Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

Oliver

The floor was moving.

When I opened my eyes, everything around me seemed to be shifting back and forth. I felt dizzy, and nauseous, and my head was pounding so badly that I was surprised it wasn’t leaking out of my eyes.

I was also sitting up. It was a strange position to wake up in, and I blinked dumbly at the sight of my own hands for several moments before I realized what I was seeing. I was tied to a chair, with my wrists bound to the armrests and my ankles bound to the metal legs.

The light around me kept shifting. My head lolled on my neck, so I was staring at the floor, and I watched as my own shadow stretched and shrunk. At first, I thought it was due to the dizziness I felt, maybe I was hallucinating, until I mustered up enough strength to look up.

A light hung from the ceiling above me, and it was swaying back and forth.

I felt even more nauseous just looking at it.

“Finally awake.”

The unexpected voice startled me, but I didn’t have enough energy to flinch. A woman I’d never met before stepped into my view. She had a barely noticeable Russian accent, and in some ways reminded me of Eva, but even more intense.

I didn’t bother to respond. Her words hadn’t actually been a question, so she wasn’t looking for an answer. Plus, my mouth was so dry, I doubted I could speak anyway.

Grabbing the back of the chair I was tied to, she spun me around to face the rest of the room.

I first saw the sky outside a window that took up most of the far wall. Dawn was just starting to light the sky, adding pink highlights among the gray and black. I prayed it was the next morning and that I’d only been unconscious for a few hours, and not actually days later.

The next thing I noticed was the room itself. Suddenly, the swaying light made sense. It wasn’t really a room at all. Rather it was the control booth of a large cargo ship. A long line of complicated control panels lay just under the window, and the front end of the ship stretched out beyond the glass, pointing toward the far horizon. Beyond the ship lay nothing but open sea.

All of these observations were noted and then immediately forgotten when my attention shifted again to the people in the control room with me.

The Russian woman was there, along with several other very intimidating people, but sitting calmly at a table in the center of the room was my grandmother.

“Nana? What?” The words scratched at my dry throat, but I had to speak up.

What was my grandmother doing here?

Had she been kidnapped, too?

She glanced at me, but her expression was like ice. If it weren’t for the fact that I recognized her face, she would have seemed like a stranger.

It was too confusing to look at her, so I shifted focus back to the Russian woman instead. She was speaking to some of the other people in the room, saying something about ‘International Waters’. I couldn’t follow the full conversation, but it seemed important.

The man she spoke with also kept calling her Aslanov. I couldn’t tell if it was meant as a first name, a last name, or a title, but it definitely sounded Russian.

These people were definitely the Russian Mafia. All the effort D’Angelo had put into keeping me from getting kidnapped, and I’d ended up in the hands of his enemies anyway.

How had I gotten here?

The last thing I remembered was sitting in the kitchen of my own house, speaking with my family.

My thoughts were interrupted when someone shoved open the door to the control room and ran up to Aslanov.

“The Bianchi leader has shown up, just as you expected. He’s demanding to be let onto the ship.”

Aslanov faced the window that looked out over the ship, hands clasped behind her back like she was standing at military attention.

“Are we far enough out?”

“Yes,” someone else answered, pointing toward something on the control panels. “We’ve just crossed the maritime boundary and are now on the high seas.”

She nodded. “Very good. Let him aboard, but only him. His bodyguards and anyone else he may have brought with him must stay behind.”

People immediately started moving around the room, but Aslanov stood like an unmoving pillar among the chaos.

“Oh…” She glanced toward me. “Gag him. We don’t want any disruptions.”

She had barely finished speaking when someone outside of my view shoved a wad of cloth into my mouth. Another strip of cloth was wrapped around my head to hold it in place. The cloth strip was secured so tightly it cut into the sides of my mouth, and the gag clung to my already dry tongue.

Even if I shouted, I wouldn’t have been able to make a sound.

After that, no one paid me any attention. Even my own grandmother, who continued to sit like an unmoving statue at the room’s only table, completely ignored me. I’d never felt more invisible in my life. There were plenty of times when I’d wished I could disappear, especially when people were staring at my scars, but right now I wanted nothing more than for someone to talk to me. Even if they didn’t explain what was going on, just a few words of assurance would have been enough.

Someone grabbed the back of my neck in one broad, cold hand, and the hard barrel of a gun pressed against my head. The twitch of a single finger would be enough to end my life.

Like dangling over an abyss by a spider’s threat, I was afraid to move or even breathe too deeply for fear of that lifeline snapping.

