by Anthology
Ellie eyed the increasing size of the falling snow through the windshield and sighed. “You just may get your wish. I was watching the news at the dealership while I was waiting for you to pick me up, and they’re expecting the snowstorm to hit around midnight rather than tomorrow like they said this morning—about six or so inches overnight with a lot more to come for the next couple of days. I had hoped to be well on my way out of the state before it hit. I won’t be able to leave the hotel, much less the city if the roads get bad. Why my stupid car had to break down today of all days…”
Cassie laughed. “Maybe the universe is trying to tell you something.”
“Yeah, from where I’m sitting, all I see is a huge middle finger,” Ellie retorted, though she couldn’t help smiling.
God, she really missed hanging out with Cassie and her husband. First year into med school and she was already starting to understand why her big sister, Liz, had decided to switch to nursing halfway through as an undergrad. She barely had time to sleep, much less hang out with friends or even think about dating.
Mom wasn’t kidding when she said I would be married to my schoolwork until I was thirty.
It wasn’t until they were pulling into the restaurant where they were meeting Cassie’s husband and his parents that Ellie realized that all of her earlier anxiety from being startled by Valerio Marcello and then having to walk across a parking lot at night had completely disappeared sometime during their banter. She would definitely have to buy Cassie a drink or two as thanks.
* * *
“Are you sure it’s okay?” Ellie asked for the umpteenth time as she accepted the keys to Cassie’s car.
“Weren’t you the one who was worried about us having to drive clear across the city in this weather to drop you off at your hotel?” Cassie admonished with an exasperated sigh. “Grant can just drive me to work tomorrow, no problem. Although—” She looked pointedly at the couple of inches or so of snow that already coated the streets. “We’ll all probably get snowed in, anyway, so whether or not you have my car or not won’t matter. At least this way, if your car isn’t ready tomorrow and the roads aren’t as bad as everyone’s predicting, you don’t have to call a cab if you need to go out.”
“Okay, okay,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what the service guys say about my car.”
Cassie grinned back and leaned over to give her a hug. “I’m so glad we got to see you today, even if it was only for a couple of hours.” She then whispered into Ellie’s ear, “Say hi to Valerio for me.”
It took every ounce of self-control Ellie possessed to pull back with a straight face, especially since Cassie was grinning like a loon. “Will do,” was all she replied, pleased that her tone sounded completely normal.
Ellie accepted a one-armed hug from Grant and shook hands with his parents before climbing into Cassie’s car. She slowly drove out of the restaurant’s parking lot, mindful of the rapidly slickening roads. It was past nine on a Monday night, but there was still quite a bit more traffic along the freeways than she had expected, especially now that the snowfall and wind gusts had abruptly increased to something that was starting to resemble a blizzard.
So much for the storm hitting at midnight, Ellie thought wryly as she signaled to leave the freeway.
At least she was only about ten minutes or so from her hotel. Well—ten minutes at a normal speed and not the twenty miles per hour she was currently going. Even at that slow crawl, she felt the tires slip twice on the icy road enough to make her adrenaline surge before she had made it to the first traffic light.
Ellie barely made it across the next four-lane thoroughfare before she was forced to a complete stop by what appeared to be a traffic jam. Squinting into the distance through the mini blizzard, she cursed loudly when she saw what appeared to be a multi-car pile-up blocking all lanes of traffic going in her direction as well as a couple of lanes of oncoming traffic about a couple hundred yards up the street. It must have just happened since she didn’t see any flashing blue and red lights and there was only a handful of people milling about the wreckage.
A sudden car horn behind her nearly made her jump out of her skin, and she instinctually closed her eyes tightly and braced for an impact. When nothing happened after several anxiety-filled, eternal seconds, Ellie slowly opened her eyes and drew in a relieved breath. She looked behind her and saw a line of four cars, the nearest uncomfortably close to her bumper and likely the one that had honked at her. Not that she could blame them seeing as there was a toddler sitting in a car seat in the back.
She glanced around the rest of the area, but although she was in the right-most lane, she was boxed in on three sides by vehicles and a curb on her passenger side. She had the sudden urge to start banging her head on the steering wheel. Really, what else could go wrong today?
Squinting through the falling snow into the distance in front of her again, Ellie frowned as she eyed the wreckage worriedly. The cars didn’t look too mangled—dented in doors and smashed bumpers from what she could see. Although the ice and maybe the decreasing visibility had likely been the culprit, everyone had also probably been driving slowly. If they had been driving on the freeway, she imagined it would’ve been a lot worse.
Her gaze landed on an entrance to a parking lot of a cluster of office buildings a couple of cars ahead of her. The car nearest the entrance probably wouldn’t try to use it to drive around the accident until the police arrived, so she would just have to sit tight until then. She could already hear the faint sound of sirens coming from somewhere up ahead.
Ellie pulled out her phone and selected Cassie from her contacts.
“Yes, we made it home just fine,” Cassie huffed into the phone the second the call connected.
She couldn’t help but grin. “That’s good to know, but that’s not why I called. I’m stuck behind a multi-car pile-up, and I figured we could get some more chat time in while I wait for traffic to be redirected.”
