by Amelia Wilde
My thoughts go silent when Vivienne’s voice breaks in.
“What are you talking about, Mark?” Her tone is even, casual, with a hint of confusion. “You should put down the gun.”
“I’m not putting down the gun.” Mark speaks the words through a clenched jaw. His sandy hair looks like he’s been running his hands through it, and his shirt is soaked with sweat. “And you know what I’m talking about. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”
“I really don’t, Mark.” Vivienne is slowly shifting her weight, moving ever so slightly toward me, in front of me, and I resist the urge to throw my arm out to stop her. I am not going to let her take a bullet for me, FBI or not.
“You’ve been after me. You came to my office, and you did something to my computer, and it’s over, okay? You’re not doing that anymore.” His eyes are wide, the color almost swallowed up by the whites of his eyes, and he glances between me and Vivienne like it’s a tic he can’t control. “I can’t let you do this.”
Vivienne raises her hands in the air. “I’m not doing anything. I’m having a conversation with my boss.”
“I don’t care if he’s your boss. I don’t care who you’re working for, the Feds, or—” He swallows hard. “I don’t care. This ends now.”
“I don’t understand.” Vivienne lowers her arms, spreading her hands in what seems like a plea for explanation. “What are you hoping to gain from shooting us?”
She’s moving again, almost like she’s become frightened, slipping her hand behind me but keeping her back straight. There’s the softest sound of plastic brushing plastic, like she’s lifting the handset off the phone, and her fingers whisper over the keypad.
“What are you doing?” Mark’s voice is loud, rough, and Vivienne flinches like she’s been hit, jumping back into her place.
“I want to know why you’re planning to shoot us, Mark. Or is that not your plan? Are you planning to do something else?” She raises her shoulders, drops them down. “Look, if you’re looking for a conversation, we can sit down and talk. Put down the gun.”
The gun shakes in his hands, the barrel bobbing up and down. “It’s too late for that.”
“It’s never too late to talk. You can start talking right now, if that’s what you came here for.”
“I didn’t have a choice!” He shouts the words, almost spits them, at Vivienne. “I didn’t have a choice, okay?” Then his mouth twitches into a grimace. “Why couldn’t you stay out of it? I know you did something to my computer. I know you’ve been after me.”
I can’t stay silent anymore. “Mark, I own this company, and I can assure you that I never sent anyone to—”
“Shut your mouth.” The barrel of the gun swings toward me, and I can feel every thudding heartbeat in my throat. I don’t have a trick to pull with the phone, and I sent everyone home. I sent everyone home. “I’ve seen her in my office twice now, trying to screw with my computer.”
“If you haven’t done anything,” Vivienne cuts in, “then what are you worried about?” Her tone is as level as always. “Mark, I think something else is going on here. I think maybe you’re in over your head with a situation you don’t feel you can talk about, and you’re making rash decisions.”
“A situation—” Mark laughs bitterly. “You don’t know what it takes to—you have no idea how expensive—”
“Tell us, Mark,” Vivienne says, and the concern sounds genuine. “Whatever it is, you can tell us. Look, I think I know what you’ve been doing. But don’t make it worse, okay? Don’t take it this far. We can talk this out. We can find a way to—”
“No!” Mark screams the word, his voice choked with rage and desperation, and right then, he breaks.
Time comes to a halt, and I watch the barrel of his gun bob, then swing back toward Vivienne. He’s hesitating, but he’s going to do something, his finger tense around the trigger, and I see it happen when he takes the first shot.
I throw my arm out to push Vivienne to the floor, to get her out of the way—I don’t care if this man, this deranged man, kills me, but Vivienne, no I can’t let her—but she’s not there. She’s rushing forward, putting herself between me and Mark, and the bullet doesn’t come. The bullet doesn’t come because it hits her in the side.
And she keeps going.
She keeps going, even when the bullet rocks her backward, she keeps rushing forward and she gets there, her hand coming down hard on his wrist. He lets go of it with a cry of pain, and then it’s in her hands.
“Jeffries, get them in here!” She shouts it at the top of her lungs while she turns the gun in her hands and levels it at Mark. “Don’t move, Mark. Don’t move at all. Put your hands up.”
“Vivienne—”
“Dominic, stay where you are—”
I don’t know who she’s shouting at, but the next moment, there are five agents bursting out of the stairwell and from the elevator, racing down the hall, and they converge on Mark, pinning him.
Vivienne kneels down, hand on her side, and puts the gun gently on the carpet, and then she tumbles to her side.
I get there in time to cushion the blow.
47
Vivienne
The beeping is what wakes me up.
At first, it filters into the dream I’m having. I’m dreaming that Dominic and I are at an amusement park, only it’s a vast, sprawling thing with hundreds of booths and attractions, with paths winding between them in such a labyrinth that it’s impossible to find our way. He’s totally unconcerned, laughing in the sunlight, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, top buttons undone, his dark hair lifting gently in the breeze. “We can agree to forget this, Vivienne,” he says, his voice warmer than the sun.
