“Do not worry about your employer,” he instructs me in that dark tone of voice. “You won’t be seeing him again any time soon.”
That’s... cryptic.
Though honestly, I can’t really remember much about last night. We had our business dinner, and that was grand, but I definitely must have drank too much according to my hangover. I swear I was only ordering wine. After all, I wanted to be on good behavior. I wanted Mr. Gallego to take me seriously.
I take another bite of food, mulling over what he’s said.
“You’re not the cops, are you? He’s not in trouble, is he?”
He’s a hard man to gauge, but when I ask if he’s a cop I can see some slight betrayal of amusement upon his otherwise calm, chiseled facade. It sends butterflies into my stomach, and for a brief second, I wonder what he’d look like with an honest smile on his face. I bet he’d look sexy as hell.
“You worry a lot about others, for a woman I had to drag out, drugged and unconscious from a party of rich men,” he says, his amusement dry. Really dry. If you could call it amusement at all.
But it makes him sound like a man who is tired of cleaning up other people's messes. Is this who the congressman calls when he’s done something bad that needs covering up? Does that mean…
I nervously sit up, my hand running through my hair and getting caught in the tangled curls at the bottom.
“Wait, shit, am I in trouble? Did he say I did something wrong? Because I don’t usually drink that much, I swear, and I don’t even really remember what happened, so if he’s afraid that I’m going to blab, I’m not going to. And I definitely didn’t use any kind of drugs last night. Maybe it was just mixing the whites and reds.”
His brows furrow and he crosses those arms back over his chest, studying me with something between confusion and consternation. It gives me further opportunity to notice just how immaculate the man is. He’s hard — hardened looking, to be exact — with dark stubble, a few faded scars upon his jaw, but his brows were so rigidly formed, eyebrows dark and naturally perfect. His eyes look almost kohl lined. Overall, he’s yummy, even if I am freaked.
“I got you out of there before they did anything to you,” he says simply, but it’s hard to tell if he’s being honest or just feeding me the line he’s supposed to.
“Oh.” I take another bite of my food, the churning in my stomach not getting any better, but not getting any worse either. “Well thank you,” I say with a forced smile before glancing around at the barely furnished room. Whoever decorated has no sense of style. I tug up on the strap of my dress, feeling self-conscious. There’s such a difference between being all dolled up at night, and being dressed the same under the harsh light of day.
“Thank you for breakfast, too, I guess. My head is killing me.” I take a sip of my water. “You got an Advil or something on you Mr...”
Not eager to give his name, he reaches a hand down into his breast pocket and pulls out a pill, placing it on the edge of my plate. But aside from the fact I’m accepting some unknown drug from a stranger, I also notice for the first time that he has two holsters strapped beneath his bulky arms, attached to a dark leather harness that blends with his attire almost seamlessly.
“Mikhail,” he says at last, after taking a moment to contemplate it over. “What is your name?” he asks in return, but it’s strange that he doesn’t already know my name, if he’s working for Mr. Gallego.
What’s happening in my life right now? The fact that he doesn’t know my name or seem to even know Mr. Gallego... It’s wrong. Something’s fishy about this.
And worse, I can’t seem to get that weird dream out of my head. I can even smell that weird scent that’s completely unfamiliar to me, see the smoke rising from a gun.
“Why am I being held here?” I ask, ignoring his own request.
“For your own good,” he says simply, darkly, that gaze of his unwavering. “Why were you with those men last night, Ali?” he says, apparently knowing my name after all. Or at least my nickname with friends.
“Who wouldn’t go out for a free meal and drinks when their boss offers them the chance?” I say, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world, and it is. I have ambitions, after all, and sucking up to my boss might be the quickest way to success. They all think I’m just some dumb blonde, so I have to show them every chance I get that I’m not dumb, and I’m not even a real blonde.
Something about my answer seems to bother this strange man, Mikhail. His brows furrow.
“One of these men last night was your boss, Ali?” he says, but that short-form of my name sounds so strange upon his accented voice. “Are you telling me they didn’t just pick you up at some bar, ply you with drinks and take you to their penthouse?”
“Ew, no. I’m not a bar skank,” I say. “What’s all this about anyways? I’m already going to have to do damage control at the office if anyone finds out about this, so if we could just keep it quiet, I’d appreciate that, Mikhail.” I give him a smile, my hand pushing out over top of the table, reaching out for his touch.
It’s been a long time since I’ve found myself curious about a guy I’d just met, but Mikhail... he’s definitely tall, dark and handsome, and mysterious to boot. I wouldn’t mind getting to know him better, see what makes him tick...
He studies me a while with that penetrating gaze of his, the kind of look that makes me feel naked, and not just because I’m still wearing the slinky dress from last night. No, this is a powerful man who can see right through me, to the depths of my being. All the questions? It’s like he knows the answers to them all, but is merely confirming them. Sometimes because they’re too ludicrous for him to buy at face value, other times because he just wants to be absolutely certain.
“How many people at the office know you went out with your boss last night?” he asks me, his voice getting even grimmer, more serious.
“A few... We left right from the office, and then he took me to my place to get changed. I mean, just whoever was working late on a Friday night. Well, and his secretary because I’m pretty sure she knows everything.”