2
An hour later, Ellie finally managed to get moving again. Unlike the other cars that had been stuck behind the pile-up, she had chosen to stay off the busier roads. Having come to the city numerous times with her parents and older sister over the years, she was pretty familiar with this area and opted to take the back roads to the hotel.
It was almost creepy how empty the roads were in an area that was usually bustling with both locals and hotel patrons. Add to that a thick coating of white over everything and snow blowing sideways across her windshield as she slowly crept her way down the slippery street, and she was immensely glad that she was only three blocks away from her destination.
Suddenly a truck zoomed across the intersection only inches in front of her, and she lurched forward against a seatbelt that had abruptly become a steel rod against her chest as her car t-boned the truck’s passenger door. Ellie cried out as she belatedly slammed on the brakes.
Her car had already pushed the truck a few feet down the road before hitting the brakes caused the car to slip away slightly to the right with the help of the accumulated ice. It sideswiped the truck’s newly-dented door a bit with the edge of her bumper until they both came to a stop side-by-side with their frontends angling away from each other.
Ellie only had a couple of dazed minutes or so to wonder why the airbags hadn’t deployed when the harsh cursing reached her ears followed by the slamming of a vehicle door. She had already been clutching the steering wheel like a lifeline, and her hands gripped the wheel even tighter in reaction. A tall figure dressed in a thick, dark coat was striding towards the driver’s side of her car through the mini blizzard, head bent low and one arm over their face.
She started to reach for the button to roll her window down, but the person reached out and yanked her door open before she could even touch it. She only had a split-second to see the livid, reddened face of a man with dark eyes before she was suddenly a little girl again, frozen with terror in her seat as a dark figure filled the opened car door.
A black-gloved hand shot out and grabbed her by the bicep along with some of her long hair, violently pulling her from the car. Ellie shouted in utter shock as she landed facedown onto the snow and ice-covered street, briefly knocking her forehead hard against the frozen asphalt. The white-hot jolt of pain that exploded through her head was enough to bring her back to the here and now from that dark memory and realize that she really had just been yanked out of her vehicle by someone.
Wincing at the pain, she tried to pull herself onto her knees from her awkward sprawl and managed to barely dodge the foot aimed at her face by a hair out of sheer luck. That gloved hand reached down for her again but only managed to pull off her knit hat as she flinched and scrambled away by sliding on her bottom.
“That was my new truck you just dented, bitch!” he half snarled, half slurred.
The enraged man advanced on her on unsteady legs, hands fisted, and his entire demeanor promising a world of pain for her. Her head throbbing and her vision blurred, Ellie desperately tried to get to her feet, but she kept slipping on the ice.
Then her head abruptly jerked back and pain exploded along her scalp as the man yanked her back towards him by the hair and she fell onto her back. Then he was on her, his legs straddling her waist and his hands tangled and pulling cruelly in her hair along either side of her head, lifting her head as though preparing to slam it back down against the street. He leaned down until his face was inches from hers, his breath smelling as if he had drunk an entire liquor store dry, but none of that was the worst part.
Except for the alcohol on his breath, Ellie had experienced this very thing before—trapped beneath a heavier, snarling body with eyes like two black holes glaring down at her. She suddenly knew it with every fiber of her being.
Her mind screamed it a split-second before she released a piercing shriek and began to buck, push, and punch at him like a woman possessed, the world and the faint sounds of traffic in the distance fading to only the man pinning her down and her incoherent shouting amidst the sound of her impossibly loud heartbeat pounding in her ears.
A blast of icy wind and snow abruptly whipped across her face, and Ellie gasped as though someone had dropped an entire bucket of ice cubes onto her face. It was only then that she realized the suffocating weight, as well as her attacker, were no longer present.
What in the—
“What the hell do you want, you son of a bi—!”
A meaty thud cut the man off, followed by the sound of someone retching violently.
The whole world above her was spinning into an incoherent black and white blizzard, but her body was very much still in fight or flight mode. She had flipped herself onto her stomach and was trying to slid/crawl away towards Cassie’s car when a pair of shiny, black shoes and the hem of an equally black coat stepped in front of her.
Ellie flinched away with a strangled cry, but the deep voice that spoke made her instantly freeze as her mind and body were overwhelmed by a surge of emotion that wasn’t quite fueled by recognition or even fear.
“It’s all right. I’ve taken care of that bastard.” The owner of that voice squatted down, and Ellie drew in a sharp breath as his face came into her field of view.
Valerio Marcello. There was no mistaking that face, even through tear-blurred eyes.
“Are you hurt?”
“No—yes—I don’t know,” Ellie stammered as she tried to pull herself up onto her knees while her head throbbed and the world threatened to tilt sideways.
Reality had already taken a left turn sometime before she had been brutally torn from the car, so why the hell not add a hotel mogul to the mix, too? She knew she was on the verge of losing it completely, so focusing on the absolute absurdity of the situation, rather than the terror that was still very much with her, helped to settle her mind. The last thing she needed to do right now was to become unhinged.
