A sob escaped her lips and she whispered against him, “Please, Reyes, please just push me away. I’m not strong enough for this. Tell me to fuck off before I break my vows. If you take away that part of me… I’ll have nothing left of myself. J-just make me go.” She clung to him, digging her nails into his flesh. She blinked rapidly and stared at her hand on his arm. Even though she couldn’t see colours she could see that her skin was light against his.
He looked at her for a moment, debating whether or not to continue, knowing he could easily fuck her up against the door and she wouldn’t murmur a single protest. But he also knew that if he did that, he would be taking something from her. Something extremely valuable. So, instead he pushed himself away, slamming a hand over her shoulder next to her head. She flinched, but stood still, breathing heavily. After a moment, he dropped his hand to the lock and twisted it. He pulled her back, smoothed her skirt down her body, opened the door and pushed her through with a growled, “Go.”
Casey ran into the corridor without looking back. She refused to turn around as she heard Reyes leave the washroom and stride away from her. Elvira rushed quickly toward her from the other direction and reached for Casey’s arm, steadying her. “Everything okay, hon?” she asked, her voice sharp with concern. She glanced behind Casey as though expecting to see someone in the shadows.
Casey nodded swiftly and lifted a hand toward her hair. Elvira reached up and tucked a few strands behind Casey’s ear with swift efficiency. “You look beautiful. Don’t worry that the bitch squad’ll think anything’s wrong. They don’t have time for anything but their own selfish selves anyway.”
Casey laughed shakily. “Thanks, Elvira.”
“Come on. Let’s go get a drink in the lobby bar,” she murmured huskily, linking arms with Casey and pulling her toward the front of the restaurant.
Casey glanced back toward the Tuesday table. “Won’t they miss us?”
“Who the fuck cares,” Elvira said. “I’m more interested in hearing what kind of wild animal attacked you in the washroom and where I find can one of those.”
Casey laughed, beginning to feel some of her tension ease and allowed the older woman to pull her toward the bar.
Chapter Thirteen
“Where are they…?” Casey mumbled, rummaging through the drawer in her washroom. She could barely see through the terrible throbbing behind her eye socket. She’d crawled from her bed to the toilet several minutes earlier where she’d emptied her stomach. Now that the horrific nausea had passed she was searching for the migraine pills Ignacio’s doctor had given her. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t.
Her hand closed over the box and she pulled it out with a relieved sigh. She collapsed sideways onto the bath mat and lay still for a few seconds, one hand clutching the small white box and the other pressed tight against the side of her head. Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. She bit back sobs of pain, knowing they would only echo in the small space around her and make the throbbing in her skull that much worse.
She cringed when something thumped against the washroom window and a loud howling sound heralded an end-of-summer Florida storm. She hadn’t realized one was coming, but if her head was any indication, it was going to be brutal. Sometimes she got really bad migraines when the weather was stormy. She wondered if they were due for a tropical storm or worse. She’d been so preoccupied with Ignacio’s and Reyes’ drama that she hadn’t been paying any attention to the news.
When she finally managed to get her breathing under control, she squinted her eyes at the packaging in her hand and used the dim light from a lamp in her bedroom to peel back the foil. With shaking fingers, she pushed the pill into her mouth and used her tongue to press it against the top of her mouth where it slowly dissolved. She’d already taken several Tylenols and one Advil. They hadn’t lessened the pain and anything that hadn’t yet broken down in her stomach had been thrown up a few minutes ago. She knew from the intensity of the headache that she was past the point of over-the-counter pain meds helping her now anyway. She would just have to wait this one out.
Casey slowly pushed herself up onto shaking hands and knees. Whimpers of pain escaped her and she nearly collapsed back onto her side. She leaned forward for a minute, pressing her forehead into the cradle of her arms for relief. She used her the back of her hands to wipe the tears from her cheeks before pushing herself back up and taking several deep breaths. Fuck, it even hurt to breath. She was fast approaching the point where she was going to curl up in a ball wherever she landed and just cry and beg for death until the migraine passed. She just wanted to make it to the bed before that happened so she could wake up on the other side of this bitch in relative comfort.
