Damage (Collateral Damage 2)

I’m attracted to him. In spite of it all, or maybe because of it all, I’m attracted to him.

He saved my life.

But it could have been him to set me up, couldn’t it? Why would I rule him out? He’s the one who gave me the phone. Maybe it was like I thought. Maybe it was bugged.

I shake off the thought. I don’t believe that. I just don’t. Maybe it was the look on his face when he took that wretched, vomit-stinking hood off me. Maybe it was the fact he climbed that ladder down and wouldn’t let me go as he carried us both back up, even as the rope tore. I don’t know, and although I’m sure he’s no saint, I don’t believe Stefan would do that to me.

When I draw my gaze back to his, I find him watching me.

I think about how he was when he came to get me. When he brought me up out of the well on that ladder. When he held my hand and swore he’d never let anyone hurt me again.

When he came into my room drunk later that same night and warned me my reckoning was coming.

The look in his hazel eyes tells me tonight is that reckoning.

“Gabriela,” he says, coming into the library and closing the door behind him. Locking it.

Why do I note that one act?

He walks toward me and perches on the ottoman before my chair.

I sit up and put my hands on my knees. “Stefan,” I say, because he’s not the only one who feels justified to a reckoning.

“Doctor says you’re doing better, healing nicely.” He looks me over. When he reaches out to touch me, I pull back, making him pause for a moment before his hand is on my middle, my ribs.

He’s feeling for the bandage.

“It’s gone,” I say.

“Good.”

“Where have you been?” Thoughts of Clara cloud the edges of my mind, but I force them away.

“I spent a few days with my uncle in Taormina. He’s the one who told me where you were.”

“What?”

“Rafa’s father, Francesco Catalano. Our relationship is…difficult, but I owed him a debt of gratitude.”

“Rafa’s father?” Was he the man Rafa met with when we were out there? Why didn’t he tell me?

“Yes.”

“How did he know?”

“Someone overheard something probably from the men on the boat bragging about what they’d done.”

“I don’t understand.”

He studies me, stands up and walks across the room to look out the window into the dark night. “You don’t understand because people are duplicitous.” He turns back to me and when he approaches, I see his gaze momentarily drop to the photo album on the side table beside my seat before shifting back to me. “Only a fine line delineates between an ally and an enemy, and that line is constantly shifting.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just be careful.”

“Careful?”

“Who here knows you understand and speak Italian, Gabriela?”

I feel my face heat up. “Only you.”

“Keep it that way.”

He walks to a cabinet and opens it. I haven’t looked inside that one yet and I see now it’s a liquor cabinet. He takes out a bottle of whiskey and pours one. He turns to me and extends it.

I shake my head so he closes the cabinet then returns to sit on the sofa across from my chair.

“Who was the man you recognized?” he asks, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee as he sips his drink.

“I didn’t recognize anyone,” I lie because I haven’t figure out how to handle this yet.

“Don’t you want to find out who did this to you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Come here, Gabriela.” He sits up so both feet are on the floor, and points to the space between his legs.

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

I get up, walk over to him.

He takes my wrist and pulls me closer so I’m standing between his wide-spread legs. He leans back against the couch, sips his drink and watches me.

“Take off your dress.”

“Why?” My heart pounds, blood throbs loud like a drum in my head.

“I want to see you. See if you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“You know what,” he says.

I do. Time for a reckoning.

He sets his drink down and stands.

I try to take a step backward, but the backs of my knees hit the ottoman and I almost fall, but Stefan catches me easily and holds tight to one arm, his expression hardening. He’s so close, I feel the heat coming off him, smell the scent of him and some part of me, it wants to curl into him. To have him hold me again like he did when he carried me out of that well. Out of that house.

But what he does is so opposite.

With his free hand, he unzips the dress and strips it off me.

“Step out.”

I look down and realize what he means. Step out of the puddle of the dress. I do and he shoves it aside. I cover my breasts.