Celeste does what I say as the engine roars to life. I jam on the accelerator, throwing Celeste back against the seat. My tires squeal as I jet out of my spot. I have to cut the wheel to avoid hitting one of Mario's guys – though my first instinct is to hit him, I don't need the headache. The last thing we can afford is to have the police get involved.
I take a sharp corner out of the parking lot and slam my foot down on the accelerator again. The engine roars as we speed away from the hotel. I keep one eye on the road ahead and one on the rearview mirror. They're coming. I know they're coming. I just need to make sure I can keep some distance between us.
“What are we going to do?” Celeste asks as she sits back up in the seat again.
“Hopefully, we can shake these guys.”
She turns in her seat, looking behind us, and lets out a frightened squeak. “They're coming.”
“I know,” I say through gritted teeth.
I watch the two SUVs flying up the highway behind us. I'm driving as fast as I can, but they're quickly closing the gap between us. I need to get us out of town. I don't want any innocents getting hurt in this mess. The houses and shops fly by outside as we race through town, and Celeste has blanched, looking like she's on the verge of hyperventilating.
I slow down a bit, letting the SUVs draw closer. Celeste sees what I'm doing and starts to panic.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” she all but screams.
“Trust me,” I say.
I know this town – all the shortcuts and backroads – way better than Mario's guys. The two SUVs close in on us, one right behind the other. The lead truck is flashing his brights and honking, trying to intimidate us.
“Grant,” Celeste says, her voice filled with fear.
Five yards.
“Do something,” she cries.
“Hold on,” I shout.
She grips onto the dashboard as I cut the wheel. We fishtail for a second, and I fear I may have cut it too hard, which would send us into a spin. Thankfully, the tires grab the salted pavement. We shoot off like a rocket. The SUVs carrying Mario's guys weren't ready for the maneuver. They zip right by. No doubt, they'll be turning around quickly, but it should give me enough time to get out of town and get the innocents out of harm's way.
The side road I'm on will lead us to the open highway. I know it's only a matter of moments before they're behind us again, and I'm not sure what to do once they are, but for now, it's the best move. We can't have a high-speed chase through a tiny town like Keys Creek. Not only could innocent people get hurt, it might draw the attention of the cops – if it hasn't already.
“What are we going to do, Grant?” she asks. “Where are we going?”
“Not sure yet.”
In the rearview, I see the SUVs behind us again. They're a ways back still, but they'll cover the ground soon enough. I need to figure something out. My initial thought is to try that same maneuver on an off ramp. That idea dies on the vine when I see one of the SUV's hanging well behind the other – guarding against that move. I may make the first truck miss the off ramp, but the second one won't.
“Shit,” I grumble under my breath.
I cut a quick glance at Celeste. She's sitting stiffly in her seat, her back straight, so gripped by terror. Her eyes are focused on nothing but the road ahead of us. The SUVs are quickly closing the gap again and I know we're in trouble. I have nowhere to go. No idea what to do. I can't outrun their trucks. They're just too powerful and fast. I can't outmaneuver them.
They're closing in on us and I have no fucking idea what to do.
The first hit from behind jolts us, sending us both lurching forward. Celeste screams and grasps her seatbelt tight. I grit my teeth, bracing for the next impact. It comes a moment later, as the guy behind the wheel bumps me from behind again. I do the only thing I can and start to swerve back and forth across the two lanes of the thankfully deserted highway. Keys Creek isn't a commuter town, so traffic on the highway is normally pretty sparse, especially at this time of morning – thank God.
The guy rams us from behind again. The sound of metal crunching and twisting screeches loudly.
“Son of a bitch,” I growl.
“Do something, Grant!”
“I'm trying!” I shout back at her.
I cut to the right just as the SUV goes left, trying to keep from getting hit again. The second SUV is still hanging back, not joining the fight – just waiting in case reinforcements are needed. The guy right on my tail speeds up. Although the accelerator is already on the floor, I stomp on it harder, as if that's going to help. The engine is growling like a wounded bear and I know I can't keep this up for long or I'll blow out my motor. I'm half-surprised I haven't already.
