Secrets (Lords of the City)

by Alice Ward

  Finally, the very tip of his cock pressed into me, entering me the slightest bit. A moan escaped from my throat and into Cristiano’s. Slowly, ever so slowly, he delved into me, filling me up and taking every ounce of me in that way only he could.

  One hand still under my head, the other came to my waist. His mouth went lower, down to burrow into my neck. I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling, gasping as he drove into me a little harder.

  Around my front went his hand, then down to my clit. Gingerly he rubbed there, making me moan. The orgasm came suddenly, shaking through me before I barely knew what was going on.

  Cristiano didn’t stop. He hooked his arms under my legs and lifted them, allowing himself deeper access to me. The quick driving made both our breaths come out heavy and labored. Sweat drenched us, its heady smell filling the room. My good hand grabbed onto the back of the couch for dear life. More pleasure was already building in me, mimicking a raging volcano getting close to eruption.

  Cristiano dropped one leg and sent his free hand under my hip. Holding me up at yet another angle, he jammed against my g-spot. I shook in pleasure, my legs like jelly between his arms.

  He tensed, getting close to his own release. I grabbed his face and pushed it against my own so I could kiss him with all my strength. With a growl, he released his pleasure.

  I wrapped my sweaty forearm around his even sweatier neck and kissed him one last time before letting my face fall to the side. Not far away, the curtains swayed from the air conditioner’s breeze. Between them, daylight burst through the windows to fill the room. I sighed and let my eyes drift closed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  e

  When I woke, everything was noticeably different. I made an attempt to open my eyes, but, still tired, they fell closed again. I stretched my toes, feeling the delicious space all around them. Wherever I was, it definitely wasn’t Cristiano’s couch.

  Yawning deeply, I opened my eyes to Cristiano’s dark but familiar room. A bit of light streamed through the cracked bathroom door, just enough so that I could see the shapes of the furniture.

  Gingerly, so as not to hurt my shoulder, I sat up. Talking from a radio or television came from somewhere down the hall, the words so low and muffled I couldn’t pick any of them out. On the table next to the bed sat a glass of water and my cell phone, the last object plugged into charge. The green light flashed on my phone. Slowly reaching over, I unplugged it and swiped the screen open to check my messages.

  Mom… and more Mom. She’d called twice and left one voice mail. Not bothering to listen to the message, I hit the button to return her call.

  As far as I knew, she knew nothing about my being in the hospital… or about any of the crazy events that occurred that week.

  “Hi Blaire,” she sang as an answer. “Where the heck have you been?”

  “Uh…”

  Now that was a long story.

  She pressed on. “Well? What’s new? I haven’t heard from you in days. You said you were going to come see me and then nothing. I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Yeah, about that… there’s just been a lot going on.”

  “Ah,” she said with a knowing tone. “You mean with this new guy?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Blaire? Is everything okay? You sound like—”

  “Yes,” I jumped in, giving her my brightest tone. “Don’t worry. Please don’t worry.”

  Her voice started to rise. “It’s hard not to when I don’t hear from you for days and then when I do finally get you on the phone, you’re extremely cryptic! What am I supposed to think?”

  I winced, a bit of anger rising up in me. If my mother only knew what kind of hell my friends and I had just gone through…

  I opened my mouth, started to chastise her, to tell her off, but then stopped.

  My mother loved me. Everything she did was because she loved me. I’d always known that, but I don’t think I had ever really recognized the real depths of that love.

  I saw it in Florentia though. She risked everything to save Cristiano. She put herself through immeasurable pain to make sure he stayed safe. On top of that, they’d gone years without each other.

  I was beyond lucky to have my mom in my life. I was blessed to have her love.

  “Well, Blaire?” she went on when I didn’t immediately respond.

  “Mom,” I rasped, nearly choking on the word. “I love you.”

  Silence.

  “I love you too, honey,” she repeated, her voice the softest I’d heard it in years. “Is everything all right?”

  “I wrecked Evie’s car, and my arm is in a sling.”

  Those were only two of the wild things that had just happened. They weren’t directly related, but I would let her think they were for the time being. The whole story was too much to tell over the phone. Soon, I would get to her in person. We would sit down together, and I would tell her everything about what happened. My secret job as a private investigator, Cristiano, Florentia, the kidnappers. I wouldn’t leave any of it out.

  “Oh my God,” Mom gasped. “Your arm is in a sling? Did you break it?”

  “No, it’s not broken, it’s just…” Got a bullet wound in it. “It’s a complicated injury… I can tell you more when I see you. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “I can come there tonight.”

  I chuckled. “No, Mom. Don’t.”

  “Really, Blaire, I will.”

  “I know you would,” I whispered. “That’s why you’re such a great mom.”

  The compliment seemed to momentarily flabbergast her.

  “You’re certainly feeling grateful,” she commented.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I am. Listen, Mom, there are things I want to tell you. Not just about Evie’s car and my arm. There have been other things going on in my life, things I haven’t told you about. I wish I hadn’t kept secrets from you. I’m ready to come clean.”