The answer didn’t surprise him, as I knew it wouldn’t, but it troubled him. That much is clear.
He lifts an arm, runs it back over his sleek, dark hair and casts his gaze down to my food, still not finished.
“Eat up. You will need all you can get. You were out for a very long time, thanks to what they slipped you. And if you don’t eat, the nausea you feel now will be nothing compared to what’s to come,” he explains casually, standing up from the table again, looming over me.
What they slipped me?
“Mr. Gallego wouldn’t give me anything like that. He’s a congressman, for Pete’s sake. Could you imagine the scandal if I was drugged while on a business meeting? The press would never let him live that down. And his friends all seemed nice.”
“Eat,” he ordered me sternly. “You are going to need your strength, and there won’t be much else to do around here for the next few days at least,” he instructed me as he glared down, those large, powerful hands upon his hips.
Next few days?!
Instead of eating, I stand up from my chair, thinking for a brief second that if I stood up I’d feel more powerful. I had apparently forgot that I come up to his pecs, am at most half his weight, and my glare is probably not going to cow him the way I hope it will. Not to mention the fact that I’m not too steady on my feet right now.
Still, a girl’s gotta try, right?
“A few days? Listen, I can’t stay here a few days. Firstly, I have a job to get to, and that... that... cot you gave me might work for a drunk tank, but I’m sober now and that’s not going to cut it. And lastly,” I say, having lost count of my points, “I’m supposed to be helping Mr. Gallego on his reelection campaign this weekend. That was why he invited me out, to give me more details on what he needed me to do.”
As expected, my resistance proves absolutely useless upon him. I might as well have just blown sp
arkles at him for all he seems swayed by my words.
“None of that matters anymore,” he states so simply in that harsh accent of his. “You have no job to return to. Gallego will not be running for re-election. And you are going to sit down, eat your food, then get changed, curl up on the couch and watch some TV,” he instructs me. And a quick glance shows me that the drab couch indeed sits before a rather unimpressive flat screen TV I hadn’t even noticed before now.
“I suggest you get used to your accommodations, Ms. Ali,” he says firmly. “For your own safety, you are staying here for the time being.”
This is when dread really starts creeping in.
“What... what happened last night?” I ask, my hands suddenly turned to ice and beginning to tremble.
“Nothing that should concern you any longer if you care for your life,” he says to me with such stern seriousness. “Now eat. Get comfortable. You are here until it becomes safe for you to leave again. For your own benefit I suggest you get used to it,” he explains before strolling past the couch.
There, he leans down, lifts a pile of clothes from the sofa, resting it on the back of the couch and patting it. It’s a pink, girly color.
“Here is a change of clothes for you. There is food in the kitchen, the TV has cable, and the bathroom is right there,” he explains, pointing to a small door off to the side. “I will be back later,” he explains as he heads to the main door.
“Wait!” The fear of being alone and not knowing what happened is apparently way stronger than my fear of what actually happened last night. Who is he? “Just tell me what happened at the party,” I plead, my head getting woozy and sending me off balance as I careen into the couch.
It’s all hazy, but I think he catches me, sweeping in faster than my eyes can see. But then it’s all darkness.
I have no idea how long I was out, but as I come to I see the light streaming in through the window, a mesh of protective bars filtering it only a little. I realize I’m on that plain, grey sofa in front of the TV and window, still locked in the drab room.
More urgently, however, I feel something else come over me: nausea, and the need to vomit.
The dark stranger, Mikhail, had warned me, but when it hits… it hits like a ton of bricks. I’m already on my side, but I lunge for the edge of the sofa to hurl and thankfully find there’s already a bucket waiting for me in place.
This isn’t a hangover. This is something more vile and scary, and I’m starting to believe the man when he said I was drugged. It’s almost impossible for me to believe, though. I’m just some aide for the congressman, trying to get some experience and work my way through school. Being drugged is something I’d more easily have accepted if I was out with guys my own age.
A sense of betrayal comes over me, fear about what my employer was intending on doing to me. If Mikhail is to be trusted — and I don’t know if he can — then he saved me from something terrible. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to wonder what a group of men would have done to a drugged and helpless young woman.
The pain that shoots through my stomach sends tears to my eyes and my entire body feels overheated with anxiety. When finally I’m empty of every last bit of food, there’s still a lingering agony in my gut, but my nausea subsides.
I’m still in my crumpled dress from the night before… was it last night? I have no idea of the time, I realize, only that it’s sunny outside. The window faces a drab building across the street, completely unremarkable and unmarked, for that matter.
I grab some of the paper towel next to the sofa and wipe off my mouth before I stumble to the bathroom. Or try to, at least. My legs are weaker than I could’ve imagined, and I feel so dizzy. It takes me a while to make my way there. The washroom the same kind of austere layout as the rest of the ‘safe house’. But it’s clean enough to eat off of and that’s comforting enough.
I vomit again, but it’s really more of a retch, since I have no more food to leave me. I notice a toothbrush and paste there, so I clean my mouth once I’m done, trying to get the sickening tang of my own vomit out of there.