The SUV starts coming to the right again, and I start to move left, but he suddenly shoots forward, the nose of his truck clipping the back end of mine. As soon as I feel that bump – at that angle and at that speed – I know we're in for a world of shit.
I don't even have enough time to open my mouth and yell for Celeste to hang on, before my truck starts to spin. As we spin around, the first SUV falls back to stay out of our spin radius. After that, it really goes to shit.
Our bodies are thrown around like rag dolls in our seatbelts as my truck starts to roll. Side over side we go, the windows shattering, the sound of tortured metal groaning and screeching. Celeste is screaming as we roll along the highway – and then we're weightless. At least for a moment.
We come plummeting back down to earth with a hard crash. The truck has stopped moving, and the world around me is eerily silent. The world around me starts to waiver. It has a shimmering dreamlike quality, and I know I'm hovering on the edge of consciousness. Everything hurts, and yet nothing does. Maybe I'm in shock. I'm probably in shock.
The smell of gas and smoke are thick in the air around me, and I feel something warm dripping down my face. I'm aware enough – barely – to know I'm bleeding. I can't move my body – not even my head – and I can't see Celeste or hear her. I open my mouth to call to her, but no words come out. Nothing but a strangled, raspy wheeze. My throat is parched, and my mouth is filled with the coppery taste of blood.
The passenger side door is somehow yanked open and I'm aware of the men – Mario's men – pulling Celeste out. She doesn't make a sound. I don't even know if she's alive or dead. All I know is that they shouldn't be moving her after a wreck like we just had. I want to tell them but can't force anything on me to work – not my mouth, not my voice, and not even my brain.
“What about him?” I hear somebody say.
There's a rumbling chuckle from another man. “Fucker's dead anyway,” he says. “Let's go. Let's get her back to the boss. He can have the doctor patch her up.”
Patch her up. That means she's alive. Good. At least she's alive. A wave of relief washes over me, but it’s interrupted a split second later by a white-hot bolt of pain tearing through me, drawing a pained grunt from my throat. That's the last thing I remember as my entire world suddenly goes black.
Chapter Fifteen
Celeste
Grant is dead. The fact that I'm not is still a shock to me. The fact that I didn't suffer some catastrophic injury is a shock to me. I'm alive and in one piece, but I can't get the image of Grant's body out of my head. They left him, and there's no way they'd have left him alive. He's a loose end. Just like I am.
So why am I currently tied to a chair in the middle of a shitty warehouse in God knows where? I don't know.
“Why am I not dead?” I ask over and over again.
No one answers me. They don't even look at me.
“Why am I here?”
Again, neither of them answers. There are two large, burly men guarding little old me. With Grant dead, there's no one left to save me. Grant is dead. That realization sends a dagger straight through my heart. My lip trembles, and my insides hurt. It feels like a million little knives are stabbing me right in the heart and the pain is more intense than
anything I've ever felt in my life.
I can't breathe. I can't even think straight, and my head is spinning. Alternating waves of nausea and grief batter me as the realization hits me that the man who saved my life, my hero – the man I loved – is dead.
All because of me. All because of what I dragged him into.
The hinges on the door in the far corner of the room squeal loudly as it opens. It's dark and gloomy in here, but I can still see well enough. And what I see is a tall, lean man, walking toward me, his face mostly obscured by the shadows.
As soon as the dim light hits his face, I recognize him. It's hard to forget a man as handsome as him – it's the biggest reason I fell for him in the first place. He's tall, dark, and handsome as the cliché goes. But he's also incredibly charming – or at least he was.
Now, as he stares down at me with those dark, smoldering eyes surrounded by thick, dark brows, I see nothing friendly in his face. And I see nothing charming about the man at all.
