Taken by the Billionaire (18 page)

“How did you track him down?”

Anneke shrugged.

“Damned if I know. It’s what I pay my people for,” she signed. She again offered me a candy, and I again declined. She popped it in her mouth nonchalantly and crunched away happily.

“We traced the call, Peter started the transfer to keep you safe, and then my dear assistant in the front seat took care of the rest,” she signed, and she pointed at the burly, dark-suited man sitting beside the driver. “You were in the Vernon Boulevard waste treatment plant, by the way.”

My apartment was less than two miles from that plant, and I shuddered as I realized just how dire my situation had been. If Peter’s negotiations had failed—if I hadn’t stabbed Sergei when he came at me—my remains would probably have been incinerated and thrown on a barge, and nobody would ever have found me.

I shivered as I remembered the brief resistance of the knife against Sergei’s skin, how it pushed back against my hand for a minuscule instant before plunging into his stomach. Time had stopped just to confirm that I didn’t miss a moment of the horror, to make sure I was scarred by the memory. Phantom gunfire rang out in my mind, and I heard Sergei’s lifeless body hit the concrete again.

I wished the images flashing through my mind would go away. They probably wouldn’t, though… certainly not soon, and maybe not ever.

I stared silently out the window into the night. The glowing arch of the 59th Street Bridge slowly inched closer. We were heading back into the city, probably to Anneke’s hotel.

No… Anneke wouldn’t be at a hotel, I thought. She probably owns a townhouse or a co-op around the Upper East Side. I turned my head toward her. She was looking straight at me, and her piercing blue eyes reflected each passing streetlight in flickering waves as we drove into the city.

“Is Peter mad at me?” I signed after a long moment of silent staring.

“What for?”

“For going on a date with his brother,” I signed back. Peter had told me time and time again to stay away from Sergei, and in the end he’d been right. His brother ended up being a psychopath after all.

Anneke burst out laughing, that same bright, musical laugh I’d heard before. It was still a crime against humanity, I thought, that she couldn’t hear her own beautiful voice.

“Are you kidding me? He’s rejoicing that you’re not dead! You should have heard him when he called me; he was absolutely distraught!”

I hoped the darkness hid my face so that Anneke didn’t see me blushing.

“It looks like you made quite the impression on Peter after all,” finished Anneke with a smile, and she turned away and looked out the window.

I tapped her on the shoulder to grab her attention again.

“Anneke, I’m sorry about Sergei.”

She smiled at me—a tight, thin-lipped smile, but a smile nonetheless—before responding.

“It’s not your fault that he kidnapped you, now is it?”

“Well no,” I signed back, and I shrugged awkwardly. I had just felt like I needed to apologize, somehow.

“It hurts to lose a son, yes, but I must be honest,” signed Anneke. “He got what he had coming to him.”

The long, black limousine pulled up to the curb in front of a beautiful, white granite building on 63rd Street just off 5th Avenue, and as the driver held open the door for Anneke, she turned to me once more.

“I would rather lose a son than have raised a monster,” she signed, and she got out of the car.

I followed her up to the heavy, bronze-fitted glass door and waited until the doorman responded to the buzzer. The elderly doorman greeted us with a bow and tried to pretend he wasn’t staring at my skimpy attire, and I hurried across the lobby, desperate to get out of sight. Eight floors passed quickly in the elevator, and when the bell chimed and the doors opened again, there was nothing at the end of the short hallway but a single door. Anneke owned the entire eighth floor.

She hobbled forward supported by her cane, unlocked the door, and gestured for me to follow her in.

What little I saw of the apartment was very different from her estate in Vela Luka. She had furnished—or more likely hired someone to furnish—the apartment simply but elegantly. There were no glittering crystal chandeliers, no elaborate, hand-carved scrollwork set into the walls, and certainly no marble flooring, but antique, dark wood furniture—still obscenely expensive—played a central role in the decorative theme of the apartment.

She must only stay here for business,
I thought, looking around the apartment as she dragged me toward the bedroom.
It feels more like a furniture showroom than a house.

I’d barely had a chance to even look around me at the apartment before Anneke grabbed me by the arm and began pulling me toward a bedroom off the main corridor to my left.

