27. Raven

27

RAVEN

T o my surprise, CJ doesn't grill me about Vinnie. When she looked from me, to Vinnie, and then back to me again, I was certain she was putting two and two together.

She's already convinced I had sex, and when I looked at Vinnie, damn… Did I give away my secret?

I could feel how warm my cheeks were, how warm my chest was, how my legs wanted to give way beneath me.

But I held myself together.

Once he's gone, all CJ says is, "My God, he's hot, isn't he?"

"Very handsome," I say.

She smirks. "Handsome shmandsome. The man's a god." She looks at the card again. "Vincent Gallo Junior. Vincent Gallo. What a sexy name."

As if I needed reminding.

"It's been fun," I say. "But I should probably call my Uber. It'll be a long wait and?—"

CJ shakes her head. "There's never a wait here."

"I thought you had a car to use?" I say.

"I do, but this is a burb. I have friends over from time to time who drink a little too much and need to call an Uber. You should be able to get one pretty fast."

"Still, it's a long drive." I grab my phone out of my pocket.

She grabs my arm. "Can't you stay a little longer? We haven't really gotten to talk much."

"Maybe for a little while." But then I look at my watch. "You know? I probably shouldn't. It's been so fun, Ceej, and you'll come to the ranch this weekend. Mom and Dad will be thrilled to see you too." I pull up the Uber app. Great, there's a ride five minutes away.

I give CJ a goodbye hug just as a Toyota Prius drives up to the house. "See you Sunday."

"Can't wait," CJ says.

I leave and hop into the car after checking the license plate. "Hi, I'm Raven. You're Johnson?"

"Yes, ma'am." He adjusts his phone on his hands-free car mount. "I see we've got a long ride ahead of us."

"Yeah. And if it's okay with you, I'm exhausted. I may just try to take a nap."

"Ma'am, that's fine with me."

I lean into the back seat and close my eyes.

I think about Vinnie Gallo.

And I wonder why he wants to see CJ's employers, the Puzos.

But I can't bring myself to care too much, because this is the most comfortable Prius I've ever been in. The seat seems to conform to my body, and I must fall asleep because in what seems like only about ten minutes, the car stops and Johnson says to me, "We're here, ma'am."

I shoot my eyes open. "Already?"

But before he answers, he gets out of the car and slides in the back seat next to me.

"What are you doing?" I ball my hands into fists. I didn't kick leukemia's ass just to be raped in the back of a car by an Uber driver.

"Nothing, ma'am. I just need to talk to you."

"About what? And if you touch me, I swear to God—" I put my hands up in front of my face.

"Calm down." He grabs my arms and forces them to my sides. "No one's going to hurt you."

"You already have. You've violated my rights." I reach into my pocket to grab my phone. "Uber will hear about this."

He knocks my phone out of my hands. "I'm pretty sure they won't give a shit since I'm not actually an Uber driver."

"Then how did you respond to my call?"

He grins. "Technology is easily hacked."

I let out a bloodcurdling scream.

He clamps his hand over my mouth. "Don't do that. It won't be good for either one of us."

I try to respond, but his hand over my mouth makes it impossible. I breathe heavily through my nose until he finally removes his hand.

"We good? You're not going to scream?"

I let out another bloodcurdling scream.

"Jesus fucking Christ." He clamps his hand over me again. "We're in an isolated area, and no one's going to hear you, ma'am. So please don't do that again."

For a criminal, he's being terribly polite. It's creepy.

He removes his hand slowly. "All I want to know is what you were doing at Giacomo Puzo's house."

"None of your business."

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way, ma'am. I don't want to hurt you." He forces his gaze onto mine. "But I will if I have to."

I don't yet have the physical strength to fight this man. There was a time, when I was younger and healthy, when I could kick ass nearly as well as my brothers and Robin. Unfortunately, that day is not today.

I swallow. "Fine. I was having lunch with a friend of mine. CJ Simons. She's their nanny."

He raises an eyebrow. "You sure that's all it was?"

"Why would it be anything else? I don't even know the Puzos."

"You know Vinnie Gallo?"

"Vinnie?" My nerves jolt all the way to my fingertips. "What do you want to know about Vinnie?"

Then I realize what this is about. I know what Vinnie's family does for a living. Somehow I got myself in the middle of it.