“Casey,” a deep voice reached softly out to her.
She cried out, startled and then nearly vomited from the sudden movement. She slammed her swollen eyelids shut and took several gasping breaths as she tried to control the nausea that threatened to overwhelm her once more. After a few more moments, she was able to peel her eyes open into slits and see the man crouched in front of her. Alonzo was looking at her with that usual mix of resigned concern. He was used to these godawful headaches.
“Crawl to me, Casey,” he said patiently. “I’ll help you get into the bed.”
They both knew he wouldn’t touch her. He never touched her because he always followed Ignacio’s instructions to the letter. But he would help her as best he could. Some small part of him cared about the frail mistress he’d been tasked to care for over the years. Slowly she did as he bid her and began to crawl painfully toward him, biting back a moan. He coaxed her with gentle words of encouragement until they reached the bed where she was forced to pull herself up before collapsing onto her side.
He leaned over her placing his beefy arms next to her and asked, “How many pills did you take, Casey?”
She closed her eyes and whispered, “Not many. Three maybe.”
It was the truth as far as she could remember, but they both knew he didn’t believe her. Because she’d lied to him once in the past and almost managed to kill herself. Plus, she had a tendency to forget how many pills she took or how often she took them when her head hurt this bad. She heard him sigh and move away from her. Then she heard him run a glass of water before returning to the bed.
“Sit up and take this,” he urged her.
She knew what Alonzo was giving her. “I don’t want it,” she told him. She’d promised Reyes she wouldn’t take any more sleeping pills. A tiny sob escaped her as a fierce longing hit her hard in the chest. She wanted him with her so badly it took her breath away. She desperately needed his comfort, the savage protectiveness he seemed to feel toward her.
“You don’t have a choice, Casey. Bosses orders. When you hurt like this you take the pills,” Alonzo said, his voice hardening. “Now sit up and take the pill.”
There was no point in arguing. If she resisted Alonzo he would tell Ignacio and she would have to deal with her husband’s anger and possibly a punishment. Which she absolutely couldn’t handle in this weakened state. She pushed herself up into a semi-sitting position and reached for the pill and water, taking both from him.
“Thank you,” she murmured and tried to palm the pill instead of putting it in her mouth.
Of course, she didn’t fool his sharp eyes. Not when she was half blind and clumsy in her agony. He caught her hand, touching her for the first time in years. She gasped and tried to pull away from him, but he held tight. She forced herself to look at him, trepidation clear in her pain-dulled eyes. His dark, remorseless gaze met hers without flinching.
“You need to take the pill, Casey,” he said in an even voice.
Her heart pounded in her chest, the blood in her head throbbing in tandem. She swallowed hard, trying desperately not to throw up on her lovely bedspread. Slowly he pried her fingers open, pulled the smooth, round pill from her hand and lifted it to her lips. She opened her mouth and let him feed her the sleeping pill. She ha
d no choice. She could fight him, but she was in too much pain and she wouldn’t win. If Alonzo was willing to touch her to get her to take the pill then something significant had changed in their relationship.
He wrapped his hand around hers over the water glass and lifted it to her lips, urging her to take a drink. She sipped, swallowing both the water and the pill. Tears leaked from her eyes. She’d tried to keep her promise to Reyes. She’d wanted to, but she wasn’t strong enough.
Alonzo took her jaw in his giant hand and squeezed, forcing her mouth open so he could see for himself that she’d swallowed the pill. She was too frightened, too overwhelmed by the meaning of his touch to protest. Nodding, satisfied, he let her go, took the glass from her and set it on her night table, then he drew the covers back and waited for her to slide under. He treated her as though she were a child, with careful efficiency. But she felt more from him than she had before. She felt something that made her heart stutter in her chest. He was allowing himself closer access to her than he’d ever allowed in the past. He’d always kept that careful distance. She was never entirely sure why. She suspected it was partly to keep himself safe from Ignacio’s wrath and to keep his post as her bodyguard. To make sure he wasn’t replaced with someone else.
