Denial

by Lisa Renee Jones

  “Turn around,” I whisper, but just thinking about doing it stirs a flutter in my belly that’s darn near painful, and I know then that the doctor was right. I’m suppressing my memories. I’m afraid of what is in my own mind, and it’s a terrifying realization. What could be so bad that I’d rather leave myself behind than face it?

  Inhaling against the pressure building in my chest, aware that I have to get past my fear, I mentally prepare myself to just get it over with. Another deep breath and I whirl around to face myself, but chicken out, clutching the sink and letting my head drop forward, my hair draping my face. Brown hair. A deep mahogany brown that falls to my breasts, and yet I hadn’t even noticed the color until now. I pant out a few more breaths and force myself to lift my chin, bringing my image into view.

  And then I wait for the eruption that doesn’t happen. And I wait some more. Still nothing, and I begin analyzing myself like I’m some sort of a lab specimen. My face is heart-shaped, my eyes a deep green. My skin ivory. There’s a smattering of freckles on my nose I’m not overly fond of, but none of this helps me. I’m completely disconnected from the image in the mirror.

  Frustrated, I curl my fingers into my palms where they rest on the sink, squeezing my eyes shut and promising myself that when I open them, my reaction will be different. Instead, my mind rewards me with one single memory, and I find myself standing inside what looks like an apartment, laughing with a pretty brunette. And there is no disconnect from her. Just seeing her softens a hard spot inside of me, easing the tension along my spine. She’s a friend. Someone I love. I slip deeper into the memory, and the images play like a silent movie. I watch in wonder, reveling in every second. She begins to fade, and I try to pull her back but fail, only to realize that I don’t know her name any more than I know mine.

  Frustrated again, I open my eyes and stare at myself, feeling as if I know the woman in that memory far more than I know the one in the mirror. “Who are you?”

  Leaning closer to the mirror, as if that might actually help me in some way, my eyes catch on a red strand of hair near my nape, and then another, and another, all hidden in the under-layer. Shifting my attention, I examine my eyebrows, and sure enough, I locate several strands of red. Heart racing, and I’m not sure why, I grab my gown, and tug it upward and confirm that I’m either shaved or waxed, but whatever the case, it hides the proof of my coloring. Hiding. The word plays in my mind, echoed by another. Running.

  I drop the gown and lean on the sink, staring at my image again, and I am now officially freaked out. I am running. I know it in some deep part of me. The question is—from whom or what?

  “Oh God,” I whisper, thinking of the fingerprints. What if I’m in trouble? What if I broke the law and I’m giving the proof to a man who can arrest me? I don’t feel like a criminal, but how does one feel when one breaks the law? I just . . . don’t know.

  Or maybe it’s not the law that’s my problem. Maybe it’s a person I’m trying to escape. What if it’s Kayden? What if that is why he’s familiar?

  A knock echoes on the door and I jump, whirling around to face it.

  “You okay in there?”

  At the sound of Kayden’s voice, the detective’s words play in my head. Kayden Wilkens doesn’t do anything, including you, without an agenda. And I remind myself that I don’t know Kayden, so I don’t know if I can trust him. The same applies to the detective, which leaves me with a devastating conclusion. I can’t lean on anyone but myself until I retrieve my memories—which means I can’t stay here. I have to leave, now, tonight, and do it with no money or help. And go where? Think. Think. Think. And then it hits me. Italy is rich with religious culture. I’ll go to a church. Surely one of them will have a place for me to stay and hide.

  Abruptly, the door opens, and I gasp as Kayden steps into the room, his big body claiming the small space, his presence sucking all the air from my lungs.

  “What are you doing in here?” I demand.

  He shocks me by kicking the door shut. “Opening your eyes.”

  With dread in my belly, I grab the sink behind me, holding on for the blow that I sense is coming. “What are you talking about, Kayden?”

  “It’s time for you to remember.” He closes the small space between us, crowding me, the spicy, warm scent of him with hints of vanilla teasing my nostrils and stirring a flicker of a memory I can’t place.

  “I was right,” I accuse, my chin tilting upward to challenge him. “We aren’t strangers, are we?”

  “Do I feel like a stranger?”

  “I feel like a stranger. Why wouldn’t you?”

  “What does your instinct tell you?” he asks, playing the same card Gallo had earlier.

  And again, I say, “I don’t trust my instincts.”

  “And yet you refuse your memories and leave yourself with nothing else to go on, vulnerable to lies I’m not telling you.”

  Vulnerable. He uses the word like he knows what I’m feeling. Like he knows me. “How do I know that? How do I know anything you tell me is true?”

  “Exactly,” he agrees. “That’s my point. It’s time to come out of the shadows and remember who you are.”

  “You think I don’t want to? I can’t just flip a switch and make my mind work. And neither can you.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m not leaving you in those shadows, either.” He reaches for me, and I gasp as he twists me around to face the mirror, his hips leveraging my backside from behind.

  “What are you doing?” I demand, grabbing the sink while he grabs a hunk of my hair and holds it up to display the red.

  “What does this tell us about you?”

  “Lots of people dye their hair,” I say, afraid of where this is going, of what I’m about to find out.