One look in the mirror and I’m instantly feeling awful though. I’m pale, my makeup is smudged, and I look like hell. No wonder Mikhail didn’t look the least bit interested in me. Well, that and the fact that I’m technically his captive, I suppose.
He said he wants to keep me safe, though. Safe from what?
I wash away the streaked eyeliner and smudged lipstick, and that gets rid of some of my disaster case appearance.
My hair feels awful, but at least the hairspray kept in my curls. Still, I desperately need a shower.
I shut and lock the door, quickly stripping out of my dress and turning the shower on hot. Steam fills the small room, and it would be soothing if I didn’t feel so troubled. My stomach churns, and not just because of whatever they slipped me last night.
It’s all just darkness, and when I step into the shower and the hot water hits me, so too does a sob. What happened last night? I want to scream at the fact that I can’t remember, that I don’t know what happened. How does someone just lose hours of their life? I’ve been drunk before, but never forgot something like this.
The cascade of water does little to soothe my troubled mind, and tears mingle with the shower. I feel like screaming, like crying, like giving up. I’m terrified, and don’t know what’s happening. It didn’t even occur to me to check my phone. Maybe someone’s messaged me, given me some words of helpful comfort.
I quickly finish the shower, feeling a little more like myself, before wrapping myself in the towel and padding out towards the bedroom. I check my shoes and around the cot, but there’s nothing. No phone.
Fuck, that must be how he found out my name! I curse myself for not having figured it out sooner. Of course he stole my phone. Why wouldn’t he, if I was being held captive?
For my own good, he said. Well I should be the one to decide that. He can’t just come into my life, kidnap me, then tell me it’s for my own good.
I grab the clothes he set out for me and quickly pull them on. Shocker, they fit. This guy is even more of a creep than I figured! Anger starts fueling me. I’m not going to sit here like some helpless damsel. I’m going to get out.
I go to the barred window, finding myself several stories up, and without a fire escape. That’s gotta be against the law, but so is kidnapping, so whatever. I try to open it, but it seems like it’s sealed shut, and I let out a groan.
A wave of exhaustion hits me and I have to lean against the wall for support.
What if he’s watching? What if there are cameras? I shake the thought away. It’s not going to do me any good to think like that. I just have to get out, and find out what’s going on.
I try the front door, but it’s locked, and made of metal. There’s no budging it. Then I go to the kitchen, I find there are no knives, and one locked cupboard, but I do get a thick spoon and take it to the window. I try to push it in, see if maybe I can’t pry the window from its setting, but I’m weak and having little success.
I must be at it for a while, because I eventually get so exhausted I slump to my knees in that pink set of around-the-house wear. What is it he’s gotten me anyhow? Yoga pants, socks and a shirt. It’s deranged, I feel like a girl in my father’s home again and the helplessness makes me want to sob.
“The window is sealed shut,” comes his dark voice, standing behind the sofa and I cry out, startled. I didn’t hear him come in at all! And it’s not like my trying to pry open the window was a noisy affair!
I scramble backwards, away from his towering form. The daze must have parted, though, because earlier I thought he was cute, but now...
I’m being held captive by an Adonis. He is all muscle, and all smoldering glare.
Just what I need.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on a girl! What if I’d been changing?”
“You would change in the living room when I gave you a bedroom all your own?” he asks in that thi
ckly accented voice which I’m starting to realize sounds vaguely eastern European. But he’s got his brow raised to me in challenge as he stands there, looming larger than life, waiting for my response as he holds a small cloth bag.
“Well, maybe,” I say defiantly, though even I can tell I sound more like a petulant child than a grown woman. I glance down at the bag, my arms folded beneath my chest. “What’s that?”
He gives the bag a toss onto the sofa.
“It’s medicine for nausea. It will help you keep your food down,” he explains to me, that towering brute looking exactly as I’d seen him last, except he must have shaved away the stubble in the interim. But it’s quickly regrowing. “Plus some magazines for entertainment,” he says, as if this is the 1990’s and people still read magazines.
“And my cellphone?”
“I had to destroy it,” he says casually.
“What?” That was pretty much the last thing I expected him to say, and I take a step towards him angrily. “But it has all my contacts!”
“It could also be used to track you down. Is a phone worth your life?” he asks me pointedly, and I’m starting to hate his chiseled face and eerie calm. He radiated confidence and power, like some smug son of a bitch who’d never been knocked down a peg in his life.
I am aghast. I can’t believe it. My phone. The newest model, that I had to shell out a ridiculous sum for after waiting in line… destroyed. By this thug.
“How could you?!” I demand, rising up on my knees and glaring at him. “Do you have any idea what that thing means to me?”
He takes his time, undaunted, those dusky eyes looking me over as if I was a strange, even repulsive creature. “More than your life, it seems,” he says simply before turning to leave.
But I can’t let him leave, and I lunge over the back of the sofa to grab his arm at the wrist.
“No wait!” I insist, but even I realize that it’s only by choice that he stops. That thick arm beneath my hands is a thickly corded knot of muscle, and he could yank me over the back of that sofa with ease.
Saved by the Outlaw: A Bad Boy Romance Page 20
