Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) (9 page)

Instead of answering, he grabbed her arm and yanked it forward. A razor-sharp pain sliced across her chest and she cried out, but it didn’t seem to affect him. With his other hand, he hit a wall switch, and the glass wall went dark. Whatever he did to her next, no one would see.

“The only answer I haven’t found is this.” He turned the inside of her right wrist to her face. “What is this?”

Her heart seemed to stop for a second, and the pressure in her chest became almost unbearable. Forcing her voice to be steady, she said, “It’s a tattoo. I know you’re not scandalized by ink—I’ve seen your back.”

“Don’t be coy, Beverly. What’s under the ink?”

Twisting her hand, trying to get free of his grip without wrenching her ribs even more, she gritted out, “None of your business. Who are you to think you can ask me personal questions? Before Thursday, you barely talked to me. Please—just let me go home.”

“No. It’s not safe.”

“I’m across the fucking hall! How am I less safe across the—” A thought occurred to her, and she stopped. “It’s not me you’re keeping safe. You think I had something to do with what happened.”

He finally let go of her, but he didn’t move clear of the door. “The situation isn’t safe. I need to control all the variables I can until it is.”

“That’s nuts. I didn’t have anything to do with blowing up a car. I wouldn’t know a bomb if I tripped over one. I’ve never even held a
gun
. Plus, I was about to get into that car myself—like a fool.” She stepped away from him, her head full of buzzing bees. If she’d only gone home with her friends last night, she’d be at the farmer’s market right now, picking out eggplants and kale. Now she was a hostage—thirty feet from her own home.

“I believe you. But I don’t know you well enough to trust you. And you
are
in danger. The people who want to hurt my uncle and me have gone for people close to us before.”

“I’m not close to you.” She rubbed her arm where he’d gripped her and knew she both sounded and looked petulant. Well, she
felt
petulant.

“They think you are.”

Bev was tired, and they were talking in circles. Her ribs hurt horribly, and her head did, too. Moreover, she’d realized that she hadn’t washed since she’d gotten ready for her fancy night out at Neon. She was just done with this stupid argument.

“I need to tell my friends I’m okay. I don’t care if you told Chris for me. I need to talk to him. And Sky, too. I need to ask my boss for a few days off. I need a shower. I need my own clothes and things. And I need my Percocet.”

“I’ll send Donnie over to your place with you, and you can pick up what you need and bring it back. You can call your friends and your boss on my landline, in the living room. My shower is your shower—help yourself. There’s a full first aid kit in the bathroom next to the guestroom so you can re-dress your wounds. And I’m keeping track of your Percocet. Let me know when you need it.”

“Why? What right do you have?”

He shifted his eyes to her tattooed wrist. Bastard. “I’m not a man who takes reckless chances.”

“Who are you to judge me? You don’t know me at all.”

“Which is my point.” He stepped toward her and put his hand on the doorknob. “I have to get going. My mother will take care of you. Men will be in and out most of the day, but Donnie will stay here to keep watch over you both.”

He opened the door and indicated she should go through first. Exhausted, confused, and inexpressibly sad, Bev did.

~oOo~

Nick left before his mother’s ziti was out of the oven, but throughout the rest of the day, there were usually at least three men in his apartment, and the ziti got hit repeatedly. It was gone long before there was any sign of Nick’s return. As it dwindled, Betty started a roast.

Donnie took Bev to her apartment shortly after Nick left, and she packed a bag, feeling absurd, packing to go across the hall. She picked up her laptop, but Donnie took it from her with a shake of his head and a “Sorry, ma’am.”

She really was a hostage. She dug her paper address book out of a drawer and brought that with her instead. Then Donnie took her back to Nick’s. He made her call her friends in the living room, where everybody could hear.

Chris was terrified and furious, and she could only speak to him for a few minutes, because he wouldn’t stop yelling, and there were too many strangers around her to answer the questions he shouted at her. But when she said, “I love you, please don’t be mad,” at the end of the call, he replied, “I’m mad because I love you, Bev. I want you safe.”

She thought they’d be okay, once she could get control of her life back.

She called Bruce next, who had heard about the bombing but not that she had been hurt in it. He was sweet and concerned for her health, and he told her to take the time she needed. She told him she hoped to be back at work by Wednesday at the latest, which would be only two days missed, Sunday and Tuesday. She had already been scheduled off on Monday. She really hoped that by Wednesday this madness would be behind her.

Then she called Skylar. She and Sky had been friends since the day Bev started at Sal’s. They’d hit it off immediately. Bev generally liked everybody until they gave her a reason not to, but it had been deeper than that with Skylar. They weren’t all that similar on the surface—Sky had a lot more edge than Bev, in both taste and personality. But they got each other’s jokes, and they saw the world in similar ways. And as early as that first day, they’d been able to communicate without speaking, with simply a gesture or a look.

Chris was her best friend, the friend with history. They knew each other so well because they’d been together so long and had learned. Sky was her closest friend. They knew each other so well because they just
got
each other.