“You need sleep. Badly,” signed Anneke, pointing to the queen bed positioned next to a steaming-hot radiator.

“I can’t just leave you alone and go to bed after you’ve just rescued me,” I signed back, shaking my head. “What kind of gratitude would
that
be?”

The bed was fitted with daffodil-yellow pillows and a heavy quilt featuring a pink, grandmotherly floral pattern. The whole set-up looked delightfully inviting after a long night of being tied down to a table. God, it might as well have been a siren with how strongly it called to me. I really needed sleep.

“You can make it up to me by saving me next time,” she responded, and she winked at me. “Or you could just straighten out my other idiot of a son. That would be lovely too.”

I started to protest, but she raised a hand and firmly cut me off.

“No more. You’re going to sleep, and we can talk more in the morning.”

With that, she departed and closed the door behind her. It seemed pointless to me to keep arguing with an obstinate deaf woman, especially when she’d already left the room. I shook my head in fatigue and exasperation, took off the bodyguard’s coat, and slid under the blanket.

The second I hit the soft mattress and felt the warm, comforting weight of the quilt against my skin, I knew that Anneke was right. I needed sleep more than I needed anything else on earth. I was so, so tired. The radiator popped and fizzled behind me as if to reassure me that it would take care of me through the night, and as I closed my eyes, my consciousness faded away and I fell into a deep sleep.

****

“Sarah? Sweetie? Are you okay?”

Peter’s voice cut through my dreams, and I slowly came back to my senses. I sat up groggily, instinctively holding the quilt up to cover myself, and I saw him. Peter was sitting in a chair next to my bed, and the moment my eyes focused on him, a bright, beaming smile burst across his face.

“Oh god, Sarah! I’m so sorry,” said Peter, and he leapt from the chair, sat down on the bed beside me, and hugged me so tightly that I thought I might burst. “I’m so sorry that I got you caught up in this! I swear I didn’t mean it to work out like it did; I never wanted you to get hurt!”

Over and over he apologized, burying his face against my shoulder as he held me close, gushing remorse with each apology.

“…I’m sorry I drove you away, that I couldn’t just admit I was an idiot and had manipulated you…”

That one was enough for me right there. My heart melted, and I squeezed him back.

He looked up at me, his eyes a little teary, and I leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips before hugging him again.

“Can you forgive me?” he asked. “Please? I promise I’ll never block you out again, never keep secrets from you like I…”

I interrupted him with another kiss—a long, ardent, passionate kiss, the kind I’d wished for days that I could give him and had been angry at myself for wanting to give him. Hopefully that got the point across to him.

You sure about that? He’s a bit thick sometimes,
chided my brain, and I smiled at him.

“Yes, I guess I can forgive you,” I answered with a wink, just to make sure he got it.

He hugged me again, and I loved every second of it.

“I’m here in the States until tomorrow—until after my mother’s meeting at the UN—and then I will go back to Croatia with her,” he said, holding me close to him. “I want to try to spend some time with her and make up for lost years and try to undo the damage of Sergei’s lies about me, if I can.”

I nodded and leaned my head on his shoulder. I loved the feeling of his body against mine, the warmth radiating from him. I felt better than I had last night, but there was still a part of me that felt weak and vulnerable. I somehow felt safer in his arms, and I nuzzled his cheek as I leaned in against him.

“Will you come back with me?” he asked quietly, almost as if he dreaded my answer. Did he really think I’d say no now that he’d dropped the façade, now that I was in the arms of the sweet man who had been hiding behind the corporate suit of armor?

“Of course I will!” I answered. “Just take me by my apartment first so that I can actually pack this time.”

“Sure. Mother’s meeting with the U.N. arbiter is this afternoon, so why don’t we go down there now if you’re ready?”

“Know if she’s got anything in my size floating around the apartment that I could wear?” I asked, suddenly remembering that I still had no clothes. I didn’t much care for the idea of heading down to Astoria in my underwear.

“As long as you’re okay with looking a little behind the times, absolutely,” answered Peter, and he hopped up from the bed and pointed to the closet.

“Thanks. I’ll be right out.”

