But Anthony didn’t seem to be going anywhere. In fact, I would swear I could hear him snoring in my ear, and that was the last thing I wanted. I had absolutely no intentions of sleeping with him tonight, so I began to shift myself subtly beneath him, hoping to either wake him enough to get him to roll off me, or be able to sidle myself out from under him, so that I could get up, get dressed, and leave.
He didn’t seem to wake up, but he did roll to one side, so that the only part of him that was really still over me was his arm, which I was able to gingerly, very gingerly, scoot under, holding his wrist up by my fingertips as if it was a particularly odious snake, then replacing it on the mattress where I had been. I gathered up my clothing as carefully and quietly as I could, all the while checking him nervously where he lay on the bed, glancing up at him, ready to sprint out the door at a moment’s notice if he should wake.
But he didn’t, thankfully.
I paused at the door, though, looking over my shoulder at his broad back. I had a lot to think about, a lot to reconcile before I could see him again. I hoped he would understand about that, although I didn’t have a lot of faith he would. What Anthony wanted, Anthony got, one way or the other.
I shrugged and closed the door behind me soundlessly, wending my way through the house and out to my car mindlessly, deliberately not thinking about anything but getting myself home, not seeing anything in front of me except the vision of my very unhappy father glaring down at me.
I needed to be home.
Luckily, the drive home wasn’t far, and as I turned onto my street…
Bright lights.
Crunching metal.
Shattering of glass.
Blackness.
* * *
Anthony
When the phone rang in the middle of the night, it was never a good thing, unless you knew someone who was pregnant, and I didn’t remember anyone like that amongst anyone who had my private number. Unfortunately, the nature of my business meant that there were occasional dead of the night phone calls from situations that needed my attention or a final word from the boss, so I was instantly fully awake.
I picked up the phone and spoke in a husky voice, an obvious clue I had been awoken out of a dead sleep. “LaSalla.”
“Anthony LaSalla?”
I was already sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching to turn on the lamp. “Yes.”
“Do you know a Raychel Polov?”
My head swiveled around so that I could look at the other side of the bed, where she should have been sleeping as soundly as I had been. But it was empty, and when I touched the sheets, cold.
Dead cold.
I was beginning to have an uncomfortable flashback to the phone call I had gotten five years ago about Dasha being murdered. But I swallowed hard and said, “Yes.”
“I’m Officer John Clark, of the NOLA P.D.”
“And?” I asked impatiently. I wished the damned man would just spit it out, whatever the news was.
“Your name was in her wallet as her emergency contact. There was an accident. Ms. Polov was taken to the hospital.”
Every corpuscle of blood I owned froze in my veins. Not again. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—live through it again. I had only a few people in my life I actually loved… no.
Fuck… the mafia.
The Russians.
It didn’t end with Dasha’s murder.
They wanted Raychel too.
My greatest fear was now a reality.
“Was she—” I corrected my tense, “is she all right?”
“I don’t know, sir. She was alive when I last saw her, although she’s hurt pretty bad.”
I shot up and began gathering my clothes. I almost shut off the phone before asking, “Where’d they take her?”
“New Orleans East Hospital.”
I hung up the phone and tossed it on the bed, pulling on my jeans without underwear and throwing on a t-shirt while calculating how long it was going to take me to get to the hospital, and considering who I knew that I could call before I got there to see what was going on with her—if they’d tell me anything.
I fired up my car, and laid rubber getting out of the driveway and down the road. I tried to stay positive in my mind during the fifteen-minute drive, but it was hard. This was just way too close to home—to my heart. It was the nightmare of five years ago replaying itself. I was afraid that by the time I got there, she was going to be gone, just like Dasha had been, and again, I wouldn’t have had a chance to say goodbye to another person who was all I had and cared for in my life.
Another love.
I’d loved Dasha like a brother.