  “Blaire, you’re scaring me.”

  “Don’t be scared. Everything is all right… I promise,” I added, feeling more like the parent comforting the child.

  “All right… well, tomorrow then. I can cancel my plans tomorrow and come into the city to see you.”

  “I can come to you.”

  “Not with an injured arm.”

  “I guess… um, all right.”

  I didn’t think Cristiano would be okay with me going back to my own apartment so soon. Which meant my mom would have to come see me at his place. Explaining that my new boyfriend was a big time billionaire was one of the nerve-wracking things on my list of revelations, but at least it was the easiest one.

  So it was a good place to start after all.

  “I’m staying at Cristiano’s,” I told her. “He’s taking care of me.”

  “Cristiano?”

  “My, uh… the guy that I’ve been seeing.”

  “You two are serious?”

  I didn’t even have to think about that one. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

  “Okay, sweetie. I’ll come there, just text me the address. You get some rest. It’s almost ten.”

  “Ten?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dang, I just slept for hours.”

  “Then why don’t you have some dinner and then go back to bed? Have your new boyfriend make you a sandwich or something.”

  “Okay, Mom,” I chuckled. “I love you. Bye.”

  “Bye, sweetie. I love you too.”

  I disconnected the call and eased my way out of the bed, the muffled yammering from down the hall providing background music as I slowly went through the motions of taking a shower and getting dressed in a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top. My injured arm didn’t stop me from doing anything, exactly, it just meant everything took much longer. Getting showered and dressed took double the amount of time it normally would.

  After wringing my hair dry with a towel, I trekked down the hallway to find Cristiano. The talking was coming from the kitchen, telling
me the small radio was responsible.

  I opened my mouth as I turned into the room, ready to ask him why he wasn’t at Florentia’s. As soon as I got through the doorway though, my mouth snapped shut.

  The kitchen sat empty. On the counter was a cutting board, suggesting Cristiano was getting ready to make some dinner, but nothing else was taken out. No food. No cooking utensils.

  My attention went to the small television screen, the source of the talking I’d been hearing. On it, an extremely attractive man was glaring into the camera, the name Niall Lambert flashing across the bottom of the screen.

  “Mr. Lambert,” a blonde reporter was running beside him, thrusting a microphone in his face, “is it true that you purchased the Wyatt Building? And can you explain why?”

  Wyatt Building? That’s Cristiano’s building, the one I was in now.

  The man stopped abruptly and the blonde stumbled forward several steps before thrusting the microphone back in his face. He turned to the camera and smiled, “Because I can.”

  Without another word, Niall Lambert shoved the camera away from his face.

  I frowned slightly, wondering what that was all about, but then froze when I heard something crash somewhere in the apartment. I took a breath to call Cristiano’s name but then stopped. Something was wrong. I stepped to the TV and turned it off. The silence in the rest of the apartment was deadening.

  He’s in the bathroom or something, I tried to tell myself.

  Still, I walked slowly, putting one bare foot in front of the other with as much softness as I could. Creeping like a mouse, I made my way along the wall, peering into the doorways as I went.

  Everything in the dining room was normal; the living room was the same as well. The door to the hall bathroom sat open, revealing its emptiness.

  And then I heard voices, and not media voices this time. They were stifled, nothing distinguishable about them other than the fact that they were both male. I tensed and stopped walking so I could focus all my energy on listening.

  One of the men was Cristiano. I didn’t recognize the other one. Cristiano’s voice rose, anger spiking in it.

  Carefully, I shuffled down the hallway a bit more. The men were in Cristiano’s office, around the corner and tucked away at the very end of the apartment.

  Maybe I should back off, I thought. With the conversation so heated, it was likely also personal.

  But Cristiano hadn’t been expecting anyone… right? Maybe someone had dropped by unexpectedly, someone Cristiano had no interest in seeing.

  “…a fool,” the stranger said.

  My back straightened, and I halted once more.

  Cristiano said something so low I couldn’t hear it. There was a shuffling, then a creaking. Something definitely wasn’t right. Pushing my rear against the wall, I kept going. There was cursing now, just a few words, then a long string of something in a language I didn’t recognize. I kept my palms pressed against the wall, my breathing soft and even. Luckily, I was on the same side of the hall as the office, something that would help me evade detection.

  When I got to the point where I could see into the office door just a sliver, I stopped. Gulping, I craned my head out into the hallway by a fraction of an inch. The shoulder of a man covered part of my view, but just past him, I could see Cristiano. Next to him stood another man — a third man — and pressed against this third man’s temple was a handgun.

  My heart did a flip. Cristiano held the gun. I didn’t even know he owned one. It wasn’t Seth’s Glock. That had been returned. Did Cristiano keep this one in his office?

  It didn’t matter. What mattered was what was happening in that very moment. I pulled my head back, eager to not have the man next to Cristiano see me.

  A stand-off. I’d just woken up and walked into the middle of a stand-off. It was like a western.

  Where had these men come from? How had they even gotten into the apartment? Security in the building was supposed to have been ramped up.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Cristiano growled. “Your friend is dead in two seconds.”