  “You not only colored your hair,” he says, “you did it quickly and badly.” He turns me around again, pressing my backside to the sink, his hands settling on my hips, scorching me through the thin material. “You were running when I found you, and you almost got caught.”

  “You can’t know that,” I say, my fingers curling on the hard wall of his chest where they’ve landed. “I don’t know that.”

  “Those men chasing you in that alley weren’t two-bit thieves. They were skilled, experienced criminals, and they were after you.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Yes. I saw them. And I intervened or you wouldn’t be here right now. What I didn’t know, when I called emergency and gave them my damn name, was who those men were. Not until I found this.” He digs out a package of matches. “Do they look familiar?”

  “No,” I say, my voice cracking. “Nothing looks familiar but you.”

  “Because you don’t want to remember anything before me and you have to.”

  “I want to remember.”

  “Mezonnett,” he says, reading the writing on the matchbook flap, and then grabbing my palm to press it inside my hand, curling my fingers, and his, around it. “It’s a restaurant owned by a man named Niccolo. A very rich, very arrogant man who also happens to be the biggest mobster in Italy.”

  “Mobster?” I whisper, my fears of criminal connections realized, and then rejected. “No. No, this isn’t right. I can’t be involved with a mobster.”

  “I don’t care what you did or didn’t do with or to Niccolo to piss him off. I just know you did something, and his men won’t chase you and forget you, because he doesn’t forget those who burn him. And that is not only your problem; it became mine when I gave my name to the emergency personnel and it ended up on the police report.”

  I feel the blood drain from my cheeks. “He’s going to look for me through you.”

  “Yes, he is, which is why I had a hacker erase my name from the police report. He also amended the ‘Jane Doe’ version of your records to show you were transported here to the hospital, but never admitted.”

  “That’s why you registered me under an alias. So this Niccolo person couldn’t find me.”

  “That’s right
. I even had your registration date changed.”

  “But Gallo found you, and us.”

  “Because someone who knows how much he hates me heard my name on the emergency radio and told him. He intercepted the paper version of the police report about sixty seconds before it would have disappeared as well.”

  “He hates you.”

  “Yes. He hates me.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s about a woman. Kind of like now.”

  “About me, you mean?”

  “For me, yes. For him it’s about her, and she’s a bitter pill he refuses to swallow. Which is why I’m here before he draws the attention to us I’ve ensured we don’t get. One of the nurses just informed me that he spent the past two days going room to room, looking for me until finally someone recognized me. He talked to a lot of people. Too many for me to feel safe staying here, with Niccolo looking for you.”

  “How can you know he’s really looking for me?”

  “He never leaves loose ends. That’s why he’s survived.”

  “Because no one else does,” I say, my throat suddenly raw and dry.

  “You’ve got it, sweetheart, but to be clear, no one outruns Niccolo. We’re going to attack this and win—and to do that, I need what’s inside your head.” He pushes away from me and crosses to a long, rectangular cabinet and removes a duffel bag, which he tosses on the floor. “It’s time for you to remember who you are. Your laundered clothes are inside. Open it and get in touch with your past, because who and what you are to Niccolo will decide what we do next.”

  “Don’t say that like I’m intimately involved with him,” I snap. “I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I can’t be involved with a mobster.”

  “A scenario that makes this easier to fix. So open the bag, grab your memories, and give us both a reason to believe that’s true.”

  Adrenaline surges through me, and my eyes land on the bag holding my personal belongings. My truth. I begin to tremble, a sign of denial and weakness I can no longer afford. Shoving off of the sink, I take the two steps between me and the bag and lower myself onto the ground in front of it, the hard tile biting into my knees. Unbidden, I flash back to being in the same position, with cobblestone pavement instead of tiles punishing my skin, and I want to know how I got there, why I was there. I grab the zipper and try to tug it down the bag, only the stupid shaking of my hand interferes, and I grab it, willing it to still.

  Kayden settles to one knee in front of me. “Easy, sweetheart,” he says, his voice a low, soothing caress I do not expect, nor do I accept, after all he’s just said and done.

  “You just told me that I’m linked to a mobster, who now most likely wants to kill us both. Nothing about this is easy.”

  “Any memories you find within the contents of this bag won’t be as bad as what Niccolo will do to both of us if we let him catch up with us.”

  “Thanks for making me feel better.”

  “I’m not a feel-good kind of guy. You have to do this.” He doesn’t wait for my agreement, unzipping the bag himself, and reaching inside to set a neatly folded pile of clothes on my lap.

  I stare down at the garments, a pair of dark jeans and a lavender V-neck T-shirt, praying for that switch I told Kayden didn’t exist to flip on in my head, but the now familiar white noise remains. “Nothing,” I say, unable to bring myself to look at him, but he’s not having it.

  “Look at me,” he orders, and I don’t want to, but somehow I do, and I can feel him compelling me to give him a different answer, one I can’t give. “There has to be something.”

  “There isn’t. Those clothes might as well be someone else’s.”

  “That’s not good enough,” he says, and while his voice is low, the undertone of truth cuts like a knife.

  I snap back, “You think I don’t know that?”