She kept her eyes on him, watching his every move as he pulled the quilt back up her body and tucked it lightly around her. She tried hard not to flinch away from him when he ran his knuckles down her cheek; she was so used to him never touching her. She simply couldn’t wrap her head around why he was suddenly touching her now. He reached over and flicked the lamp off, throwing her bedroom into shadows except for the dim lighting from outside her bedroom, caused by lanterns from the patio leaking in from outside her window. The throbbing in her head eased slightly and she let out a grateful sigh.
She stared after him as he moved in the darkness to sit on her vanity chair and face the bed. He bent so his elbows were on his knees and he watched her. He’d done this in the past. Watched over her when she had a migraine and he didn’t trust her word on how much medication she’d taken. Somehow, she thought this was different. She felt he was watching and waiting for her to fall asleep. He was waiting for something.
She desperately wanted to stay awake. She didn’t trust those eyes, gleaming black in the darkness. Her head pounded in rhythm with the outside elements, battering her bedroom window with stormy fury. She couldn’t seem to stop the waves of fatigue from overtaking her and gradually her eyelashes fluttered shut, no matter how hard she urged them not to. As she finally succumbed to a deep, unnatural sleep she wondered if the man watching over her was her friend or her enemy.
Chapter Fourteen
Casey wasn’t sure exactly what woke her up, but she was suddenly awake and in the middle of Armageddon. Her head was throbbing so viciously her first thought was that someone had embedded an axe in her skull while she was sleeping, which was both unrealistic and not a very nice thing for her imaginary attacker to do. Then she registered the dull sound of bullets and men shouting, though the sounds were coming from a distance. Next, it occurred to her that she was in someone’s arms and that the someone holding her was running at top speed through the downstairs corridor of her home.
Casey forced her eyes open, but piercing light penetrated her sensitive vision throwing a shard of imaginary glass straight through her already splitting brain. She let out a strangled scream and automatically clutched at whomever was carrying her and buried her face in his broad chest. His arms tightened around her as he ran. She heard his harsh breathing thundering above her head and felt his heart thump against the side of her face. She wondered if it would be impolite to ask him to either put her down and let her die in peace or to stop breathing and beating so loudly until her migraine had passed.
Then something exploded next to them and she felt fire rip down her arm as shards of marble flew through the hallway they were running down. A trickle of blood ran down the back of her arm and dripped off her elbow. Casey whimpered quietly and held onto for dear life. She was certain now that it was her Alonzo who was carrying her. He swore, shifted her against his side, allowing her legs to slide to the floor and reached for his gun holster.
Casey clutched him, attempting to hold herself upright while he covered them and edged around a corner holding Casey tight against his solid body. Her legs refused to hold her up and every time she closed her eyes fatigue threatened to overtake her. Why the fuck had he forced her to take that sleeping pill? It was going to get them both killed because she couldn’t even work her own damn legs. Slowly she sank to the floor, her knees bending under her weight, her eyes firmly closed against the light and her fingers clinging desperately to Alonzo’s shirt. He kept one hand on the top of her head while she huddled against his legs.
Alonzo shot down the corridor a few times then scooped Casey back up in his arms and began running toward the back of the house again. They raced out the back door so fast the door banged against the side of the house shattering the glass in the window next to it. The driving rain from the raging storm pelted down on them, soaking Casey in a matter of seconds. Alonzo didn’t slow down. He flung Casey over his broad shoulder where she was forced to brace herself against him if she didn’t want her already intensely splitting head to bang against his back. She lifted her face and tried to see through the fall of her tangled hair, the pouring rain and howling wind, but it was a blur. She had no idea how Alonzo knew where they were going and prayed they didn’t end up in the pool. She was pretty sure she would happily drown right at this exact moment.
