LUCA Page 4

  She was dressed unfortunately.

  I watched her and she didn’t notice me for a moment, then she caught me. She jumped back, startled, “I just wanted to thank you for this,” I pointed to the zipper marks on my side. “You probably saved my life twice. First the shot, then this. I just wanted to thank you.”

  “You can thank me by letting me go.” She said. “Say I escaped. Say that when the cat hit you I ran off and there was nothing you could do. That would be the way to thank me.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “I know you won’t.”

  “If you were in my position, would you betray your family?”

  “I would never do what you’re doing if I was in your position.” She said, like a slap in the face.

  “Whatever happens I’ll protect you, that’s my promise. You don’t think that’s true but you’ve got more spirit in you than any woman I’ve ever met. I promise you when it’s over I’ll see that you are back and safe with your father. But, between then and now, you should learn to control yourself and your temper. Elio has a temper and he can be foolish.”

  “Angry fools are easy. I’m not afraid of him.”

  “You should be.”

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  CHAPTER 8 - NINA

  There was no gentleness of spirit in me when it was time to replace his bandages. I planned on being rough with him. I wanted him to hurt.

  In the sunlight I could see his body better than the night before by the firelight and red glow of the flares. My hands had traced nearly every inch last night but that was work. I was saving his life or at least trying to. Now my fingers were being very unprofessional not having a life to save. They lingered too long over his abs and forearms, found themselves tracing over his shoulders even though they were impeccable. They spent too much time on him, touching him, much longer than they needed to, longer than a decent, professional nurse or doctor’s fingers would spend. But I wasn’t a decent and professional doctor or nurse. They wouldn’t have wanted to inflict pain on their patient either.

  “They look good,” I told him.

  I could feel his eyes burning into me, I didn’t want to risk looking up into them. Especially not so close as we were and in a bedroom, half-clothed.

  “Good then,” he said.

  He pulled his shirt back down over his chest and I took his arm to take a closer look. The teeth marks were still open gaping wounds, they hadn’t closed themselves up yet. These were the ones that worried me now. So deep they couldn’t be stitched for fear whatever infection in them would be sewn up too.

  “I think maybe it’s your best bet to put more alcohol in these, they haven’t closed up by themselves yet. It will probably hurt like hell but I recommend it.” I finally looked up into his eyes.

  They smiled at me, not surprised by my advice. “It seems you always recommend pain,” he said, amused. “I’ll start confusing your presence with pain pretty soon,” and he played with my hair with his good arm. “You’re the boss. Do what you have to do. But be gentle with me.”

  I brought the whiskey and held his arm and stretched my legs over his so that if he bucked from the pain, he would have something to buck against.

  I had the new bandages beside me. I had the whiskey between my knees. I was ready but fearful of the pain he was about to go through. Cautiously I asked “Are you ready?”

  “Just fucking do it,” he growled, “the talking, the anticipation is worse than if you actually did—”

  His face turned from anger cursing me out to pain mid-sentence as I poured the whiskey over his arm and he locked eyes with me.

  He controlled his face and even managed a twisted smile. His face was in pain but the eye muscles smiled, while the rest of his face stifled a scream.

  “Maybe there is good reason to think of me and pain together,” I told him, not breaking eye contact with him until it was done. Gently, I cleaned his arm off and bandaged it up again.

  “It’s still an open wound. I don’t think it’s best to close it up. But it’s dangerous to keep it open. The best thing is to cover it and keep applying antibiotics after we wash it with alcohol and wait for it to close itself up.”

  “You like this, don’t you? You want to do it to me again don’t you?”

  “I’d like you to see a doctor or a nurse, or really just anybody who knows anything about these things and has better materials than fish hooks and whiskey and fishing line. I’ve been getting by with my knowledge of TV medical dramas so far.”

  “That explains a lot.” He fingered the mess I had made on him, the zigzag handiwork of my stitches. “You and I are actually going to hit dry land and drive the rest of the way to New York. A boat takes too long and they may be looking for you out here.”

  Dry land? I said to myself. A chance to escape. Trapped in a car with him for days, with no escape. Hotels at night. Possibilities for escape and freedom and for bad, reckless things to happen. Somehow I felt Jack, the white-haired chaperone was a safety net for me. Without him always a few feet away I wasn’t sure whether I should be excited or scared of the possibilities ahead of me.

  I realized Luca was staring at me, I had been thinking in silence, not saying anything. “That sounds good. I can help drive too.”

  He laughed, but not a real laugh, a sarcastic fake one. “I don’t think so. I could see your little hamster wheel spinning in your head just now. It should be about 20 hours on the highway from where we pick up the car. I can drive 20 hours easily.”

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  CHAPTER 9 - LUCA

  A fucking rental car? A fucking rental car!

  “Jackie, why does this car have bar codes on the windows and on the license plate?” At least it didn’t have special rental plates, but still, this was almost as bad as a bicycle waiting for me. “You know rental cars attract attention.”

