as on life support for heart and liver failure, making Jesse the unofficial first in line. His brother, a Toro, had been murdered. He was expected to thoroughly even the score, no matter the cost.
Now, it was just a matter of who would kill who first.
“The people downstairs had every intention of taking me and Nate tonight. They were here to bring us to Jesse, so we could spend our last days in the same warehouse that Gavin did.”
I gripped the edge of the bed, feeling as if the room were whipping in circles around me. “Fresh collateral…” I slowly realized what the man downstairs referred to.
“Gavin was my only collateral before.”
My fingers curled around my neck, my pulse flaring under my palm. The people downstairs had assumed I was someone close to Abram. Someone he might love the way he did Gavin. Suddenly, my heart was ramming into my chest, slamming against my ribs as if trying to get out. “So then,” I could hardly speak, “if they can’t get you again, they’ll come after me?”
Abram stood before me now, holding my face in his strong hands. “I would never let it happen, Isla. Jesse Toro will never find out about you. Nate is taking care of the three downstairs. They won’t be giving him any information.”
His words relieved me but I was still shaking. “What now, Abram?” My desperate whisper hung in the air. He knelt at my feet and pulled my face close to his, pressing a kiss to my forehead, right by my scar.
“I’m sorry, Isla,” he murmured softly. “Everything’s going to change again.”
chapter twenty
We were all displaced now. With both Nate and Abram disappearing for who knows how long, the underground nights at the top of the Monarch would be “shut down indefinitely” and we were all to move out of our suites. We were not to return to the Monarch, not even as guests, and were given a second confidentiality agreement to sign.
I, however, had an even stricter set of rules to follow.
Shortly after Abram had explained everything about Gavin and the Toros, Nate had called. The conversation lasted all of a second before Abram hung up and vanished from the penthouse. He didn’t return. I spent the next two days with his handlers, who preferred I stay in one room. “We’ll have a solution shortly. Just stay patient,” they told me. But it was impossible. All I could do was sit in bed and wonder what kind of danger Abram was actively pursuing. I wondered if he was in the city. If he had gotten Jesse Toro yet. It felt like a full week had passed when a man with glasses, whom I’d never seen before, finally came into my room to inform me of my new arrangements.
I would be starting work at a new hotel – Rhode and several of the other bartenders would be joining me. Unlike them, I was being given an apartment to live in. It was a doorman building in Gramercy Park, with two bedrooms so I could choose to live with Rhode if I wished. I was to promise to share nothing of what I knew or had seen. If any of my friends or coworkers pressed for information about the closing of the top of the Monarch, I would tell them I had simply had a “brief fling with Mr. Lenox” and that he had given me no information about his personal affairs.
“We would encourage you to get as quickly acclimated as possible. These arrangements can be permanent if you want them to be, which I’m sure you’ll see no reason not to, as the job is quite stable and the apartment very comfortable. You should absolutely get as quickly immersed as possible.”
It was bizarre. I was being given a luxury apartment and being told to simply carry on. As if those two notions were so easy to process.
“And rest assured, if you ever feel nervous or threatened, you can call this number,” the man handed over a card. “But I promise you have nothing to worry about.”
One of Abram’s handlers set two bags down. Judging from my hairbrush tucked into the side pocket, my things were packed in there. I wasn’t sure who to direct my question to but I asked the man with the glasses. “Where is Abram? Is he okay?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know and if I did, I couldn’t tell you. But I’m confident, Miss Maran, that he is okay.”
“I…” I shook my head. “How am I supposed to…” My voice trailed off. How am I supposed to be at peace? That was my question but it sounded stupid anywhere else but inside my head. But I truly wondered how I’d be able to start my new job, sit on my new couch or wake up in my new bed while unsure if Abram was in New York, overseas, dead or alive. I wouldn’t know unless the news one night played a story about his murder. And that would only be if his body was found. It felt as if Abram had left me unraveled – completely undone then sewn back up only halfway, forced to walk around like nothing was wrong despite having no shred of closure whatsoever.
A regular moving company helped me settle into my new apartment. None of Abram’s handlers – not even his car – took me there. I’d hailed a yellow cab on my own, just a normal girl again, with no connection to the man being hunted by Jesse Toro. I had a real apartment, a job on the books and neighbors who were regular, everyday people.
Rhode moved in with me on the fourth day. Over a bottle of red, perched in front of the TV on the couch, I let myself tell her about my “affair” with Abram – the parts that were of no danger to divulge. I tried to pretend that this was just some girls’ night, that Abram Lenox was just a man I’d slept with a couple times. Rhode’s gasps and squeals and hilarious reactions almost got me there.
But in the end, once my wild, breathless story finished, I could feel my heart still sinking. Worry weighed it down to my stomach and I wondered when, if ever, I could forget Abram Lenox.
~
“So, you’re cocktail waitresses at Muse Room?” The blonde one, still in his work clothes, wiggled suggestive eyebrows at Rhode. “Isn’t that the place where the girls walk around in like, corsets and garters?”
Handing him another beer, Rhode giggled. “Thank God, no. This is a new location that just opened up inside The Victorian and we get to wear normal cocktail dresses.”
“But normal cocktail dresses are still pretty short so consider us there,” laughed the one named Travis.
In our first week at the apartment, we’d quickly learned that we lived across the hall from a four-bedroom of twenty-somethings who worked in finance. They were what Rhode called a “jackpot of bros.” “They get so much heat but underneath it all, everyone loves a bro,” she said. “I don’t know about you but I love overgrown, all-American frat boys who are weirdly good at a bunch of useless shit like beer pong.”
That did make me laugh. So I agreed to invite a few of them over one day after work. Rhode took an instant liking to Travis, so I was stuck talking to the blondish-red-haired one, who was more annoying than boyish and the less attractive one of the two, who kept referring to his other roommates as “fuckin’ boneheads.” Because of him, I wound up excusing myself to get more beer at the deli, insisting that he didn’t have to come with me.
Alone downstairs, I went for a walk. Knowing Rhode, she’d be making out with Travis in no time, forcing the annoying kid to go home and giving me all the time in the world to be alone with my thoughts. So strolling across town with just my keys, I let the warm summer breeze through my hair. Every once in awhile, a strong gust would send my silky skirt whipping through the air, its floral print a dash of multicolor dancing in front of my eyes. It reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on for a couple blocks.