“Mario, please –” I manage to croak. “Why are you doing this to me?”
He's a tall man, at least six-foot-four, and he towers over me – even more so when I'm bound to a chair. Grabbing my chin in his hand, he turns my face upward at a sharp angle, forcing me to not only look up at him, but automatically puts me in a submissive posture to him.
“You couldn't keep your pretty mouth shut, could you, Celeste?” he asks. His voice is soft, but deep, sending a chill colder than the Arctic tundra down my spine.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I say.
“Yes, you do,” he snarls. “You saw my meeting with Sam Frederickson. And if that wasn't bad enough, you just had to keep digging, until there was nothing else, I could do. You forced me into that position, Celeste. What happened is as much your fault as it is mine.”
Digging? That's right. It was more than just the meeting that sent me running to Grant. It was the moment that I realized who I'd been dealing with. I had no idea Mario was part of the Mafia. No clue. Not until that stupid assignment in my internship to write about an unsolved murder in Chicago sent me digging. That's when I saw Sam's face again – and his name. It all clicked into place like a puzzle.
“Why didn't you come to me, sweetheart?” he asks.
Just like I'd done with Bruno, I know I have to appeal to Mario somehow. I need to make him see me not as a threat, but an innocent woman, just trying to get by and finish her journalism degree.
All the details are coming back to me now. My best friend got me a job at Francelli’s, where I’d met Mario. He co-owns the restaurant with Bruno. Mario loves me, or at least he did. He has to care about me, otherwise I’d be dead.
“I was scared, baby,” I say, my entire body shaking as I speak. “Terrified you'd hurt me, or worse. And I was right about that, wasn't I?”
“Only because you ran, sweetheart,” he says, letting go of my chin. “None of this would've happened if you hadn't run from me, Celeste.”
He clasps his hands behind him and walks around me. His eyes never leave me. He examines me from all angles. His close scrutiny is making me uncomfortable, but I can’t do anything about it. Not trapped in here and tied to the damn chair.
“I only ran because I was scared, Mario,” I say. “That's the only reason. You have to believe me.”
He doesn't say anything until he steps around and is standing in front of me again. He lets out a deep, thunderous laugh, a wide smile on his face. The other two men join in. For a second, I'm left trying to figure out what the joke is, and why I'm the butt of it.
“Tsk tsk, Celeste,” he says, his voice colored with amusement. “Why lie, now?”
“I'm not lying –”
He moves so fast, it's a blur. The back of his hand collides with my cheek, jolting my neck and making the room spin around me. My face is burning with pain and anger, and the coppery taste of blood fills my mouth.
“If you don't believe me, why am I still alive?” I spit. “Why didn't you just kill me on the spot? Why didn't you just kill me and leave me back there with Grant?”
“Because now, you're valuable to us, sweets,” he says. “You may actually serve a greater purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“That man – what's his name? Oh yes, Grant Williams,” he mumbles, “I need him, and he's apparently taken to you. So for now, you stay alive, until we have him.”
“He's –”
I almost told Mario the truth – that Grant is dead – but I shut my mouth. If it kept me alive a little while longer, so be it. But the taller of the two guards clears his throat and looks a little uneasy.
“Sir, we have some bad news about Mr. Williams,” he says.
The taller man walks over to Mario, and the two of them speak in hushed voices. All I can do is watch as Mario swings at the bigger man, driving his fist hard into the other man's face. The crack of the blow echoes around the room we're in. The man doesn't go down, but he also didn't fight back. Mario is the boss here. While he might physically be smaller, the big guy apparently knows his place.
“Get your ass back there and make sure he's dead. If he's not, bring him to me, now,” Mario growls.
“And what if he’s gone, sir?”
“You better pray he isn't,” Mario says, storming out of the room.
* * *
“I love him, Celeste. God, I love him so freaking much,” Tasha said, her voice high, her entire body shaking with excitement. “And he loves me too. He's perfect in every way. Absolutely perfect.”
