But Ginger didn’t like to play fair, and neither did the Wolf. As much as he wanted to fuck her, he knew there was a good chance she’d try to kill him. And then what?
Then what indeed.
Ginger and Alfred talked for a little while, all small talk peppered with flirtatious giggles from her, and leering on behalf of Alfred.
Eventually Ginger said she would see him around, giving him one last coy smile, and walking off.
But not before looking into the Wolf’s eyes one last time.
He could have sworn he saw her revulsion. She couldn’t know who he was, and yet he knew that look. Perhaps just his presence was enough to scare her off.
But he knew who he was dealing with, and he knew what he had to do.
The Wolf stayed by Alfred’s side for a while as he sauntered around the party, meeting with senators and celebrities and socialites, all the glitzy people with their shallow smiles, their tiny brains. The Wolf hated these kind of people, was taught to abhor them from a young age. When you were growing up in Mexico, struggling to put one foot in front of the other, to make something out of nothing, you learned to hate the upper class rather than envy them. You saw that it was nothing but luck and old money that got them where they were. Not their skills or their intelligence. Everyone at this party, all their success was handed to them. Nothing to envy about that.
Eventually the Wolf excused himself to go use the toilet, knowing that the three other guards would keep a close eye on Alfred. After all, they all thought the Wolf was someone else, the head of Alfred’s security detail, a man who was shot between the eyes with a silencer and currently stuffed into a closet upstairs.
But instead of heading straight to the bathroom, the Wolf set about locating Ginger.
She wasn’t hard to find.
She was inside by the ballroom, watching people dance, pretending to sip on a glass of champagne.
She saw the Wolf coming from across the room, her posture stiffening. He liked that he scared her, that he made her pay attention.
He walked right over to her, knowing she was probably hoping that this would happen.
“Mr. Carino wants to speak with you in private,” the Wolf told her, making his voice lower than usual and burying his Mexican accent with an Atlantic one.
Even so, Ginger frowned. “All right,” she said after a moment.
The Wolf put his hand at her back. “Right this way.”
He led her out of the ballroom and toward the staircase down the east wing of the mansion. As they walked, her long red gown trailing behind her, they passed by rooms filled with partygoers seeking privacy. And some, judging by the open doors, who obviously were not. They would call out for the Wolf and Ginger to join them, but they kept going down the hall, the moans fading in the distance.
Finally, after leading her up to the third floor, a floor that hummed with stillness, where only the slight vibrations of the music could be heard, he opened a door to a library.
“In here,” he said.
He could hear her swallow, and he didn’t have to touch her to know that her pulse was racing. This was what she wanted, a place where she could have Alfred all alone to herself. She figured that her flirting worked, and that she this was the next step.
But of course, that wasn’t going to happen. Not with the Wolf around.
He was very territorial, in more ways than one.
She walked into the bare room, her shoes soft on the wide carpet that stretched the entire length. There was no furniture, just bookshelves that stretched up to the ceiling.
“Are you going to turn on the light?” she asked, turning around to look at the Wolf in the doorway.
He smiled again beneath the mask. “No.”
He stepped inside and closed the door, quickly locking it behind him. She could escape if she wanted to, but he wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Where’s Alfred?” she asked, and now he could hear the fear in her voice.
“He’s not coming,” the Wolf said. “Ginger Jones.”
4
Ginger stared into the darkness, wishing she could see at least the Wolf’s silhouette. But the only light was coming from the garden outside the window, three stories down, so if she had to fight him, she was going to do it blind.
He knew her name.
Ginger Jones.
It was all over for her.
She’d been found.
“Are you…” she started, clearing her throat, feeling waves of anxiety wash over her, something she wished she could get under control. “Are you the guy who—”
“I am not the guy who,” The Wolf cut her off. There was something so familiar about his voice, but she couldn’t place it. He had the upper crust accent of a wealthy New Englander, but there was something about it that was off. Something that reminded her of when she had to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, kind of like she was doing now.
“How do you know my name?”
The Wolf chuckled. “Because you’re an impossible woman to forget, even for someone like me.”
She backed up, trying to think. She wasn’t sure if the party would have metal detectors, so she didn’t bring any weapons at all. All she had was the message. She quickly turned her head and tried to assess the room, hoping there was something sharp in this library that she could use in self-defense.
She finally spotted a metal poker by the large fireplace, the marble gleaming in the dim light. She cursed the moon for hiding again, for leaving her in such darkness, but she still made a run for it.
The Wolf was faster. He anticipated what she was going to do.
He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back until she fell right onto the carpet, a yelp of pain escaping her lips as the back of her head made hard contact.
Stars made their appearance behind her eyes, and she knew she had to act fast or she would be dead. She tried to get up, to scramble to her feet, but the Wolf was large and much stronger than she was.
She went for her usual defensive moves, but he was quick in that regard too, as if he knew everything she was going to do before she did it.
He grabbed her wrists and pinned her down, enjoying the show. She struggled wildly beneath him, trying to be free of his grasp, trying to kick at him, but he had her in such a way that she could barely move.
He could kill her right now.
She didn’t want to fail her grandmother this way.
“You can’t scream,” he said roughly, and his accent faltered just a little. “They’ll come up here and find out who you really are.”
Her eyes pinched shut under the mask, her head rolling from side to side, and she was trying to think, starting to panic. She knew this man, and he knew her. Most people who knew her wanted to kill her, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would do the same. There were so many people she had wronged, so many men that this man could be.
But then he let it slip.
“I won’t kill you if I don’t have to.”
Ginger was panting hard by now and stared up at the mask, hoping to see his eyes instead of the fathomless black holes. Pieces were starting to come back together now, like a puzzle taking shape, and she was trying to shift through the files of people in her mind, to figure out who this was. Someone that could kill her but didn’t necessarily want to.
“I know you,” she said after a moment. She didn’t relax. Her body was as tightly-strung as a piano wire.