Valerio reached down, slowly, as though approaching a frightened animal and gently grasped her shoulders. “Here, let me help you up.”
Before Ellie could open her mouth to protest or even pull away, he lifted her up by her upper arms as easily as though she was made of air and set her down carefully onto her feet. The rapid movement made her head spin, and she instinctually grabbed onto his coat to keep from toppling over again. His hold on her arms immediately tightened.
Ugh—she was starting to feel a bit nauseous, as well, but she forced herself to focus on him.
He tsked. “You have a fairly nasty bump on your forehead. Did it happen in the accident, or did he…?”
“I hit my head…when he dragged me out of the car.”
His face was starting to blur again in a way that had nothing to do with the heavy snowfall.
“Come sit in my car where it’s warm. My driver’s already called 911. I’ll stay with you until the police and ambulance arrive.”
Still feeling much too queasy, Ellie allowed Valerio to lead her to an expensive-looking silver car without a word. Her face had long since gone numb with the constant bombardment of a mixture of icy wind and snow, which was probably a blessing given that she couldn’t really feel the injury on her forehead anymore because of it.
What must have been the aforementioned driver was standing beside the back, passenger side door. The man quickly opened the door as they approached and then stepped back as Valerio helped her into the car.
“Sit tight, and try not to jostle your head around too much,” he instructed. “As much as I’m loathe to do it, we can’t allow your attacker to freeze to death before he can be arrested.”
Valerio shut the door, and for the next few minutes, Ellie closed her eyes and concentrated on calming her still-racing heart before brushing her damp bangs aside and tentatively touching the center of her forehead. She winced as her fingertips came in contact with a knot around the size of a table tennis ball. Not quite the first impression she wanted to make after not seeing her big sis for months. Never mind Liz, her parents were going to freak.
Now that she was starting to warm up, the bump was beginning to throb, but on the plus side, the world had stopped spinning. She also no longer felt as though she was one wrong move away from losing her dinner. Her mind was still a little fuzzy, but that could just be the shock. She probably didn’t have a concussion, but given what she knew about head wounds, she couldn’t altogether dismiss it as just a bad bump, either.
Although she was expecting it, Ellie still started badly when the door to her left was abruptly opened, and she had a terrifying moment of déjà vu of the driver of the truck looming over her in the door. Then she saw Valerio’s face as he slid into the backseat next to her through a flurry of snow, and she was thankfully able to reign in her rising panic before it could rage out of control.
“The bastard was snoring if you can believe it,” Valerio said in disgust. “I could already hear sirens in the distance, and the roads are still fairly passable. It won’t be long now. Are you still feeling dizzy?”
Ellie caught herself at the last second before she could shake her head and set her head to throbbing even worse. “I’m—better,” she replied, wincing internally at the tinge of caution coloring her words. She really needed to get it together! “I don’t think I need to go to the hospital, but…”
“I think I’ll let the paramedics be the judge of that,” he interjected.
“Okay.” She couldn’t really argue with that.
“I had hoped to run into you again, and while I’m pleased that it’s happened so soon, I’m sorry it had to be under such horrible circumstances,” he said seriously, his eyes fixed intently on her in a way that instantly made her want to squirm.
Maybe because her cheeks were currently one step away from being blocks of ice, but the heat that suddenly rushed to her cheeks was painfully noticeable. She had endured enough stares and scrutiny in her past to last her a lifetime, so it was a huge pet peeve of hers. However, she couldn’t very well demand that her rescuer stop looking at her without sounding r
ude or ungrateful, so she forced herself not to look away, hoping he would just think that the redness in her cheeks was because of the cold and not embarrassment.
“You still think you know me?” was all Ellie could think to say.
“Don’t worry. No matter who it was, stranger or friend, I would never leave a lady to fend for herself in that kind of situation,” Valerio said firmly, apparently misinterpreting the reason behind the turmoil she couldn’t quite keep from her voice. “Seeing that it was you—well, that I could possibly know the victim made me that much more glad that serendipity led me here when it did.”
“I’m sorry, but I really have never met you before you talked to me back at your hotel,” Ellie said, suddenly feeling a little guilty despite knowing she absolutely had nothing to feel guilty about.
“And I’m just as convinced that we have,” he insisted.
“Maybe I just look like someone you went to elementary school with or something.”
Valerio shook his head. “It’s more than just your looks. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m sure it’ll eventually come to me.”
“Mr. Marcello—”
“Please, just ‘Val’ is fine,” he interjected, flashing her a grin that instantly sent her heart racing.
Crap. Why did he have to be so damned good looking, anyway? His sexy smile was the last thing she should be thinking about right now!
“All right—Val,” Ellie began again, “did you knock that man out when you pulled him off me?”
He nodded. “Though it’s probably not the grand feat you’re imagining. You did a real number on his face, you know.”
His eyes radiated approval as they glanced down at her hands that she hadn’t realized until now she was nervously wringing in her lap. She was startled to see that the skin of her knuckles was broken and slightly bleeding on various places as though she had skinned them. She hadn’t even realized that she had injured them at all, but now that she was aware of the injury, she noticed that her hands were indeed throbbing and stinging faintly.