And Sky got her now, making their conversation a complicated dance on Bev’s side. “You sound wrong, sweets. I’m glad to hear your voice, but I’m still worried. I’m coming over on my way into the diner.”

“No, Sky. I don’t want company. I just need to rest. I’ll be okay.”

“Is that guy with you? Nick? What phone are you calling from? This isn’t your number.”

“Yeah. It’s good. I’m good. I lost my phone last night. I’m using Nick’s phone.”

“I still want to come over. I’ll stop at the Cove Café and have Edith make you that chicken spinach wrap thing you like.”

Bev looked around at the men in the room, who seemed to be simultaneously ignoring her and hearing every word. The last thing she wanted was for Sky to get caught up in this somehow. “Really, Sky. I’m good. I’m just tired and not in the mood for company. Okay?”

The silence on the other end of the line stretched out. When Sky finally spoke again, her voice had the depth of suspicion. “Is he keeping you from us? Chris said he couldn’t get to you this morning. Bev, I’m really worried.”

A big part of her wanted to say,
YES! I’m in so deep I’m drowning!
But she didn’t—and not only because she didn’t want her friends dragged in.

There was something more. Despite everything, despite her fear and frustration, she believed Nick was trying to keep her safe. She thought of him sitting next to her last night, keeping her company while she fell asleep. She wanted that man back. So she laughed lightly, trying not to stress her ribs. “You’re being silly. I was asleep this morning. The hospital gave me the good stuff. I’m not being kept from anything. I just need to rest. Okay? I’ll check in again, and I’ll see you Wednesday.”

Skylar sighed audibly into the phone. “Okay. You call if you need anything.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Ditto, sweets.”

When she ended the call, aching inside and out, feeling suddenly very alone, she nearly broke down into tears. But she managed to hold them back, unwilling to collapse in front of an audience of men she did not know, men she feared.

After that, she took a shower, where she did let herself cry, trying to breathe through the pain her sobs made. She then dressed in her own clothes—yoga pants, a camisole, and a zip hoodie—and bandaged her face and elbow again. Those wounds she barely thought of; the pain in her chest consumed her attention.

Betty, who’d been maternally fussy all afternoon, finally force fed her some roast and salad, and then, mercy of mercies, bestowed on her two Percocets with a bottle of Pellegrino. And then Bev went to the guestroom—her cell—and closed herself in and went to bed.

As she waited to fall into a medicated sleep, dark thoughts she’d rousted ages ago returned for a visit. In a matter of just a few hours, she’d lost the reins of her life again, and somebody she didn’t understand had laced them into his fingers. She was too trusting. She expected people to be good. No matter how many times they showed her they were not, she continued to expect them to be good and was left alone and astonished when they weren’t. She was either stupid or crazy, but either way, she never learned. Even now, she wasn’t learning; even now, her brain conjured up the memory of Nick lying with her on the sidewalk. That was the good man she wanted, and that was the thought in her head when the Percocet haze enveloped her.

~oOo~

When she woke, the room was dim; night had fallen. She felt a little better in body and spirit, so she got up, eased her hoodie back on, and went out to see what the world of her handsome prison was like now.

It was quiet and still dim. The hall sconces were lit, and there was a light on over the kitchen sink, but otherwise the only light in the apartment came from a single lamp on a table in the living room.

The place was deserted—or almost. Nick sat on his sofa, a glass in his hand. Scotch, probably. She had seen the bottle of scotch on his counter the night she’d brought the beer over, and he’d drunk scotch at Neon, too. His drink of choice, she guessed.

His mother was gone, all the strange men were gone, even Donnie was gone.

His eyes went to her immediately as she entered the room. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better. A little less sore. Where is everybody?”

“Working or home with their families. There are three men on the building, including one just outside the door, so don’t worry. We’re still covered. I needed some quiet.”

“I’ll go back to the room, then.”

“No. Sit with me. Do you need anything?”

She was hungry, but not really in the mood to eat. On the counter was a bowl filled with a bunch of bananas, some peaches, and a couple of apples. “Can I have a banana?”

“Of course.”

She took one and came into the room as she peeled it. She sat on the other end of the sofa, and he watched her eat. They didn’t speak.

When she finished her banana, feeling self-conscious with his eyes so heavy on her, she took the peel to the kitchen and found the place to throw it away. Then she went back around the counter and sat where she’d been.

“I don’t like it when you look at me like that.”

He didn’t apologize or respond to that statement at all. Instead, he said, “Tell me about your scars,
bella
.”

She felt sure that she would have told him to fuck off, except that he’d called her
bella
. It seemed like he was always doing or saying just one thing, just enough, to keep her in the stupid zone. So she didn’t tell him to fuck off. But she also didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, not yet. “Why? Why is it so important for you to know?”

“You tried to kill yourself.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like quitters. I don’t like weakness. There’s no room for either in my life. Suicide is both.”