by Mia Madison
“I don’t understand.” I sit up, but stay at the head of the bed, with Carlo at the foot. “If they knew I was at your place, why didn’t they come after me one of the times I was there without you? Why didn’t they grab me when I left today? And why would they use … her?”
His eyes go hard and I get a little shiver down my spine. “The reason they haven’t grabbed you, babe, and didn’t today, is that I don’t just have eyes on the house. I have men on it. My guys patrol the area all day, some by car and some on foot, in shifting patterns that Gagarin’s men can’t predict. They couldn’t risk setting foot on the property, so they got into my system using some fancy tools that gave them access without having to get too close.”
26
Garbage
I’m still confused. “But … they hacked your system to send your ex in? Just to mess with you?”
“I’ve become a major inconvenience to Gagarin in the last week. He’s apparently decided to strike at me by any means possible. God knows what he said to Donna; probably convinced her she had a shot at getting me back if she pulled that little stunt.”
I rub the palm of my hand against my forehead, trying to stop the headache that’s brewing there. “Come here, doll,” Carlo says quietly. “I’ll rub your shoulders.”
Part of me wants to refuse, but that would be childish. I shift down the bed and turn my back to him, and his big hands begin gently kneading the tense muscles in my neck and shoulders. “Oh god, that feels good,” I groan.
As always when Carlo’s touching me, I start to get turned on, but he’s careful not to put his hands anywhere else. I ignore the pleasure shimmering along my nerve endings and try to focus. “I still don’t get it. Using someone you were married to years ago seems like a really strange tactic.”
“I’ve done some research,” Carlo says. “One of Gagarin’s favorite pastimes is head games. He’ll fuck with an enemy for a long time, in every possible way, and no tactic is too petty for him. He wants to see them broken before he closes in to finish them off. Once he was done with Donna, he would have killed her.”
I suck in a breath, but he’s not done. “After today, I’ve gone from indifference where she’s concerned to being fuckin’ furious with her. But that doesn’t mean I want her dead. It would have gotten to me, but not nearly as much as him going after someone I care about.”
“And you think that’s what he’ll do.”
“I know it is. If one of my guys hadn’t gone by the house right after you peeled out of there, they would have had you.” I shudder under his hands, and not in a good way. “But Gagarin’s a fool, because he didn’t do his homework. In deciding to fuck with me, he’s taken on the entire Adamo clan.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no one’s gonna touch you.” He turns me to face him. “Once we knew what they’d done, we locked down the system and accessed the footage, so I know what Donna said to you.” I look away and he gently brings my face back around. “She lied, babe. Every word that came out of her mouth was garbage.”
27
You Are The Fire
“All of it?” I whisper.
“All of it. I haven’t touched her since before we got divorced. Even her hair — she never dyed it when we were together. The things I say to you, do with you … those are yours, no one else’s.”
“But she knew — oh my god, she watched us?”
“There are no cameras in the kitchen. But part of the living room is covered, and it wouldn’t take much to put two and two together.”
It hits me then that Carlo never lets me walk around totally naked. And if we get busy in the kitchen, he makes sure I’m covered up again before we leave it. He’s been protecting me even when I didn’t know it. The last of my tension melts away, and I lean forward to touch my forehead to his.
“We okay now?” Carlo says.
“Yeah.” I lift my head. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Being stupid and almost getting myself grabbed.”
His hand cups the back of my neck. “She messed with you good, angel. I can see, finding her in my house like that, why you’d react the way you did. That said, we got lucky today, and we can’t rely on that.”
No, we definitely can’t. “I’ll be good,” I promise.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Let’s not get carried away, doll.” I blush, and his smile gets bigger. “Time to go. I got some of my guys waiting. They’re gonna bring your car back, help me set up some new stuff.”
“The cops might be out there now.”
“Probably are. I’ll deal with them too.”
We get off the bed and I say, “I’m sorry I spoiled dinner.”
“You didn’t spoil anything, babe. Gagarin tried to, but he can go fuck himself sideways with a rusty pitchfork. I had to change our reservation time, but we’re still going out.”
At first I’m surprised, and then I realize this is part of Carlo’s fuck you to Gagarin. We’ll be careful, of course, but we’re not going to cower in fear and refuse to live our lives. “Okay,” I say, and take his hand.
I’m so glad I have new clothes, because dinner is at Luigi’s, a super-fancy place where I have never even contemplated eating. After my experience today with Bianca’s, the first thing I do after we’re seated is lean over and ask Carlo, “Is this an Adamo restaurant?”
He grins at me. “If you mean does one of my cousins own it, then yeah.”
“I knew it,” I say with satisfaction. “I’m beginning to realize your family owns everything. I didn’t even know until today that your sister is the Bianca of Bianca’s.”
“Not quite everything, babe. But there are a lot of Adamo restaurants, as you put it. We grow up loving food and learning how to cook it, so it’s not really surprising.”
The waiter comes with a wine list and Carlo orders a glass for each of us. I shoot him a glance under my lashes, not sure if I should remind him of my age. “They’re not gonna card you, doll,” he says.
