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“I know we shouldn’t risk being seen together,” she says shakily, but I also know she wouldn’t call unless she were scared.
“Are you somewhere public?”
“Yes.”
Layla had suspected someone was watching her apartment. When Archer approached them last time, they left, and I wanted him to stay close to Layla in case something happened. Two sightings now. I wondered for how many nights they’d actually been there. Archer hadn’t seen the culprit since.
I hate how powerless I am to protect her, dangling her like some bait just to coax my father out to maintain this business with the Armani’s.
Now, the stakes are starting to become too great.
I grab my keys from the desk and storm for the door. “Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
Consequences be damned.
39
ELANEE
Ican hear my rattling breath through my ears as I walk toward the bar Dmitri instructed me to walk to. I can’t see the person in the hoodie anymore, but I also can’t shake the feeling of being watched. I’m still on the phone with him. He hasn’t let me hang up since I called. I’m walking with my phone in my pocket and one wireless headphone in my ear to speak with him.
“I’m almost there, sweetheart,” Dmitri says.
“It’s too risky, isn’t it?”
And yet my pace kicked up the moment he said he’d come for me personally.
It’s too greedy. It risks what we’re planning, and yet part of me also thinks that the only thing it will damn is me.
“Are you close?” he asks. A pause. “I can see you’re only four streets up.” My eyebrows knit together, but I’m not surprised he probably has a tracker on my necklace as well. I fiddle with it, thinking only of him.
I hate this, every part of living in paranoia. Will it be this time? And every time, I think I’m getting closer to death, which ignites the spark in me that still wants to live.
I stop dead in my tracks when I round the corner, and Slater’s pink-haired woman, Candy, is blocking my path with a wild storm in her gaze. Past her and across the road, I can see the bar Dmitri told me to meet him at.
“You’ve been summoned,” she says. Those words run a chill down me. But it feels off. I’m incredulous because why was she of all people fetching me? As scared as I should be by those words, it doesn’t match up to the person who is calling for me. Someone like Lyle would’ve come and collected me himself, right? If Slater was gone, wouldn’t he be next to take over?
“Elanee, who’s that?” Dmitri’s voice is tight on the other end of my earpiece. “Keep walking.”
It’s not so easy to disobey if it’s an order.
“And why are you telling me this?” I ask her.
Her upper lip curls and she looks feral. Black bags ring her eyes, and a rash crosses over her cheeks. I imagine she might’ve been pretty once. But too many years of abuse have taken away any sparkle of life and health from her.
“You were always a bit of a smart bitch, weren’t you? Didn’t know your place because you thought you were something special, huh?”
“There’s nothing special about being a prisoner,” I bite back. I can hear Dmitri barking instructions in the background.
“I’m going to give you one chance.” She scratches her arm. “You’re going to step into this dark little alleyway here, or I’m going to shoot every person I see on this street right now.”
I swallow as it finally dawns on me now. “Have you been the one following me?”
“Don’t you dare go into that alleyway! I’m almost there,” Dmitri says, and his voice is ominously clipped. He starts abusing the driver to get through the traffic.
“I said get in the fucking alleyway, slut!” she yells. An elderly man is aghast but tries to hurry along past her. “Or that old prick will be the first and then the next and the next until I shoot you.”
You’re already going to shoot me, I think inwardly.