“I don’t want to forget it,” I tell him. “I’m trying to remember where we saw the ice cream.”
“You’re sweet like ice cream,” he says, putting his arm around my waist.
“We saw that before.” I point to a booth I’m sure we’ve seen before, only it keeps changing while I try to fix my gaze on it.
“I’ll buy you all the ice cream you could ever want.”
“Cotton candy,” I say, and I can taste it on my tongue, the sweetness, the sugar, and Dominic laughs again.
The beeping starts again, a steady tone. “What is that?”
“What is what, sweet thing?” His voice sounds strangely like an echo, and I put my hands to my ears. It feels colder, but the sun is still out, still drenching the entire amusement park. I shiver.
“Vivienne?”
“What is that?” I ask it again, but my mouth doesn’t seem to work as well this time. The amusement park starts to lose all its color, the vivid brightness leaching out of it, the beeping growing louder and more annoying, and for an instant everything goes dark.
Then my head breaks the surface and I open my eyes to see Dominic’s blue eyes wide in front of mine, looking at me with such concern and love and hope that my heart shatters all over again.
“Vivienne,” he says.
I can’t help but smile at him. My lips are dry, and my eyes feel gummy. When I raise a hand to rub at them, I discover for the first time the hep lock in the back of my hand. “Hi.”
“Hi, sweet thing.” Dominic reaches for my other hand, takes it in his, and raises it to his lips. “Hi.”
I blink, once, twice, and there’s a nurse leaning over him, too. “How are you feeling, Ms. Peterson?”
“I—” Wasn’t I going by Davis? I narrow my eyes, trying to make sense of all this. “My side hurts.”
“That’s a side effect of getting shot,” she says, her voice smooth and low. Her hands are working at the gown I’m wearing, and my side throbs again. Shot? The memories filter up from somewhere deep in my mind. Dominic’s office. Mark Sadler. The flash drive. I start to bolt upright, and the nurse puts a hand on my shoulder and presses me gently back down into the pillows. “Calm down, honey. Did the pain get worse?”
She’s peering into the side of my
gown, but the dressing there must meet her satisfaction, because she deftly ties the strings closed again. “The flash drive.” My voice is a little rough.
Dominic squeezes my hand. “They took it off my desk. They have everything they need.”
“There was a second one, but it was—”
“They got that, too. Your boss was harassing me about where your purse was the second you got out of surgery.”
“Did you tell him?”
He rolls his eyes. “I told him it was probably in your desk, and then I told him where the desk was. He started to suggest that I show them where the desk was, but—” Dominic laughs. “I’ve been here with you every moment. What an absurd thing to ask.”
I crack a smile. “That’s Milton.” He’d want all that stuff collected as soon as it was appropriate—sooner, if he could get away with it—and it looks like they did. “Did they—did he say—”
“He said you did a fantastic job.” The nurse steps away and turns down the volume of the machine that’s beeping.
“I’m going to go get you some food, Ms. Peterson,” she says. “Some food and water. Call if you need anything in the meantime.” Her eyes travel over Dominic, and the corner of her mouth quirks in a smile. “I doubt you will, though.”
I give her a nod, and she disappears out the doorway.
Dominic raises my hand to his lips again, eyes locked on mine, and his next breath comes along with a ragged hitch. “You scared the shit out of me, Vivienne Davis—Peterson.” He grins at his own correction. “I was ready to be the hero.”
“You were a hero.”
“I was not. I let you get shot.”
“No.” The memory is getting clearer by the second. “You tried to save me.” I smile at him, my heart aching with joy that he’s still here, still with me. “I was busy doing my job, that was all.”
“Vivienne.” My name is like a prayer on his lips.
“Dominic.”
“I love you.”
My eyes fill up with tears in an instant. “I love you.”
“I’m never going to leave your side again.”
I laugh. “I hope you leave my side sometimes. Otherwise, it could be a little oppressive.”
“Fine, fine…you can go to work. But first, we’re going on a vacation.”
“A vacation?”
“As soon as you’re out of the hospital, we’re heading out. And we’re not coming back for a month. Maybe longer.”
I can’t believe what he’s saying. His last vacation went down in flames in less than a week—there’s no way he’d take a month off from Wilder Enterprises.
“You can’t do that.”
“I can do whatever I want. And what I want is to take you somewhere warm and gorgeous and spend every moment with you, showing you that you mean so much more to me than a company ever could.”
I pick my jaw up off the floor. “Dominic, I don’t—I don’t know if I can take a vacation for that long.”
He gives me a look. “I already cleared it with your boss.”
“Wow.” I try to look stern. “That’s pretty presumptive.”
He leans in close, his eyes shining. “No, it’s not.”
I breathe him in, the scent of him filling me with warmth and hope and love. “No, it’s not.”
Then his lips are on mine, and the rest of the world fades away. Nothing else matters. Nothing else ever will. Not like this.
48
Dominic
Vivienne looks radiant in a pink sundress, her hair loose and curled down her back. It’s her first day out of the hospital, and I brought her back to my penthouse the moment we could escape. I watched her face light up at the racks full of vacation clothes, at the suitcases waiting to be packed, at the hair and makeup team I hired to make sure she feels like a princess every single moment.
