, seven, and there’s an alleyway I can use.”
“For what?” she asked.
Calisto smirked. “I have an SUV to burn.”
Oh.
Emma shot a look over Calisto’s broad shoulder, noticing a dark SUV parked in the alleyway he mentioned.
“No cameras, I checked,” Calisto said. “Easiest way to clean up a mess is to burn it. Or that’s what Affonso always told me when I was younger.”
She recoiled at the very mention of her future husband. Calisto didn’t miss the actions.
“Sorry,” he said quickly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Liar. It does.”
Calisto didn’t say another thing. Instead, he closed the door on Emma and she watched him move to the back of the Mercedes and pop the trunk. Calisto pulled a small, red can from the back before walking over to the SUV and disappearing into the dark alleyway. Not ten seconds later, he was back in view.
Without the gas can.
Pulling something shiny from his pocket, Calisto glanced down at his hands. A light bloomed, telling Emma he held a lighter. When he tossed it, the car lit up instantly.
Emma looked away. She didn’t speak again until they were driving far away from the closed convenience store and the burning SUV.
Calisto slowed the car down and stopped for a red light. He watched the cars speed through their green light, his hands tightening around the wheel enough for his knuckles to turn white under the pressure.
“Thank you, Calisto.”
“Don’t thank me, Emmy.”
> “But you saved me.”
“Yeah, but what difference does it make, huh?”
Emma’s heart clenched. “It makes a huge difference to me.”
Calisto shrugged. “I still have to give you away now. The only difference this time is that I know the monster I’ll be giving you to.”
“It’s okay.”
She lied.
It wouldn’t be okay at all.
“It won’t be,” Calisto said.
She watched him through hazy, water-filled eyes. She didn’t understand him for a minute, but she wanted to more than anything.
Emma wanted to know Calisto.
Anything he might give.
She was too late.
Her wants no longer mattered.
“Why did you do that to me in that place?” Emma dared to ask.
“I didn’t have a choice. They have rules they follow—things they do. I couldn’t break them, being the newcomer to the group. It might have made me seem suspicious.”
“Liar.”
Calisto’s jaw clenched. “Don’t, Emmy. Just forget about it. I’ll get you back to your penthouse, you have a few hours to spare before you have to meet up for one final dinner with your parents, and then another night to sleep before New York.”
“Liar,” she repeated, refusing to acknowledge what he said.
“Emma—”
“You did it because you wanted to. You wondered what I felt like. You thought about doing that to me. That’s what you said.”
Calisto hit the gas as soon as the light turned green, sending Emma flying back in her seat. “You’re goddamn right, Emmy.”
She took a burning breath.
It felt fucking good.
“Would you do it again if I asked you to?”
“Emma.”
“Well, would you?”
His hands tightened on the wheel again, and his gaze burned brightly with things she hadn’t seen from him before: need, lust, and want. Calisto still didn’t answer.
Emma didn’t really need him to.
Calisto
“You should get dressed.”
Emma didn’t give any indication that she had heard Calisto speak from the other side of the large living room. She stayed sitting in a large chaise, twisting her fingers together over and over, while looking out the wall-to-wall windows of her penthouse.
She hadn’t spoken for hours.
She didn’t move.
Calisto wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew that he couldn’t keep worrying over Emma Sorrento. The more he thought about her, and the more he concerned himself with her emotional state, the worse he knew it would get for him.
He had first felt it at the auction. It hit him when he entered the “showing rooms,” as the people had called it. He saw her behind the glass where she was standing straight, blindfolded, and swathed in white. She was compliant in the showcase, but her defiance had come through in the clench of her fist and tight set of her lips.
He’d seen it.
And felt it.
The affection.
It burrowed deep in Calisto’s chest like a thousand little pins sticking into his lungs, determined to hurt him. He’d stayed back, watched her through the glass to keep his interest from being too obvious, but it’d taken every ounce of willpower he had left to do so.
Because he couldn’t disregard her.
Something he wanted had been just out of reach. Something he worried about was in danger. Something he cared for was hurting.
Someone, not something.
Emma.
Calisto leaned in the entryway between the kitchen and living room. Crossing his arms over his chest, he ignored the ache settling in his bones. It was goddamn hard to do.
It started in his fingers, the digits he’d used to explore, to touch, and to learn Emma, and then quickly traveled up his arm and into his chest. He tried—God, he was fucking trying—to forget her needy little sounds and the way her mouth felt, wrapped around his fingers while he fucked her with his other hand.
This was not good.
This was terrible.
She was just a woman. That’s what Calisto wanted to tell himself; that’s what he wanted to believe. Emma was nothing more than a woman. There were other women for him to want. To obsess over.