  I winced. What do I do? What do I do? Call the police was the obvious answer.

  But there was no time. And I’d managed to slink down the hallway undetected, but what if I got found out going back down the hallway to get my cell phone? A good guess would be that the man standing near the doorway also held a gun.

  A gun that could go off any minute.

  I had to do something right away. There was no time. I didn’t know what those men were here for, but another thirty seconds and the man I loved could be dead.

  Judging by the bit of him that I’d seen, the man closest to the doorway stupidly had his back to the entrance. His weakness could be my advantage, thank God. I frantically looked around the hall for anything to use as a weapon, but the nearest thing was an abstract painting on the wall.

  “Kill him,” the man nearest to me sneered. “And see what happens. We came here with one purpose, and there’s nothing that can stop me from fulfilling it.”

  I would have to implement everything I’d learned in hand-to-hand combat training, and I would have to move quick. I would only get one second at the most to take the thug out… and I would have to do it with my best arm in a sling.

  I took a deep breath and planned each move in my head, seeing the whole thing play out perfectly. The giant step and twist I would take as I entered the room, the swift path of my fist flying up. I didn’t know just how tall the man was, so that’s why I would have to go at him with an uppercut, take his jaw out from below.

  Focus on the jaw.

  Once I took that step inside the room, I would zero in on it, clock it with all my might. Forget one second. I had half a second to get the job done. I had the advantage of coming in at him from the back, but the second he saw motion, he would likely shoot.

  “Tell me this,” Cristiano said in a loud voice, likely trying to distract him while also trying to clue me into the intruders in the house. I didn’t wait for him to finish. I seized the opportunity while he had my target’s attention and stepped around the doorway.

  Sometimes you hear about time slowing down or people having tunnel vision in times of crises. Knowing you absolutely have to make something happen can cause both of those effects. The only thing I saw was that jaw. Everything else around it blurred and went out of focus. The uneven stubble. The boxy cut of the man’s lower face. The mole right there above my bull’s eye.

  I landed my left foot on the floor, planting it, and drawing energy up as I twisted. My fist collided with the bottom of the man’s jaw. Pain shot through my knuckles, but I kept pushing as the scene unfolded in slo-mo. His head flew up, then back down. And to my relief, he collapsed onto the floor, a crumple of limbs, the handgun clattering next to him.

  “Blaire!” Cristiano shouted.

  I whipped my eyes in his direction, ready to fight off the next attacker, but nothing else had changed. Cristiano still stood there, his handgun directed at the man whose eyes were wide and staring.

  I dropped to my knees and grabbed the gun from the unconscious man’s hand. “Rope,” I gasped. “We need to tie them up. He could wake up any second.”

  Cristiano didn’t answer.

  “Rope!” I nearly shouted, looking at him. “Or something.”

  “The, uh, in the bedroom.”

  “Oh.”

  Of course. The irony of using the rope that Cristiano had kinkily tied me up in bed with to secure an intruder wasn’t lost on me as I ran down the hallway to retrieve it.

  “Put them together,” I told Cristiano when I returned. “We’ll tie them up back to back.”

  Binding them to something heavy like the piano would have been a better idea, but the man on the floor looked too heavy to drag all the way to the other end of the apartment. We would just have to tie them together and then not take our eyes off of them.

  Cristiano told the other man to get down on the ground. I kept the gun I’d won as a pr
ize pointed on the two men as Cristiano hauled the passed out one up and tied him tightly to the other guy. Once he was done, he stood up and called the police to report a home invasion.

  The conscious guy stared at me, a dopey look on his face. He was shorter than the other one, with a chubby face and a ski hat on, like he was trying his hardest to dress the part of a burglar.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “Why the fuck are you here?”

  He stared at me glumly, then said something in a language I didn’t recognize — perhaps the same one I heard earlier.

  “In English,” I told him.

  He shook his head.

  “Great,” I muttered, then narrowed my eyes. “Ken. Do you work for Ken?”

  He just blinked at me.

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Cristiano said from right next to me.

  “I thought this was taken care of,” I bitterly said. “When the fuck are these people just going to stop?”

  “It’s not the same people,” Cristiano replied, his face a tight mask.

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “We’ll talk about it…” His eyes drifted to the man. “Later.”

  I understood the hidden suggestion. Perhaps the man in front of us only pretended to not know English. And, though the police were on their way, who knew when the man would be out of jail and free again? It would be best if he didn’t know any more about us than he already did.

  Cristiano let out a low whistle. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  I let out a shaky exhale, letting myself acknowledge for the first time that my plan to knock out the guy might not have worked. In the moment of crisis, I’d only been able to let myself believe my punch would deliver. Failing simply hadn’t been an option.

  “I’ve never done it before,” I admitted.

  “How did…? I thought that only happened in movies. People getting knocked out with one punch.”

  “You have to hit their jaw the right way,” I explained, still keeping one eye on the bound men in case one of them should try something funny. “Either from the side or directly under, so that their brain shakes against their skull. That’s what causes the blackout.”