In fact, he altogether turned his gaze away from Luca. That was fine. It allowed him to size up the guard while he considered what the man said.
What was Penny doing—or who was she visiting—on the floor where the Smithenson family was staying in the hotel? The same political family currently raising funds downstairs from wealthy donors.
The guard was two inches shorter than Luca’s six-foot-two. But the guy also had probably forty pounds of muscle on Luca’s fit one-ninety-nine. So, he had a bit of height on his side, and the occasional kickboxing training that had become more and more infrequent over the years as he focused on his job might help but ...
“Really,” Luca said, taking a step forward and reaching for the door. “I’ll only take the elevator back down to my fl—”
Luca didn’t even reach the doorknob or finish his sentence before the guy grabbed his wrist and squeezed hard enough to make him flinch. Not that he did so, or showed his irritation.
“I said no entrance to this floor, asshole. And how the fuck are you getting lost when you’ve had a room booked for the week, anyway?”
He smirked.
Good catch.
Maybe the guy wasn’t just meat shoved into a suit. Not that it was going to do him any good at the moment. Luca had been willing to forgo violence thirty seconds ago had he been able to get past the man but now ...
Too bad.
“I lied,” Luca said frankly.
And with a shrug.
Just because.
Honesty was the best policy, wasn’t it? Especially in cases where it gave Luca the leverage of shock.
The guard’s head snapped to the side, his gaze nailing into Luca, but it was already too late. He used his free arm to lift fast and hard, and his elbow hit the intended target. The nose of the guard which broke on impact. And stunned the guy just long enough for Luca to get his forearm against the man’s throat as he pinned him to the wall.
Forty unfortunate seconds later, because the man bled all over Luca’s arm, and he let the asshole fall to the floor before stepping over the unconscious body. Chances were, by the time he woke up, Luca would already be gone from the hotel.
Hopefully with Penny. Even if he hadn’t figured out how to make that happen yet. Shit, if all else failed, he would just go the same route for Penny that he’d gone for the guard. Why not?
Luca reached for the doorknob at the same time something down the hall beyond the door caught his attention and froze him to the spot. A black hat, that was. And the long, white-blonde hair now peeking out from beneath the rim, falling over the delicate line of her shoulders in soft waves. Shoulders that were covered by the sleeves of a gown that went all the way down to her wrists.
Scars, he knew.
She must still cover those.
Had she been wearing a wig earlier?
It was the change in hair color that shocked him the most. Just for a second. Long enough to make Luca pause and wonder what the fuck he was supposed to do now. He’d never even been this close to her in all these years.
Penny.
She stopped in front of the elevator, reaching out to push the button to open the doors. The black gown she had worn for the evening—or job, whatever the fuck she was there for—was a tight number that hugged her curves and showed off how well she could pull them off.
The last time he saw her ... she was eighteen.
Barely a woman.
Barely fucking legal.
Practically a mouse in the way she had trouble talking to men, or women ... anyone. Back then, the Penny he met that his sister and best friend took in couldn’t gain the courage to lift her head to meet someone’s stare. She’d worn clothes that drowned any suggestion she was a female and regularly ran from the pain that chased her day and night.
He shouldn’t know any of those things. It was part of the reason that made this job so goddamn complicated for Luca. And yet, he did.
It’s why he paused.
Why he stared.
And why he couldn’t stop staring.
He hadn’t gotten a good glimpse of Penny when she came into the hotel downstairs. Hadn’t gotten a peek at her in years beyond the occasional grainy security photo. He couldn’t even guarantee the woman who came in downstairs had been Penny until this moment. With her profile in full view through the glass of the door, there was no question in his mind.
It was absolutely her. The mark he couldn’t catch. The one he couldn’t find.
Until now.
Penny.
Her heart-shaped face had thinned from the roundness of her youth, making her cheekbones sharper and her chin more angular. Those painted-red, full lips were not something he expected—he couldn’t remember the younger her ever wearing make-up even if the rest of her pale skin still looked like porcelain glass. The ice-blue, wide doe-eyes were the exact same, though.
It was that second when Luca realized he’d been chasing an idea of Penny. The image he had imprinted into his memories of her—of the girl that his sister and best friend desperately wanted to find. Certainly not this grown woman who he had to do a double take of because he was a man who had never learned how to look away from a beautiful woman.
He’d been right.
That Penny was a ghost.
This woman was real and every part of Luca knew it. That was the problem, though. He shouldn’t notice those things at all.
The black purse hanging off the corner off her elbow swung a bit when she stepped back and glanced upward. Maybe at the lights overtop the elevators. The groan from the man on the floor took Luca’s attention away from the glass for only a second before it was right back on Penny down the hall.
She stepped forward when a ray of light shone across the carpeted floor. The elevator doors had opened. Like a fool, he’d been stuck staring at her instead of moving and was about to lose his one and only chance in five fucking years to catch her.
Luca yanked open the door at the same time Penny took another step. The noise of the heavy door had her glancing his way, recognition lighting up her eyes.
Then again, it could have also been him calling out, “Penny.”
4.
Penny
PEOPLE liked to say the past always catches up eventually. No matter how hard someone tried to leave it behind or how fast they ran away from it, it would eventually show right back up to laugh in someone’s face.
Penny didn’t think the sentiment was untrue ... she had simply hoped that with enough time and distance, her past would stay where it belonged. It’s what she worked for—what her handlers tried to make happen by keeping her out of North America as much as possible for the better part of her first three years working under The League as an assassin.
That way, everyone was safe.
Or so she was told.
All of that effort was totally blown to shit when Luca Puzza stepped inside the elevator after sticking his arm into the closing door to keep it from shutting completely. Given there were another five people in the space, a family guessing by the way they all chatted behind her, Penny did her best to keep from swearing out loud. She hadn’t expected people to be on the elevator at all when the Smithenson floor wasn’t available to other patrons of the hotel. But the elevator would open up to let people on from the Smithenson floor when it was carrying others from higher floors lower, she supposed. It was just her good luck that the elevator hadn’t been empty coming down.