I shooed him out of the room and started rummaging through Anneke’s closet. She’d really been into floral prints at some point; the closet was practically full of them. Floral dresses, floral blouses, monstrous pink sweaters with embroidered white flowers on them… the contents of Anneke’s closet were an archive of nearly a century of poor fashion decisions.

I held my nose and grabbed a mauve blouse and the least offensive skirt I could find—a black, pleated knee-length silk skirt with green and purple flowers down each leg.

I groaned as I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked atrocious, but it was still better than doing the walk of shame through Astoria. Barely.

It was all Peter could do not to laugh when I came out of the guest bedroom in Anneke’s dress.

“Don’t even start,” I said, shooting him a glare. “Just don’t.”

He burst out laughing anyway. I sighed and headed to the elevator, Anneke’s silk skirt making irritating swishy sounds the entire way.

****

Even in the middle of the day, well before the start of rush hour, it took nearly forty-five minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic and grinding of teeth to get back out to my little place in Astoria. At least there was plenty of parking since everyone who lived on my block was at work.

I leapt out of the car, tossed some quarters in the meter since Peter’s Mercedes lacked a parking permit, and waved for him to follow me up the narrow stairs to the front door.

“Up here. I’m on the second floor,” I called back to him as he locked the car. I ran up to the second floor to unlock the door to my apartment while he locked the front door behind us.

“Nice place,” he said, looking around the kitchen as he followed me into the apartment.

“Hey, it’s what I can afford. I’m not exactly rich.”

“No, I meant it. I like your place,” he stammered.

“Really? What do you like about it?” I asked as I rummaged through the closet and pulled out my navy blue suitcase. “I can’t say I took you for the five-hundred square-foot Astoria type of guy.”

“I’m a convenience kind of guy,” he answered from somewhere behind me, probably the living room. “You’ve got a subway station at the corner and a market right across the street. I’d have loved to have that in university,” he answered from somewhere behind me, probably the living room.

“What, you didn’t have a vast fortune back in college?”

“Well, not then. My mother was still covering all my bills, but I didn’t exactly have a limo driving me everywhere back then,” he answered, sounding a little hurt.

“How times change!”

Why was I being so mean to him all of a sudden? He hadn’t done a thing wrong; he’d just walked into my apartment and told me it was a nice place! I couldn’t help but feel defensive somehow, as if, in spite of his compliment, I had to justify my own little apartment and why it wasn’t as good as his.

I’m absolutely not being fair at all
, I thought, and I closed the closet behind me.

“Sorry about that… I just thought you weren’t serious, that you were making fun of my apartment,” I said, walking over and sitting next to him on my gray, threadbare sofa. “I don’t know why I snapped at you.”

“It’s okay,” said Peter comfortingly, and he put a strong arm around my waist. God, it felt good being in his arms again.

“I really do like it, Sarah. It’s small, yes, but it’s very convenient. Money lets me make things convenient for myself now, but… well, you know what I mean,” he said, fumbling for words.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I answered, nodding to him. I didn’t have money, so I’d had to find other ways to make life easier for myself.

I gave him a long, soft kiss before getting up and heading to my bedroom to pack my suitcase.

“Anything I can help you with?” he called after me from the living room while I rummaged through drawers and started to cram clothes into my suitcase.

“Not unless you secretly know where I keep all my stuff, in which case it’s really creepy and you should probably just leave.”

“I don’t even know where the bathroom is!”

I poked my head out of the bedroom and pointed to the door opposite the laundry room before continuing my ill-fated hunt for socks without holes in them.

Fifteen minutes later, I zipped up the bulging, overloaded suitcase and quietly peeked out into the living room again. Peter was sitting on the sofa and staring out the sliding glass door of the balcony. I tiptoed quietly to the back of the sofa, leaned down, and kissed him softly on the cheek.

“Hi sweetie,” I whispered in his ear, massaging his shoulders. I just now noticed that he was wearing black jeans and a grey polo shirt, and this was the first time I’d seen him
not
wear a suit. He was dressed like a normal person—or at least like someone on my own level, from my plane of existence—and it only made him even more attractive to me.