It couldn’t be Emma Sorrento.
Not for Calisto.
She was taken.
She was claimed.
She was not his.
In a few days, Calisto would hand her off, and that would be that. He wondered why it wouldn’t be that easy to let her go.
What good had saving her done?
He had simply taken her from one monster to give her to another.
Calisto drew in a slow breath, and exhaled through his nose. It was yet another attempt to cool his urges down, forget about his needs, and focus on getting the job done.
Except she wasn’t just a job.
Emma wasn’t a thing. She was a person. Calisto didn’t know how to not see her as a woman so that he could just do what needed to be done. She was struggling with what she had done, what happened, and what was yet to come. He could see the weight on her shoulders, pushing her deeper into her seat with every passing second.
“How long do I have?” Emma asked quietly.
Her voice, raspy and tired, surprised Calisto. She hadn’t spoken in so long that he wasn’t sure she would speak to him again at all.
“Before what?” he asked.
“The dinner with my parents, Cal.”
Calisto tossed a look at the clock on the far wall. “An hour and a half, mia dolcezza.”
Emma’s shoulders stiffened at his casual use of a pet name. My sweetheart, he called her. Calisto wasn’t sure why it had bothered her. It wasn’t the first time he’d used it on her when they conversed.
But it is the first time you called her yours, he thought.
Calisto grinded his teeth in an effort to shut out his inner voice. The damn thing hadn’t been helping him much lately, so he wasn’t about to start listening to it now.
“I have a little bit of time before I need to get ready,” Emma said.
“I thought maybe you would want to get over there early and spend some extra time with your mother and father, or even your uncle, before tonight’s flight.”
Emma shook her head subtly. “No. I’ll see them enough in New York before the wedding.”
“They’re your parents, Emma.”
“They’re just people who brought me here. DNA doesn’t mean love, Calisto.”
She was right.
Calisto was living proof of that.
Sighing, he ducked his head when she turned to look at him. “Are you just going to keep sitting there doing nothing?”
“Maybe,” Emma murmured. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How many others did you see in there last night?”
Calisto stilled on the spot, taking in her question. “What do you mean?”
“Girls. At the auction. How many?”
“A lot.”
Emma’s stony features cracked when she openly frowned. “How many is a lot?”
“About ten.”
Maybe ten wasn’t such a high number, but for the price those girls cost the men who bought them, ten was enough to make a killing.
Quite literally.
It disgusted Calisto, but he saved the one he could. There was nothing more he could do.
“Who were they? The girls, I mean,” she said.
Calisto thought about the term he had heard used at the auction. “Valuable collectables.”
Emma flinched. “Oh, my God.”
“Slaves, Emma. They’ll have no past, no future, and no real present because they’ll no longer exist as regular people. But girls like you, girls like the ones they had gathered for last night, are considered collectables to those people. Whoever they are. It’s a very private event, and the only reason I was able to get in like I did was
because of the methods I used to do so and the money I was able to show for the effort.”
“So they have more than one.”
“Likely,” he confirmed softly.
“Aren’t you worried that they’ll come after you because you didn’t hide me like they said?” Emma asked.
“You mean getting you out of state?”
“Yeah.”
Calisto shrugged. “No. In a few days, Emma Sorrento will no longer exist as she is. She will be—”
“Emma Donati,” she interrupted calmly.
Calisto clenched his fists at his sides, letting the bite of his fingernails soothe the rush of possessiveness that filled him at hearing her name when it was changed. He liked it—but he hated who it would be changing for.
“Yes,” he managed to say. “And who you become matters very little to them as long as you’re someone else. Their concern was only with making you disappear before your family realized who had taken you. You were worth a lot for them on the auction block, but the longer they kept you, the greater the risk of outside influence or retribution. Simple as that.”
Emma wet her lips and stared down at her lap. “It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“Emma Donati. It has a nice ring.”
Calisto swallowed hard. “It does.”
“It’s too bad, really.”
“What is, bella?”
“My name. I like it, but I hate the man giving it to me.”
Calisto had to agree, but he chose not to voice it.
Emma smiled crookedly, and glanced up at Calisto again as she added, “Well, I guess that depends on how we look at which man. I only hate the one, after all.”
“The man you’re marrying?”
“Yes. But I don’t hate the one giving me to him.”
Oh.
Well, then.
Damn.
“You should get dressed,” Calisto said lamely. “Your engagement ring and other jewelry is where you left it.”
Emma stared at him, unmoving and seemingly unashamed at her boldness. The fire in her eyes had replaced the blankness from before. She was still wearing that white ensemble from the auction, but only because she had refused to do anything when they returned.
She looked almost innocent, but her sensuality was hard to forget.