Because I’m with him, in a family-owned restaurant. Nice. “Are all Adamo restaurants Italian?” I say. “And I thought Adamos never ordered Italian food in a restaurant.”
He arches a brow. “Who told you that?”
“Well, no one told me, exactly.” I explain about my conversations with Cait and Erin, and with Tonio and Kosta that day at Revved. Carlo is highly amused by this.
“There’s not a rule or anything,” he says. “Everyone makes their own decisions. Lasagna is one of Tonio’s specialties, so it makes sense he wouldn’t order it out. Kosta, not sure, but he was probably just messing with you.”
“Cait said she’s going to tease Tonio about ordering Italian every time they go out.”
His white teeth flash at me. “I bet she is. She likes playing with fire, that girl.”
For a moment, I get a ridiculous little flare of jealousy, and then Carlo’s hand squeezes my thigh. “You don’t need to play with fire, doll. You are the fire.” His voice gets lower, warmer, more intimate. “And I love playing with you.”
28
Don’t Break
I get quivers in several locations and try to focus on my antipasto. Carlo leans closer, his lips almost touching my ear. “You get this outfit at Bianca’s?”
The quivers intensify. “Yes.”
“Next time you see her, tell her I owe her.”
His words send a tremor down my spine. The dress decision was difficult, but after a lot of wavering I went with the emerald green one (even though my eyes are blue) because I thought it had the sexiest cut. It’s strapless, and somehow manages to make my shoulders and my cleavage look amazing. It clings everywhere, and verges on indecency when I sit down and it rides up.
The look Carlo gave me before we left the house said he was going to enjoy taking the dress off me later, but it’s good to know he appreciates it while I’m wearing it, too. “She’s your sister,” I tell him. “I don’t think she really needs to know t
hat.”
“Don’t women talk about all that shit anyway?”
“Not all of it, all the time,” I say. “Just … most of it, most of the time.”
“Glad we got that cleared up, babe.”
I jab him playfully with my elbow as our soup is served. We’re at a table for two, tucked away in a secluded corner. Carlo’s wearing a black-on-black suit that makes him look good enough to eat. If this weren’t such a high-class place, I might give in to the temptation to make him my main course.
The soup is delicious. I take a sip of my wine, feeling very sophisticated, and am about to ask him more about Adamo restaurants when the world goes mad.
There’s a distant, high-pitched whining sound, and rising voices come from somewhere in the restaurant, louder and louder until they’re shouting. Carlo tenses and is halfway out of his seat when the plate-glass window at the front of the restaurant blows apart from the force of a large vehicle ramming through it.
“Down!” Carlo yells at me, simultaneously shoving me to the floor and tipping our table over in front of me to form a crude shield. “Phoenix One, code red now!”
Who is he shouting those words at? But there’s no time to ask, because men are rushing at us from all directions, and then a gun goes off and Carlo’s body jerks. “Carlo!” I scream, trying to get to him, but hands are on me, dragging me away from him, and I’m kicking and clawing and then everything goes black.
I come to, coughing and sputtering, when a bucket of cold water lands on my face. Dragging myself to a sitting position, I scoop my wet hair out of my eyes and look around.
The room is mostly dark. Not a house, my brain says automatically. Too big, wrong layout. Some kind of business.
A bright light hits me in the face and I wince, squinting, flinging a hand up to block it. “So,” a voice says. “Adamo’s whore.”
There’s only the faintest trace of an accent, but I have no doubt this is Vasily Gagarin. Oh god. My heart starts pounding hard. I want to jump up and run away as fast as I can, but I can almost feel the bullets striking my flesh if I do.
Carlo would know what to do in a situation like this, but I have no clue. I fall back on instinct. When I open my mouth to speak, nothing comes out; I have to clear my throat and try again. “What do you want?”
A pause, a sound so faint I can’t interpret it, and then a foot in a black dress shoe kicks me in the stomach. I roll over, retching. “Whores speak when they’re spoken to,” the same voice says.
I lie curled in a ball, hands over my stomach, trying not to cry, or scream, or beg, when fear and pain are telling me I should do all those things. Is Gagarin as crazy as his pimp? How do you survive crazy?
Head games, Carlo’s voice says in my head. He wants to see his enemies broken … once he was done with Donna, he would have killed her.
That means I have one job: don’t break.
29
Knife’s Edge
When I can talk, I say, “I’m not a whore.” Speaking is agony, but at least it means I’m alive.
There’s a longer pause this time. “Up,” the voice says, and a hand grabs me by the hair and hauls me roughly to my feet. That puts me above the light that was blinding me, and I get my first look at Gagarin.
He’s sitting a few feet away in a carved wooden chair that doesn’t go with the concrete floor beneath our feet. He looks to be somewhere in his thirties. Even with him sitting down and me standing he seems tallish, probably six feet.
His suit that probably cost more than I’ve made in my entire life. He’s slender and elegant, with blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and an aristocratic demeanor. He might be handsome, except that those eyes have no life in them.
I count half a dozen muscle-bound men in ill-fitting suits watching us. That’s six too many; they could do a lot of damage if this creep is into watching. Like he’s watching me right now, as if I were a mildly interesting new specimen of insect.