She looked up at me with a shy smile. “I’m a little pale and sickly for this kind of thing, don’t you think?”
“Not at all.”
That was the last of her arguments, and she willingly went into their hands, emerging from the spare bedroom-turned-dressing room after two hours freshly showered, her hair blown out and curled to perfection, and her face glowing.
She’d come to me in that pink sundress, bare feet padding on the carpet, and put her arms around my waist, giving me a tender hug. “Thank you.” Then she’d taken a deep breath. “You smell good.”
“I spent some time getting ready, too.”
I took her hands in mine and held them over my heart. “Tell me the truth.”
Vivienne’s brow furrowed. “About what?”
“Are you too tired to leave today? You can be honest with me. We can delay as long as you need to.”
She’d looked around the penthouse. “You’re telling me your private plane doesn’t have a bedroom if I need to rest?”
“It does, but—”
“Dominic Wilder, I have been in a hospital room for too long, looking at the same four walls. And before that, I was spending all my time at various desks at your office building.” She gave me a look. “Don't get me wrong. You have great taste in office furnishings. But I am ready to be somewhere else. With you.”
“You don’t want to overdo it.” The concern crept into my voice in spite of myself.
“I’m very nearly healed,” she said, putting her arms around my neck. “And you can help me out of this dress any time and see for yourself.” She raised her chin and kissed me on the neck, then the jawline, then took my earlobe between her teeth for a fleeting second. “I’d prefer if you did it on the plane, though, and not here.”
“This is a perfectly good penthouse.” My cock was already pressing hard against the zipper of my pants.
“But your plane can take us somewhere exotic. Far away from here.”
“You’re right.”
I put my hands on the sides of her face and pulled her in for a kiss that started out soft and sweet and almost immediately turned into something hotter.
“Dominic!” She pushed me away, laughing. “All these people—”
She gestured at the people moving in and out of the spare bedroom, carrying suitcases and makeup kits and pushing portable mirrors and lights. Most of them were trying not to watch us, but a few of the women had indulgent smiles on their faces.
“You’re right. It’s not fair to them.” I took her hand in mine and smiled down at her. “Let’s go.”
Now, forty minutes later, we’re waiting for them to finish the final checks on my jet. Vivienne stands in a tucked-away waiting area in the terminal. It won’t be long until we’re ready to walk out on the tarmac, climb into the plane, and jet off together. First stop, the Bahamas. Second stop…anywhere.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out absentmindedly, only to feel my heart pick up when I recognize the number on the caller ID.
“Are you okay here for a minute?” I murmur into my gorgeous girlfriend’s ear.
She nods, not looking at me. “More than fine.” She’s watching the activity around the plane with rapt attention, but then she turns and beams up at me. “I’m so excited.”
I kiss her temple and turn away, swiping to answer the call as I head out into the main hallway.
“Dad?”
“Dominic, it’s me.” My dad’s voice is gravelly, but familiar. It’s been a long time since we talked.
“I know, Dad.” Pain spikes through my chest, along with a strange compassion. “What can I do for you?”
“Well—” He breathes in, then lets it out slowly. “I saw on the news that something happened at your building, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
My building. He used to call it his building. For years after he almost lost it, it was still his. Now it’s mine.
“I’m fine. I had—I had some good luck.” It’s a huge understatement, but it’s what I’ve got.
“That’s good, son. That’s very good.”
Something cracks open in me then, and I can’t
stop the words from pouring out of my mouth, words I’ve never said to him before. “Dad, I have to ask you something.”
“Ask.” His tone is a little astonished. I haven’t spoken to him like this in years.
“I don’t—” Now that we’re here, I don’t know how to say it. “I don’t get it, Dad. I don’t get how you let Wilder Enterprises get so out of control. I’ve met someone and I thought—Jesus, I thought that meeting her was a disaster because it would take my mind away from the business. But I realized—shit happened, and I realized that she’s the only good reason to focus on it, to grow it, to make sure nothing happens. If she ever ended up like Mom—” This is an awful blow, and I know it.
“There’s something you should know, Dominic, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a chance to explain.” My dad’s voice is tight with relief, with caution, with everything he’s never said. “I took all that time off because your mother—she was desperately unhappy. I didn’t know what else to do, so I tried everything.”
It’s dawning on me now, bright as day, and with a plummeting sensation, I realize what a dumbass I’ve been.
“I tried everything—the vacations, the trips, the hobbies—because I thought it might make her happy.” My dad sighs heavily. “It wasn’t enough.” He swallows hard. “I didn’t mean to let you down, son. I was trying to fix things with her first, and then I was going to get back to business. I should have found—found a balance.”
“No, Dad.” I speak around the lump that’s risen in my throat. “No. I’m—this was my mistake. This was my misunderstanding. If anything like that was happening to Vivienne—”
“Vivienne is a gorgeous name,” he says softly, and I take the olive branch in both hands.