"His sister is engaged to my brother."

"Right. And I believe you were with him last night."

I say nothing. How the hell would he know? We were at my house. Nobody knows where my house is. I haven't even been living there.

"So what? He's a free agent, and so am I."

"Yes, he is. And you are as well. So I want you to do something for me."

He's kidding, right? He's basically abducted me and taken me to some unknown place when he was supposed to drive me home. This is false imprisonment, kidnapping, you name it.

Then again, he probably knows all of that.

"I hardly know the man," I say.

"I'd say you know him pretty well in the biblical sense." He narrows his eyes and looks me up and down. "I've got to say, for a bald chick you're pretty hot."

My hand absently wanders to my head. "Look, I hardly know him. We had some fun. Is that against the fucking law?"

"Not if you're both over eighteen, which I know he is." He trails his gaze down from my head to my breasts. "And I know you are."

"Exactly what else do you know about me?"

He shrugs. "Everything there is to know, Ms. Bellamy."

My skin tightens around my body, as if someone wrapped plastic wrap all over me. I feel violated. And not just because I've been kidnapped.

He says he knows everything about me, and already I know he's speaking the truth. He's said too many things that were accurate to truly be bullshitting me.

"If you really know who I am, you know my father's got money. A lot of money."

"I'm not interested in your money, Raven."

Raven now. Not Ms. Bellamy.

"What are you interested in?"

"Vinnie Gallo."

"I don't know what you need from me. You clearly know more about him than I do."

"True. But you can get close to him."

"Not if I choose not to. We had one night. It's not like we're in a relationship."

He cocks his head. "Would you like to be?"

His question stuns me. Because the answer on the tip of my tongue is yes, I would like to be in a relationship with Vinnie Gallo. But I know what he does for a living. And I know he's got his work cut out for him if he wants to bring down his family.

And he said he couldn't go any further with me and had no intention of doing so. He damn near broke my heart, but I'm not telling this asshole any of that.

"To be honest, I haven't given it a lot of thought," I lie.

He leans in, his teeth gritted. "Then get good at pretending. I need you to give him a call. Set a date for, say, this Friday evening."

"That's two days from now," I say, "and I already have another date."

His eyebrows nearly fly off his head. "Really? Is baldness in now or something?"

I close my eyes, count to ten. I really want to scream again. More than that, I want to claw this guy's eyes out, but my fingernails are short right now.

I need Robin here. She may have been a tomboy when we were growing up, but she wears her nails long and lethal.

I decide not to dignify his comment with a response.

"Like I said…I'm busy." He doesn't need to know that I was going to cancel the date with Brick anyway.

"Cancel it," he says again.

"No," I say succinctly.

"I'll make it worth your while if you cancel it."

I scoff. "What could you possibly do to make it worth my while? I come from money. I'm recovering from leukemia. I almost died. So unless you can guarantee me that I'll be leukemia-free—make that free from cancer and any other catastrophic illness—for the rest of my life, I'm not interested."

He turns his gaze away from me then, looks toward the front of the car.

Right. He says he knows everything about me, but he hasn't given me a lot of thought. Hasn't put anything into my perspective. When you're ill—when you feel like you'd rather die than go through one more day of the pain—you realize that money and material things really mean nothing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I have them. Money does make life a lot easier. But I would've given it all up in a heartbeat to be free from that devastating illness.

"I can guarantee you that your brothers will live."

My jaw drops. "Leave my brothers out of this."

"I'll be happy to…" He leans in again, poking me in the upper chest with every word he speaks. "If you break the date with whoever you're going out with and see Vinnie Friday night instead."

That's hardly a hardship, which is why I know it can't be that easy.

"And?" I ask.

"And…your instructions will come." He pulls a burner phone out of his pocket and hands it to me. "You'll get a text. All you have to do now is call Vinnie and make a date for Friday night."

"I'm not going to hurt Vinnie."

"Who asked you to?"

" You're asking me to." I push at his chest with my hands. "You think I'm so na?ve as to think you just want me to go out on a date with Vinnie Gallo Friday night?"

This guy clearly has no idea that Vinnie has no intention of seeing me again. He'll say no.

"All you need to do is call him," Johnson says. "Ask him to meet you at your place. Cook him a nice dinner. And make sure he doesn't leave until after midnight."