  His eyes glint, the wolf back in spades, and he grabs the clothes, tossing them in the bag and shoving it aside, his hands closing around my arms. “It’s time to remember.”

  My anger is instant, fear nowhere in sight. “You can’t order me to remember and I just do it.”

  “I’ll take that challenge,” he declares, standing and lifting me with him.

  “Stop bullying me,” I hiss, grabbing two handfuls of his shirt, and giving not even a tiny flip about my gaping gown. “Stop bullying me!”

  “I’m trying to save your life,” he says, rotating me and pressing me against the hard wall, fingers flexing into my shoulders where he still holds me. “What’s your name?”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “You do know.”

  “No,” I bite out. “I don’t.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit.”

  “Your memories could change everything we do when we walk out of this room—you know that, right? Every move we make that could be wrong, you can make right. Now: what’s your name?”

  I don’t know, but I can’t say that to him again. “Let me off the wall.”

  “After you tell me your name.”

  “Stop being an asshole!” I explode, shoving against his hard, unmoving body.

  “I’ve been called worse, sweetheart,” he says, cupping my face. “Give me what I want.”

  “I can’t give you what I don’t know.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I told you—”

  “What’s your damn name?”

  “Ella,” I shock myself by saying. “My name is Ella.”

  four

  Ella,” I repeat, joyful laughter bubbling from my lips. “Ella. Ella. Ella!” I grab his shirt, balling it in my hand. “Kayden, I remember! I remember my name! Thank you for being an asshole.” I point a finger at his chest and manage a moment of sternness to warn, “But don’t do it again. It won’t work next time. I’ll know what you’re doing.”

  His hands slide from my face to my shoulders, those blue, blue eyes meeting mine as he says, “Ella.”

  “Ella!” I exclaim, absolutely giddy. “Oh God. It feels good to hear my name.” Even better in his rich, deep, sexy voice, and I demand a replay. “Say it again.”

  His fingers flex where he holds me. “Sweetheart, I need you to listen to me.” His voice is firm, directive. “I know you’re happy, but—”

  “But?” I repeat, my bubble quickly deflating. “That’s not a good word. It prefaces a problem.” My eyes go wide. “Please tell me my name doesn’t mean something horrible to you.”

  “I’ve never heard your name before now. And what it means to me isn’t what’s important.”

  “If I’m a crazy person and don’t know it, but you do, yeah, I kind of think it does.”

  “You’re about to make me the crazy person, woman. Time is not our friend right now. I need to know if ‘Ella’ is just a name to you. Or did we unlock your memory?”

  I inhale on the question that might as well be a knife drawing blood. Ella is as much a stranger to me as Kayden. “Ella is not just a name¸” I argue, rejecting that this revelation means nothing. “It’s my name. And I know it’s my name, and that’s more than I had five minutes ago.”

  “I understand that,” he says. “But—”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “Can you remember your last name? Give me that name and I’ll find out who you are and how you might be connected to Niccolo.”

  “A last name,” I repeat, willing it to come to me.

  “Don’t think,” he reprimands. “Just answer like before. Yes or no. Time is ticking.”

  “No, but Ella isn’t a common name. Surely there can’t be that many of us who’ve traveled to Italy in the short window tourists are allowed to be in a country.”

  His eyes sharpen, his tone with them. “I take it that’s a no on the last name.”

  I force out a reluctant, “No.”

  “And we don’t even know if you are a tourist.” He releases me, adding a murmured, “Fuck,” before diving fingers through his hai
r and flashing the tattoo on his left wrist, which appears to be some sort of bird, while I can now tell the box on his right has a chess piece inside. I wait for either to mean something to me, like his watch and his scent, but nothing comes to me.

  “You’re sure?” he presses, his hands settling on his jean-clad hips.

  The fact that he’s gone from “Don’t think” to this says he’s desperate, and I’m pretty sure he’s not a man who gets desperate often. “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “Not even a possible name?”

  I give a shake of my head and his lips tighten, his chest expanding on a breath he exhales with the declaration, “Plan B it is, then.”

  “Plan B?” I ask.

  “That’s right,” he says, giving me a once-over that has my nipples puckering beneath the thin gown, before he levels a stare at me and orders, “Get dressed. We need to be gone before Gallo gets back.”

  “Please tell me the extent of Plan A, which is always the best plan, wasn’t just you being an asshole to try and jolt my memory.”

  “Plan A was, and is, you remembering who you are, and that will remain the case. I told you. The details of your relationship to Niccolo are a potential game changer.”

  My fingers curl into fists by my sides. “I don’t have a relationship with Niccolo. I’d know if I did. I’d feel it. Like I know you’re . . .” My voice trails off while the certainty of knowing this man beyond that alleyway takes root, and reality hits me. I’ve been swept away by this man so much so that I chose him over a detective, and I’m about to leave the hospital without even knowing where we’re going.

  “I’m what?” he presses.

  “I know there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

  He reaches for me, pulling me to him, his hand nestling intimately over the bare skin under my gown and above my backside. “Please don’t do this,” he pleads, his gentle tone defying the tension wafting off of him. “I know you’re scared and confused, but don’t start doubting me now. I am not your enemy, Ella.”