  “I know.” He said and put his hand on his head, incredulous as I was that we were looking at a rental car. “Maybe the guy who got it didn’t know. I said a clean car. I think I said no rentals, but maybe I didn’t. I figured he knew a clean car meant no rentals, but this looks like a rental. The other choice is the boat.”

  “What’s so bad about a rental car? I would be more pissed about it being a crappy little thing.” Nina asked.

  I had no words for her, I stared at her then in a calm voice, told her “These crappy little cars don’t attract attention. You ever notice how all the drug and gun couriers you read about in the newspaper are almost always caught in a great big truck with tinted windows and chrome rims? Those attract attention. They’re flashy. This little piece of crap is not flashy, it fits in and looks like everything else on the road.”

  “Except it’s a rental car.”

  “Except it’s a rental car. Good, you do follow.” I felt like being condescending because I was so angry, but I reminded myself I wasn’t angry at her. I wasn’t only angry at her, at least not until she opened her mouth. “Cops look out for rentals because most people who transport that stuff use rental cars to do it. Cops can follow your car just because it’s a rental, they don’t need any other reason. They follow you and wait until you roll through a stop sign or forget to use your blinker when you change lanes and they pull you over.”

  “You’ll just have to be more careful then. Or let me drive,” she said.

  I liked her better torturing my body. “Get in,” I told her, “The passenger side.”

  I looked at Jack before I got in, “Next time, you handle it yourself.”

  “I will. You two enjoy the drive.”

  Trapped in a car with no escape, I expected more rebellion from her. I expected to fight over the radio and how I drove and just about everything. I expected a general annoyance and defiance from her but she sat quietly which was almost worse.

  She had some plan, I was sure of it. “What sort of escape are you planning?” I decided to see if she could be honest at all. She turned to me, disarmed. I hadn’t seen
her at a loss since that first morning.

  “I haven’t completely figured it out yet, when I do, you’ll be the first to know.” She turned back to her thoughts but only for a moment. “It would be a lot easier if you let me go. I don’t understand your loyalty to Elio. The rumors are he’s a terrible boss and everyone would rather have you as the boss.”

  “We’re family. And he was chosen by his father.”

  “But you were chosen first. Then he changed his mind right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Tell me. It’ll distract me from planning my escape.”

  “We don’t discuss family business with outsiders. Certainly not with outsider rivals.”

  “I’m a prisoner though. Who am I going to tell?”

  “You won’t be a prisoner very long. When you’re released or ransomed you’ll tell whoever you want.”

  “A promise then. Some trust between us. I promise I won’t tell.” She turned to me, her face was naked, no lies or deception in it for the first time in ages. “And to show you I plan to keep it, I’ll tell you about my family and why I’m interested.”

  She turned away again and spoke to the windshield, “I plan to run my family when my father retires. Some of my family won’t be very happy about that. I’m not sure how they’ll react or how to deal with it. And I don’t know anyone who can give me any advice in this. Except you. You just lived through what I’m about to go through.”

  “I think our situations are different.”

  “Why does he have your loyalty?”

  “Because we’re family.”

  “And because you tried to kill him right?”

  “What?”

  She turned to me again, soft eyes and soft lips, searching for the truth. “Rumors. You tried to throw him off a cliff? That’s why your father passed you over for succession.”

  “That’s the rumor?” I couldn’t believe it. “That’s not what happened, I saved him.”

  I wasn’t going to tell her the whole story. But the fact she knew of it reminded me what kind of a man my brother was. And what he could do to a woman who rejected him for me. It reminded me that family comes first, before women, even her. Because people get hurt when I forget that rule.

  “Elio is a good leader. He’s the one who runs the family. I’m loyal to him because that’s how a family survives. If yours isn’t loyal, it won’t survive and neither will you. Get people around you who are loyal. Don’t trust the others. That’s my advice.” I told her, “And don’t pay too much attention to rumors. There are rumors about your family too.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  I drove on in silence content she was thinking about something other than escaping at least for now.

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  CHAPTER 10 - NINA

  He wasn’t very helpful so I tried to get some sleep which wasn’t easy in a small compact car. He drove and I slept which meant when he had to sleep I would be awake. That was my elaborate master plan that he was so worried about. I was disappointed in myself for not discovering something more clever, but it was simple and it would work. I would pretend to sleep and escape.

  I woke up briefly when he was getting gas but he smartly found a very out of the way, lonely gas station off the highway. Even if I ran there was no place to go and no one to care when he chased me down and dragged me back. Better to wait.

  I fell asleep again and when I woke up I thought we were heading to get gas again because there was nothing around us but empty fields and darkness. He took a dirt road into more fields away from the few lights I had seen and stopped the car.

  “You can stop pretending to sleep,” he said. “I’m going to sleep for real for a little while and if you want to run away feel free but there’s no one around for miles and miles. I’ll find you when the sun comes up.” He pulled the lever to drop his seat back and was almost immediately snoring lightly.

  Well shit.

  There was no figuring this out. I couldn’t very well over power him and throw him out of the car and drive off. Not even in a dream. And wandering around in the dark in the middle of nowhere didn’t sound like a good idea either.