“That's great, sweetie. I'm so happy for you,” I said, beaming for my best friend. “When can I meet him?”
“Soon. He's meeting with Daddy first. And Mario, of course,” Tasha says. “But I know they'll hit it off. I know they'll approve of him. He's just amazing in every way and he makes me so happy. I know they're going to see that.”
I stared across the table at her, so happy to see that sparkle in her eye and flush in her cheeks again. It was hard to believe that mere months before, she was broken and barely able to walk. That she was so far down that she'd passed rock bottom and continued straight on by. It was amazing to me, what a difference a few months – and a good man – could actually make.
When I met her, Tasha had a drinking problem. More than a problem – it was a lifestyle. She woke up, she drank. She got ready for work, she drank. She talked on the phone, she drank. For Tasha, happy hour started the moment she woke up, and lasted until the moment she passed out. Not that her hours were happy, necessarily – she drank as a means of avoiding much of the pain in her life. I understood her wanting to numb herself, but that didn't mean I wasn't worried about my best friend. I just knew that one day I would come home and find her dead. That she would have drank herself to death.
Tasha blamed her drinking on her mother's death. I knew she took it incredibly hard, and I knew that's what sent her spiraling into depression in the first place. I hadn't known her before her mom died or she became such a raging alcoholic. I only knew her as a drunk, and later as a recovering alcoholic. I was so proud of her. She'd come so far. She was definitely turning her life around, and there was a glow about her that couldn't be denied. A glow I was so damn happy to see.
But I also worried about her. This romance with this Sam guy had happened so fast, and it seemed to have come out of nowhere. I worried because those whirlwind romances often burn super bright for a little while, but eventually they start to dim. That love and passion that fueled you through the crazy, emotional beginning starts to cool, as people get comfortable and start to get real.
If things went badly, I feared my best friend might turn to the bottle again. Maybe even harder than before. The mere thought of that scared the daylights out of me because I was sure if she got back on that path, there would be no coming back. If Tasha spiraled again, I just knew I was going to lose her. Forever.
I'd spent months helping her get clean. Tried to help her get her mind right. In exchange, she got me the part-
time job at her family's restaurant, and we were roommates now. It helped pay the bills – which was incredibly helpful to me, as a journalism student. I wasn't exactly flush with money, so I appreciated the help. It was a perfectly symbiotic relationship.
The fact that I'd hardly heard about this guy worried me more than I wanted to admit. Especially since the L-word was already being tossed around so casually. Like it was already old hat with her. With them. I knew Tasha was a girl of white-hot passions and intensity, and I feared what glomming onto this mystery man and putting so much of her emotional energy into him was going to do to her. Especially if it didn't work out in the end.
“So, where did the two of you meet?” I asked.
“Do you remember that event my dad made me attend a little bit ago? He actually told me to talk to Mr. Frederickson. He said it would be good networking or something,” she said. “Because he's rich, Celeste. Like, super rich. And he's self-made as well, which is impressive – don't you think?”
“I do. That's very impressive,” I said. “What's he do?”
“Real estate development. Just like Mario,” she said. “Which is why they're so eager to meet him. I think they're going to try to plan some joint works together or something. I'm not sure. But they said they're eager to do a little business with him.”
“So, in a way, Mario and your dad pushed you into dating him?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“Well, not really,” she said, giggling and rolling her eyes. “But maybe they nudged me in the right direction. And it is the right direction. They just want to see me happy, Celeste. And he makes me happier than I can even begin to tell you. I feel like a kid on Christmas every single day I'm with him.”
“I'm happy for you, Tasha,” I said.
I'm highly skeptical of this whole thing, but if she's happy, and this guy is who he says he is, and treats her right, who am I to say anything otherwise? Besides, it's not like my own track record with men is anything to write home about. Maybe I'm just being overly critical. Tasha's happiness was what was most important there.
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