I swallowed hard. Jesus, I wanted to go in with him. All the more reason I shouldn’t. I stayed put where I was. “What about Bogdan? I heard gunshots. Is he dead?”
“Unfortunately, no.” He frowned. “Killing him would have started a war. Even doing what I did was already bad enough, but when I saw you with him, I didn’t think. I acted on instinct.”
I felt fear clutch at my heart. He was still out there and almost certainly fuming that his prey had been snatched right from under his nose. “What happens now?”
“Now that you’re missing he’ll go after everyone and everywhere you could possibly return to. He will not stop until he finds you.”
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I slapped my hand on my mouth. “How can I remain here in safety when everyone else I love could be in danger? My father? Aldie?”
“I’ve sent people to keep an eye on the both of them. Your father is nowhere to be found at the moment, but we have eyes on Aldie. If there is any danger at all, we’ll step in.”
I searched his gray eyes. They were so familiar. I must have seen them a million times in my dreams. “Why did you do this?”
“I couldn’t let him take you. Not him,” he said, running his hand through his thick dark hair.
I scoffed. “That is incredibly hard to believe.”
“Believe it or not, it’s the truth.” Then he turned and walked into the house.
I remained outside, my gaze on the luxurious foyer, inviting me to come and forget the harshness of my ordeal. Don’t go in. It’s a trap. You’ll burn your wings. You know nothing about him. What you remember is a mirage. Worse still, you’ll go and fall in love with him all over again. Then he’ll just walk away … Everything my head was saying was true, but I couldn’t exactly stand out here all night.
I found myself moving over the threshold and shutting the door behind me.
The house was simply magnificent. But I couldn’t fully appreciate all the beauty and luxury as I looked around. I thought a stern butler or housekeeper would appear to tell me where to go but no one did, so I wandered to the right and found what was certainly just one of many living areas in the house.
A television screen bigger than any I’d ever seen, hung from a wall. Probably custom. The furniture, expensive carpets and art pieces, all dripped of surreal wealth and it started to dawn on my shocked, disorientated brain that he was not just another ordinary accounting student who had become a regular at our bakery years ago.
I followed a corridor that opened out to all these fabulous rooms until I stood at the threshold of a massive minimalist kitchen. The ceilings were lofty and it was done up in pure white. The only color in it was a bunch of very yellow bananas hanging from a gleaming metal stand.
It all looked so beautifully perfect, a sigh rose up from deep inside me. This was the exact kitchen I had always dreamed of. Here, I could create little mouthfuls of heaven. I walked into it like someone in a trance.
“Do you want something to eat?” his voice asked from behind me.
I turned around to see him standing at the entrance. “No,” I responded, and watched him. Now that my brain felt slightly less scrambled, I could see him better. Dressed simply in a pair of dark slacks and a white shirt, he looked even more dashing than the man I’d met two years earlier.
I still remember, the first time I saw this man, I’d been so utterly stunned by his beauty, the stainless tongs I’d been holding had slipped out of my suddenly nerveless hands. Confused and red-faced I’d ducked down under the counter to retrieve them and banged my head hard on my way back up.
“Are you alright?” he’d asked, his voice poured out of him like melted chocolate. It swirled around me deliciously. Something in his eyes sparkled in a way that made it hard for me to breathe. I had never met anyone who carried a storm in their eyes before.
My head had been thumping like there would be no tomorrow, but I’d nodded vigorously since I’d been struck dumb. Like a love-struck teenager, I’d wrapped up his order clumsily, my fingers shaking so much, I couldn’t do up the bow and had to leave the ribbons hanging over the sides of the box like two flags of defeat.
He’d thanked me, a lop-sided smile on his face, his gorgeous eyes dancing, and left a massive tip.
I had to wait two weeks more for the drop-dead gorgeous stranger to come by once again.
But I wasn’t the infatuated fool anymore. I hardened my face. “I want a phone,” I said. “To call Aldie.”
“Sure,” he responded, pulling his phone from his pocket and coming towards me.
My breath caught in my throat as he came closer. You better calm down, I cautioned myself. Oh, no, we’re not doing that again.
Unaware of the effect he was having on me, he held out his phone to me.
I swallowed and steeled myself. I was almost too scared to take it … too scared to touch him. Carefully, so our fingers did not touch I gingerly took it from him.
“The password is 2359,” he said softly.
I tapped the numbers then realized I couldn’t actually remember Aldie’s number. I looked up at him in dismay. “I can’t remember her number. Would you have a computer or laptop, so I can access my email account?”
He smiled, that wonderful magician’s smile of his. That was what I used to call him. He could make a simple picnic into a slice of heaven or a boring study session into the most exciting encounter. He was always conjuring rabbits out of a hat, until he did his last trick and disappeared into thin air. To my horror, my face heated up with such acute awareness of how it was between us that a delicious tingle went all the way down to my spine.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I have Aldie’s number.”
I stared at him in astonishment. “You have Aldie’s number?”
He shrugged casually. “You never know when you might need to call someone. It’s saved as Stinky.”
My eyebrows shot up at the nickname. “Stinky?”
“She was always a snippy, snappy thing back then.” His smile had gone into dangerous territory, the stormy gray eyes sparkling like trouble in the sunshine.
I wasn’t interested in that kind of trouble. I got myself firmly back on track. Swinging my gaze away from him, hit her number, and said coolly, “She’s going to kill you if she ever finds out.”
“She won’t if you don’t tell her.”
I walked away from him when Aldie picked up. “It’s Bianca,” I said quickly.
“Where are you? Are you okay?” she demanded.
My smile was bitter. I hadn’t told her about Bogdan yet. She had no idea just how much my life had changed from the early hours of the morning when I’d left the apartment we both shared to go to the bakery.
“It’s a long story,” I said with a heavy sigh and walked towards a tall window.
5
Levan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ8RBj_P0KQ
I watched her standing at the window and I still couldn’t believe she was really here. I could feel my heart beating fast with a strange sense of fear and excitement. I was aware of just what I’d gotten myself involved in. War was what I had unleashed. Bogdan’s enterprise may not be as reputable and distinguished as ours ‒ but his army of thieves, smugglers, hired killers all over the city ‒ would be enough to cause some serious damage. I knew there would be collateral damage, I might even be part of that body count, but I was prepared to risk it. Nothing and no one could dissuade me from the course I was on now.