  I couldn’t believe the confidence in him. To announce his plan, turn off the car and fall asleep like that. No tying me up or threats or worry I might be able to figure something out. He was almost daring me to escape.

  Maybe he was lying about being in the middle of nowhere. Even the middle of nowhere had people. Except he wasn’t the type to lie about things, not so far anyways.

  The lights dimmed and went out in the car, opening up the bright stars in the sky and leaving me alone in the dark with only his breathing. I looked around the car and saw no other lights from houses or streetlights, only the stars.

  I don’t know how long I waited, however much time it takes for his breathing to go from quick and loud to slow and quiet, and for his face to change in the starlight from tired and angry and slightly pained, to calm and peaceful and slightly adorable.

  The light came on as I opened the door but he didn’t wake up. He only shifted away from it, his head turned his eyes away from the light and his good arm came up to shade them, his wrist resting on his forehead. Even in sleep he protected his bad arm, good. I thought of how he might tear his stitches out when he found me gone and sat up quickly but maybe he would protect himself then too.

  The air was cold and the night so incredibly still and quiet. There was nothing out here, not even crickets. The blackness was so thick I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me. The light from the car was only a glow and didn’t reach far enough for me to see anything up ahead. I followed the dirt road ahead of me, when I looked back, the car was swallowed up by the dark as the light dimmed and went out. There wasn’t a trace of it left, only the false image in my eyes floating away into the dark again.

  I walked on and my eyes started to get used to the dark, some darkness was blacker than the rest. The nothingness ahead was the darkest, but the grass and road were less dark. I stayed near the tall grass, the edge of the road, and made my way.

  There was nothing in front of me or behind me now, a lonely feeling, but I made out a slightly less dark outline of a tree and heard leaves rustling lightly. It was only a few feet from the road and I went to sit underneath it. I leaned my back against it and sat on the cold ground, not sure if it was wet too, or just cold.

  There was no going forward. I would be lost or worse if I kept going. I had to go back to the car and sit there and try to sleep. There was no other way. Still, I didn’t want to admit defeat, even if I was defeated. A few more moments under the tree. I leaned back and breathed deep. He promised to return me safely, and so far he had kept all his promises. I hugged my knees to my chest to shake off the cold and try to think if there was anything else to do except trust him and his promises.

  The quiet and the peace and the dark were broken all at once. I heard the car start, the headlights flash, and the tires spin out on the dirt road. Then the horn blared and the headlights pointed off the road, then straightened out when the wheels stopped spinning and all of it came rushing towards me. I froze where I was and the car skidded on the dirt road as it stopped and the horn stopped blaring as he opened the door and jumped out at me.

  He stomped to me with a crazy, desperate look on his face, not anger completely, it was the same face I had seen when he saved me from the cat. Possessive and scared and protective. He pulled me up by the wrist, “Why the hell do you keep doing this? The bobcat wasn’t enough for you?” He screamed but didn’t wait for an answer, he dragged me to the car, clutching me tight to him as I shivered from his warmth. He pushed me through his door over to my seat and pulled up the center console and pulled my seat down. He pushed himself over to my seat, past the steering wheel and his hip resting uncomfortably in the hollow between the seats. “Try that again and I’ll put you in the trunk.” He said and nuzzled his head against the back of my neck as I shivered again fro
m the heat.

  “Sleep or don’t I don’t care. But I will get some sleep tonight if it means I have to hold you under me like this all night.” He squeezed his arms around me tighter and his breath burned the back of my neck. But his voice became calmer, sleepier all of a sudden. “Wait to be rescued if you want. If anybody is within ten miles of us they’ll have heard the horn and seen the lights and come to see what the hell happened. But like I told you before, no one is out here.”

  “I could drive if you want to sleep,” I offered.

  “Help me kidnap you? I’ll wake up in front of your father in just enough time to see him castrate me.”

  “What?”

  “Those are the rumors about your family and your father.”

  “Ezrah?”

  “Yes, sweet Ezrah who I’m sure is a teddy bear and wrapped around your finger. He can be a monster to his enemies. Some rumors say he’s a fair man, but it’s those rumors of his unfairness, the ones that make him a monster who cuts off the balls of men who get on his bad side that I listen to, just like everyone else.”

  I squirmed and wanted to face him while he said these things, but he held me tighter the more I struggled.

  I stopped struggling, but didn’t give up. “How about a hotel in the morning? I need a shower.”

  “Maybe if I can sleep for two hours.” He growled in my ear.

  “If you don’t say yes, if you don’t promise, you won’t sleep for two minutes.”

  “A shower. Okay. Now shut up.”

  I fell asleep as soon as his breathing got slow and quiet and softer and his arms relaxed around me, his good one still held me close to him. I could almost see his face turn to calm and peaceful again.

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  CHAPTER 11 - LUCA

  “A motel, not a hotel. Less people, they might be more used to not asking questions and not remembering their guests,” I told her. Clearly that disappointed her plans, but she accepted it, happy I would keep the promise she extorted from me.