He kneels in front of me, spreading my legs and resting his hands on my thighs. “Your father knew where it was, and he wouldn’t tell me either.”
“What does that mean?” I demand, the mention of my father like another bite that radiates through me and becomes a ball of unnamed emotions in my chest.
“He had the necklace, like you do. He was undercover in my father’s operation, and his boss, now your figurehead of a boss, stole the necklace from him. And like you, your father refused to return it to my father. Only your boss, your father’s old partner, was working with me, about to hand that necklace over, when your father intervened and took it. At that point France and Italy were ruled by Niccolo’s mother and my father, who’d married. That necklace was key to my plan to take over the empire when I killed them.”
“You say that like killing your parents is nothing.”
“They were nothing,” he says. “And why, you might ask, do I feel that way? None of your fucking business. What matters is that I waited years for that necklace to show up in order to act on my plans. Years of nothing, in which I had to share the power with Niccolo and turn to you for a solution.”
“I was never a solution. I knew nothing about the necklace.”
“But I knew your father had trained you all your life. I knew if anyone could find that necklace, it was you.”
My world starts to spin.
“I created your covert team,” he continues. “You aren’t really CIA, though even the agency has whispers of your secret unit. It’s really quite comical. I paid for your college education. I paid for your training. I made sure you questioned your father’s death and had the skills to figure out where the necklace was, and finally you gave it to me. Dane Owen Daniels, ‘DOD,’ was the link, an old friend of your father’s who helped him hide the necklace. But we didn’t know who he was until you gave us a way to find him and the necklace.”
My gut knots with my stupidity, for allowing myself to be a token in a game my father lost, and which I am close to losing as well. “And then you had me transport it across the border.”
“It seemed profoundly appropriate. If you fucked it up and got caught, you’d be the thief. I made you. I erased you. I even killed your ‘boss’ at the fictitious CIA operation when I brought you here, to ensure no one could track you. So you see, you work for me. You’ve always worked for me. You belong to me. And you will bring me the necklace.”
“Did you—”
“Order the murder of your father? Of course I did. My only regret,” he adds, his hands sliding up my thighs, “is that I didn’t keep him alive and force him to watch me fuck his beautiful daughter.” His thumbs are now stroking my inner thighs just below my sex, and it is all I can do not to lean forward and smash my head against his, kick him away, and finally live out that fantasy of snapping his neck.
I’m trembling, visualizing that fantasy, and he laughs, low and dirty, a sound that crawls over my skin like slimy, disgusting worms. “I should force you to have an orgasm right now,” he says, “just to prove I can despite all the hate you’re throwing my way, but that would be a pleasure you don’t deserve right now. Instead, you get to spend the rest of the trip thinking about what I’m going to do to you. How many ways I’m going to fuck you when we’re alone.”
I decide I’m done playing submissive with this man. The game starts and ends tonight. “I’m going to kill you,” I promise him.
“I hope for Sara’s sake you don’t,” he says, “because I might not survive to enjoy you, but then, neither would she survive another day.” He squeezes my legs, thumbs digging into my flesh with brutal force. “Keep them open.”
He backs up and sits in his seat, pulling out his phone and snapping a picture. “When the time is right, when I can send this without him tracking our location, Kayden is going to enjoy that one, I think, don’t you?”
I don’t focus on the horrific knowledge that at some point he’s sending that shot to Kayden. I focus on the one positive confirmation he’s given me. Kayden is alive; be it by design or not, Kayden survived Gallo. But Neuville can’t let him live. Not after he defied Evil Eye. He’s setting Kayden up, planning to kill him, and no doubt thinks he has some plan to justify it and escape retaliation. That picture is bait and we’re headed to Paris. Where Sara is right now. But more so, in that moment, I remember everything. I know why I was blocking the location of the necklace, and my hiding place is both brilliant and almost sadistic on my part, when I think about it now.
It’s in his house. I hid it in his house, and some part of me couldn’t bear the idea of ever stepping foot in that place again.
eighteen
sara