After being abducted, doused, kicked, and dragged around by my hair, I’m not exactly in the best of moods. So I don’t bother trying to make my expression neutral, let alone fearful or anything else Gagarin might like. No, I stare back at him with equal coldness, and I keep staring because I have no idea what else to do. All I know is I can’t show weakness.
Eventually, the corners of his mouth turn up, so faintly that you’d miss it if you weren’t looking closely. “You have spirit,” he says. “You may make an interesting toy.”
I lift one shoulder as if it’s all the same to me. “Carlo’s not much into sharing his toys. It makes him cranky.”
“Your man is dead.”
Agony tears at my heart. For one excruciating moment I’m blind with it, and I’m not sure how much shows on my face before my brain catches up.
No. If Carlo were dead, I’d be no use to Gagarin. He wouldn’t be toying with me like this.
“Nice try,” I say, and the room takes on a lethal chill. Crap. Don’t push the psychopath too far, Gina. Scrambling for a distraction, I tilt my head to the side and study his face, letting my eyes travel over the contours of his bone structure.
I do this like nothing’s wrong and I have all the time in the world to examine him. The moment stretches out. I have to sell it, so I start actually sketching him in my mind, visualizing the paper and the outline of his skull appearing on it.
“What are you doing?” It comes out a little sharply. Ice Boy is feeling off-balance.
I blink as though I’d forgotten where I was. “Oh, sorry.” Just an everyday conversation, no big deal. “You’d make an interesting study.” Please let Gagarin be as narcissistic as he is cruel.
And maybe he is, because there’s a spark of interest in those arctic eyes. “What kind of study?”
“The charcoal kind.” I move my hand, tracing him as if onto the paper, and his eyes follow the motion.
“You’re an artist?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you any good?”
“Yeah.” No bragging, no modesty, just fact. Let him walk into the trap of his own volition.
He studies me. I do the same to him, still in drawing mode, cataloging his features. It’s a kind of claiming, taking him over with my gaze, and I can tell by the way he shifts in his chair that it makes him uncomfortable. I’m walking a knife’s edge, hoping his ego will overbalance the need to hurt me.
Eventually, he turns and says something in Russian to one of his men. I tense, preparing to fight for my life, even knowing it’s futile. The man answers at length, and when he’s done Gagarin turns back to me.
“We have some time.” Some time before what? I don’t dare ask, and I’m afraid to know the answer anyway. “You will paint me,” he announces. A gesture encompasses the other men. “They will get what you need.”
His crew shift uneasily, but don’t say anything. They’re afraid to speak up. Bad leadership, Gagarin.
Who knows if this will do any good, but at least it’s letting me delay whatever he has in mind for me. Probably. Maybe.
30
Like A Stake
I ask for writing materials and make a totally legitimate but nonetheless lengthy list of what I need. Several pre-primed canvases, an easel, a variety of good-quality oil paints, tons of top-drawer brushes, drawing paper and pencils for preliminary sketches, a large piece of canvas cloth to use as a backdrop, linseed oil, paint thinner, a drop cloth, mixing containers. I briefly explain, which is to say justify, every item I write down.
When I’m finished I offer the list to Gagarin. He takes it, scans it, and hands it off to one of his men, saying something in Russian. The man looks at him, then at the list, then at me. “Where do I get this stuff?”
“Donatello’s Art Supplies on Broadway. Big place. Can’t miss it.” Is Donatello’s another Adamo business? If I survive this, I’ll have to ask Carlo.
The guy shoves the list in his pocket, gestures to another man, and leaves. Two down. Four to go. Not that the odds are really improved, especially if
they all have guns, but it makes me feel a little better.
“You’ll want to think about where to stage this,” I say to Gagarin. The longer this charade goes on, the harder it is to pretend that this is normal and he’s sane. A trickle of panic is pressing at the back of my mind, trying to push its way in, and I keep fighting it back. “We’ll have the canvas backdrop, but I’ll need good light, and you may want to sit in a different chair, or hold something that’s meaningful to you. Stuff like that.”
He ponders, snaps his fingers, and rattles off another stream of Russian. To my shock, this sends the other four henchmen off into different parts of the building on various errands, and Gagarin and I are alone for the moment. I wish I were a badass and could take him out with my bare hands. Of course, then his men would no doubt come running and fill me full of bullet holes, so maybe not.
When his face takes on a predatory look and he starts to rise from his chair, my stomach ties up in knots and I flip the notepad I’m still holding sideways. “Don’t move, please. I’d like to get some preparatory work done.”
It comes out more peremptory than is wise, and he freezes halfway up, then slowly settles back into his chair, his lips thinned. I take a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. The basic #2 pencil I’m holding is nothing I’d normally use to work with, but right at the moment it’s a lifeline.
Fortunately, he actually is an interesting subject. Trying to capture his particular combination of poise and poison is enough of a challenge that I fall, just a little bit, into my zone, the rest of the world receding as I focus in on what I’m drawing. Gagarin senses my absorption, and when his men come into the room, he waves them away again.