Moments later, the door to the control room opened again, and this time D’Angelo’s familiar figure stepped through. Until then, I’d never really seen him in full Mafia Boss form. Even when he was literally killing someone in front of my eyes, it didn’t have the same effect as it did right now. He almost didn’t look human. Everything about him was perfect. Not a hair hung out of place, and his all black suit was pressed so sharply that he could have sharpened his knives on the creases.

Even the expression on his face was cold and perfect. This was the kind of man who comfortably held life or death in his hands on a daily basis.

For the briefest moment, his blue eyes flickered in my direction, but he almost immediately looked away and focused on Aslanov.

Even D’Angelo was ignoring me. Maybe I really had become invisible. I sunk in my seat, but then the gun at my head dug harder into my scalp and I sat up straighter.

Aslanov regarded D’Angelo with a sarcastic curve to her lip. “What? No tearful reunion? You’re a rather cold lover, aren’t you.”

In contrast to her almost teasing tone, D’Angelo’s expression never shifted. “I never let pleasure get in the way of business. I’ve killed people for less.”

“Oh?” She gestured to the person standing behind me. “Then you won’t mind if I just dispose of him.”

The gun pressing against my head gave a click as it was cocked, and the metallic sound echoed right through my skull.

Still, D’Angelo didn’t even look at me.

He wasn’t really going to let them kill me, right?

Up until now he’d fought to protect me. He wouldn’t have done that if he could so easily throw me away.

Right?

It was at that moment I realized how short my relationship with D’Angelo had been. We’d only known each other a few weeks. That wasn’t long enough to really get to know someone, let alone develop an actual commitment. Technically, what we had could still be considered a fling.

Someone so important and powerful wouldn’t compromise himself for a mere fling. I was stupid to think otherwise. He protected me because it was the easier option, but now that I’d become an actual liability, he had no reason to protect me any longer.

Tears dripped from the corner of my eyes, soaking into the gag wrapped around my head. Forced to breathe only through my nose, I felt on the verge of hyperventilating as my lungs constricted from grief.

Still, D’Angelo continued to only pay attention to Aslanov, who was now fully smiling at him. After a moment of silence where nothing happened, he sighed deeply. “I’m not here for games. If that’s all you’re interested in, I’ll deal with someone who actually knows how to get business done.”

Then he turned away from Aslanov and sat at the table across from my grandmother.

“Ma’am.” He gave her a slight nod.

My grandmother’s face finally creased into an actual expression as she looked him up and down. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“Oh, I was,” D’Angelo assured her with the hint of a smile on his lips. “But I think I’ve figured it out now. You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you? Based on the timeline, it’s probably been about forty years since you were put in place. That’s a long time for a sleeper agent to stay dormant. I’m impressed.”

Sleeper agent?

I’d only heard that term in old spy movies that Rowan sometimes watched when he wanted something other than monsters.

Did that mean... my grandmother was working for the Russian Mafia?

Or, no, it meant she’d been a part of the Russian Mafia from the start, and all this time had only been pretending to be an ordinary citizen.

The moment right before I passed out returned to my mind. I’d been in the kitchen, speaking with my family about my night job, and my dad’s involvement with the Italian Mafia, and the fire. Then I’d suddenly passed out.

No.

Nana had served everyone tea, but now that I thought about it, although she poured three cups, I never saw her take a drink.

She’d drugged me, then handed me over to the Russian Mafia... because she was secretly a member of the Russian Mafia as well.

My head spun, and I swallowed several times to stop myself from throwing up. I had a bad feeling that if I threw up with the gag on, my captors still wouldn’t let me take it off.

With her hands folded on the table, my grandmother was the very image of a polite lady. “It’s your fault I was left dormant for so long. If you hadn’t come along, I could have gone home a long time ago.”

“Ah.” D’Angelo nodded as if what she said made sense. “I wondered about that. You were put into position here when tensions between our organizations were high, but then my parents secured peace by getting married. So, you’ve maintained your persona as an ordinary citizen ever since, just waiting to finally be put to use.” His grin turned sadistic. “Like an old toy waiting for its owner to finally play with it.”

My grandmother sneered at him. “Enough. We all know the situation now, so there’s no use repeating ourselves.”

D’Angelo bowed his head ever so slightly. “My apologies. I just want to make sure everyone was on the same page.”

For the briefest moment, while his head was bowed so no one could see his face, he glanced in my direction.

Realization struck like the first ray or dawn in my mind. Everyone else in the room knew the truth about my grandmother. There was no reason for him to say it out loud. He only did so to make sure I understood.

D’Angelo was talking to me. In this situation, he couldn’t risk acknowledging me. That would only give his enemies more leverage against him. Yet, despite that, he still found a way to communicate with me.

My tears kept flowing down my cheeks, but now they were filled with hope instead of heartbreak.