She didn’t, however, hide the burning stare she leveled on Luca when he cocked a brow and grinned as he came to stand directly in front of her, and the elevator doors closed behind him. Effectively closing the two of them together in a small space.
Exactly what she needed to avoid. She’d hoped the door would close before he could reach it, maybe he’d make a run for the stairwell where he first came out of,
but he couldn’t guarantee which floor she would exit on ... giving her a better chance to get away.
She wasn’t so lucky.
And didn’t he look happy about it.
The handsome bastard.
Fuck.
It was those green-blue eyes of his—so intense and familiar—that threw her back in time. Years. So many years. Back to an entirely different world when she was a different person running from monsters instead of just hunting them down. To a family—who despite not being her own blood, had loved her, and taught her how to love—she had left behind.
It wasn’t just her past Penny ran from but everything she left there, too. Her feelings and fears; her truths and lies.
Now, one of them was staring her right in the face. She might not have laid eyes on Luca in five years, but time meant nothing at that moment. Time stopped. Everything about his face was exactly the same from the chiseled cheekbones and strong jaw to the way his stare froze her in place from the heaviness that grew in her chest.
“Been a while,” Luca said. “Hasn’t it, Pen—”
“Don’t.”
He stopped talking.
She didn’t say more.
The last thing she needed was this man saying her first name in an elevator full of witnesses after she had just murdered a man. Not that they knew it—or even Luca.
The family behind her kept talking.
Luca’s lips twisted in a smile that made Penny’s chest even heavier when he reached behind himself to push a button on the elevator as he asked, “Ground floor, then? You leaving? I’d like to come along. Have a word. Naz and Roz miss you.”
Apparently, time meant nothing. That weight making her heart pound harder was the same thing she used to feel whenever this man smiled at her all those years ago. What a cruel, sad joke that even her foolish notions of a young woman would chase her into adulthood, too.
Her crush, that was.
On Luca.
Everything about Penny was different from how she used to be. She made sure of that. Her training helped. Her handlers promised it. It seemed that also wasn’t the case because Luca could still make her tongue-tied at the worst possible time.
She hated how smug and gorgeous he looked when he moved to stand beside her, also putting his back to the chatting people in the elevator. She hated it even more that she noticed how well his suit fit him and that she could appreciate that fact when she could only remember one other time when he’d worn a suit in her presence.
Her eighteenth birthday.
The same night they kissed.
Her first real kiss.
If she cared to indulge that thought, then she knew damn well her mind wouldn’t let her forget how it felt to have him kiss her. All because she asked; she had wanted nothing more than to be kissed simply because she wanted it. Something on her terms; born from her desires. With someone she trusted.
That someone had been him.
“Did you know about me?” Luca asked.
Penny didn’t know what he meant for sure, but she had a damn good idea. “That you’ve been tracking me for years?”
“All these years, in fact.”
Right.
Couldn’t let that slide.
“Why do you think they make it so hard for you to catch up?”
Luca nodded, a glimmer of appreciation in his gaze that stayed nailed on her as though if he blinked, she might disappear. Hell, he wasn’t exactly wrong. If he gave her the chance to get out of there without him on her tail, then she was absolutely going to take it.
She didn’t have a choice.
Penny came and went.
She didn’t leave a trace.
“You know I can’t let you go tonight, right?” he asked.
She was only grateful for the fact that he kept his tone down, frankly. Too low for their guests to hear and below the shitty music playing through the speaker overhead. The speaker that was located right beside the blinking number that kept dropping with every floor they passed on their way down.
“Give me a day—or night, rather,” Luca said. “Go see them. Naz and my sister, I mean. Explain what the fuck happened. What did happen?”
Penny didn’t reply because she couldn’t. What difference would it make to a man who had been chasing any and all breadcrumbs of her very existence for years? All on what, the off chance that he might be able to return her to people she had been forced to leave behind?
It wasn’t like she could explain why.
They wouldn’t understand.
Even she didn’t.
Not completely.
Her gaze snapped up to the numbers overhead still counting down.
Five ... four ...
She needed a plan and fast. Chances were, her handlers from The League wouldn’t be willing to let actual contact between her and Luca slide. Not when the entire point of her taking the offer to train and work as one of their assassins had rested upon the need of leaving everyone in her life behind. Beyond that, this could only cause more trouble for the actual job.
Another reason for the people above her to get rid of the issue altogether.
“I’m a bit confused,” Luca murmured, sticking his hands in his pockets which was at least one thing she didn’t have to worry about. Fewer appendages to fight back when she took him by surprise in another couple of floors, right? That was the only way to fix this situation by all accounts. She needed to make it out of here cleanly.
Or as clean as possible.
She didn’t want to do that to Luca. At the same time, he really didn’t give her a choice tonight. Any other night, had he accosted her—though she had no clue how he managed to track her this time, but they knew her working in the states would be dangerous—then she might have been able to do ... anything else.
Indulge his conversation. Lie. Run.
Tonight, there was no option.
She had to get away.
Without him.
“Confused,” he continued, tipping his head her way, “because clearly you have freedom. See, I have heard the rumors about the organization you work for. What they do—who you are. And in all this time, if you knew we were looking for you ... why didn’t you try to come back? Or call? Anything? Did you think the time you were with my sister and Naz meant nothing to them? To me? We lo—”
“Shut up,” she snapped.
Her sharp hiss did quiet the people behind them. She could practically feel their gazes burning into the back of her head. Probably taking in the long-sleeved gown she wore and the color of her hair. Imprinting the image of her to their memory, so they could relay it later to police when the dead body was found upstairs, and the mysterious woman caught on camera coming and going from the eighth floor was connected.
Two and two always made four, after all.
Jesus.
Penny was really screwing this job up.
Not her usual style.
Luca sighed. “You’re not even going to say a thing to—”
The elevator jumped when it came to the third floor. Rubber squeaked when the doors opened to the hotel’s floor with the pool. The same floor that had been lit up on the elevator’s switchboard from the second she stepped inside.