Page 11 of The Voicemail

I shake my head. “Mr. Russo, it’s a very nice offer, but I’m sure I’m going to be fine.”

“Elena,” he says seriously, and I’m again caught off guard by how my name sounds on his tongue. “A man tried to break into your home in the middle of the night. He ran off to God knows where, and now you don’t even have the luxury of a door you can lock. It’s 2:30 in the morning. I have a driver waiting downstairs and a platinum credit card. Let me help you.”

I take another step back into the apartment. This is too much. I don’t know him. The cops clearly respect him, but that doesn’t make me trust him more. If anything, it makes me trust him less. He’s obviously rich, but that’s not what made them treat him like a king. He’s powerful in a way I don’t understand. Maybe even dangerous.

“No,” I tell him. “I can find my own hotel. I can take my own car.”

He sighs, and I can tell he’s ready to argue again. Then my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and look at the screen. A text from an unknown number. For a second, I can’t make myself open it.

Alex sees my face and steps closer, then stops before he gets too close.

“Elena,” he says in a softer tone.

I open the message.

You shouldn’t have called him.

The hallway tilts. I stumble, and Alex catches me before I go down. He helps me to the couch and watches me carefully.

“Who are you?” I manage to ask him.

“I’m someone who believes you. Someone who wants to help.”

My mind races and I finally come to a conclusion. No matter who Alex is, he isn’t the person trying to hurt me. If he can provide safety, even for a night, then I have to take it.

“Okay,” I say. “Get me out of here.”

4

ALEX

Elena doesn’t speak for the first ten minutes in the car. She sits on the far side of the back seat with her overnight bag on her lap and her phone clutched in one hand. Her knuckles are pale around it. She’s still wearing her coat, even though Marco has the heat turned up and the rain has already steamed the windows.

She hasn’t taken her eyes off the street, like she’s waiting for her attacker to lunge out of an alley. For all I know, he might.

Luca follows in the car behind us with two men. He’s furious the attacker got away. We need whatever leverage against Bianchi we can get, and something tells me Elena’s stalker works for him.

The important thing is, Elena is safe. That’s all we can control for now.

She finally speaks when we cross Sixth. “Where are we going?”

Her voice is steadier than I expected. Not calm, exactly, but steady.

“A private residence my security company owns.”

Her mouth tightens.

“I thought we were going to a hotel,” she says, sounding less steady.

“This is safer,” I assure her. “I know I’m a strange man asking you to trust me to take you to a secure location in the middle of the night. The optics aren’t great. I realize that.”

She laughs humorlessly. “So it’s too much to ask that we stay someplace public?”

“The man who attacked you clearly knows how to find you. A hotel isn’t secure enough.”

She sighs and shakes her head, like she’s too tired to argue about any of it. Maybe it isn’t her smartest decision, but I’m grateful I don’t have to drag her kicking and screaming.

Her phone lights up in her hand, and she flinches before she can stop herself. It’s not a call. Just a notification from some app. She turns the screen face-down against her bag.