Alonzo crashed through another door and straight into the pool house smashing into the far wall. The entire structure shuddered under his weight. He’d turned before hitting the wall, taking most of the hit against his shoulder, but her head jarred so badly that Casey felt bile rise up in her throat and had to swallow several times so she wouldn’t throw up on him. She clung weakly to his soaked shirt as he strode through the pool house with her still slung across his back. She wondered what his plan was, there were no other exits that she knew of, when he crouched on the concrete and set her down. She moaned and curled onto her side, holding her head with both hands.
Casey watched as Alonzo used his bulk to move a massive shelf holding soft white towels and shoving it aside. She curled tighter into herself as it crashed sideways, smashing into the wall across from them, littering the floor with towels. Without pausing he reached down and wrenched open a trap door in the floor. Casey stared in open-mouthed astonishment. She had no idea there was an escape route in or around the mansion. She supposed it made sense though.
When Alonzo reached for her she went eagerly into his arms, recognizing now that he was trying to get them the hell out of whatever shit-storm was raining down upon Ignacio’s head. And while Casey was smart enough to know exactly who was storming the compound, intent on killing her husband, she didn’t have the capacity to work out her own part in Reyes’ plan. She felt better off going with Alonzo and working out the rest later.
Alonzo scooped her up and plunged them through the darkness of the hole in the floor of the pool house. Casey hid her face against his shoulder, crying out when his feet hid solid ground and her head smacked into him. She knew it was a shallow wish, considering men were dying all around them, but she wanted her head to stop fucking hurting until they were safely away from the danger so she could just think straight.
Alonzo strode easily through the damp darkness of the underground tunnel with Casey held firmly in his arms. He seemed to know exactly where they were going. Silence surrounded them now that they were away from the mansion. She desperately hoped he was taking her to a car where they could drive away from the deadly chaos aboveground. Where they could wait out the storm until news of its outcome trickled their way and she was able to figure out what to do next.
Casey expected them to continue until they emerged from the tunnel but the eerie echo of Alonzo’s shoes dully hitting the rough concrete abruptly ceased. He stood sti
ll in the darkness holding her, his breaths puffing in and out of his mouth above her head. Casey tilted her face back and tried to see him in the inky darkness, but she couldn’t see a thing. Her skin felt icy and shivers wracked her body.
“Al-lonzo…” she whispered. “Wh-where are we?”
“End of the line,” he whispered back.
He crouched to set her down and she stiffened expecting to feel the hard impact of concrete, but was relieved when she felt the softness of a blanket against her body. She heard him reach for something in the darkness and sat in confused silence until a bright light flared up in front of her. She flinched and closed her eyes against the sudden glare and the stab of pain it created in her skull. She squinted and realized he was lighting candles. After a moment, as her eyes adjusted, she was able to open them and look around. She let out a moan of despair. They were in a room with no exit. He wasn’t trying to escape the carnage happening in the mansion, he had just relocated them.
Then, as she continued to search the room, despair turned gradually to confused fright. Not only was she sitting on top of a blanket, but she was surrounded by rose petals. Hundreds of rose petals. She tried to force her throbbing, drugged brain to work through the problem at hand and what she was starting to suspect was a horrible truth. Finally, she turned pleading eyes up to the man that had been her bodyguard for almost a decade.
“It was you?” she whispered.
He nodded, his dark eyes bleak in the flickering light of the candles. “That Bolivian guy sent you the roses. I took the opportunity to finally show you how I felt with the petals. It was as close as I could get to touching you.”
“Why?” she whispered, the word torn from her as though it hurt to ask. They’d known each other for many years. Had spent nearly every day of every one of those years together, yet never once had he indicated that he thought of her as more than an annoying child-like mistress of the manor.
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