Falling for a Trained Killer

Chapter Five

I stir awake thinking I’m in my New York apartment. It was a nightmare. But the drapes are white. The ones in my apartment are blue. Why are the drapes white I ask myself? I’m still in my green dress from the evening before. It had not been a nightmare. I stand up immediately afraid. I have a headache that throbs like the worst hangover, but I don’t care. I have to get out of here.

Kidnapped, I have been kidnapped, I repeat again and again as I run to a sliding door. I feel so groggy. I had been drugged. With what, I have no idea. But my mouth is so dry and I am beyond thirsty. My feet are bare against dark wood floor panels. Where were my high heels? They took my shoes? The door was not locked. Why is it not locked? That is a surprise. Am I free? Did he just dump me somewhere? 

My mind races to the night before. The dark stranger: Marcus. The act of terror. The mangled faces of those who were killed flash back to me. I find myself in a bathroom not an exit. I stop gripping my stomach unable to hold in my fear and throw up. My vomit splashes against the white cream tiles of the bathroom. The convulsion of my stomach sends an uncontrolled shiver down my back and I collapse to my knees. Once it is all out, I force myself to stand again. 

I fumble across the room to another door. I move into a corridor of some mansion. I look left and right not knowing which way to run. I choose left and turn down a hallway into the last room behind two massive doors. Where is the way out? I find a window and see a large set of grounds. There is a spiral staircase in the distance, I make my way towards it nearly falling down the first steps as I lift my dress up from the polished wood. 

Without my high heels I could easily trip over the trim. Two steps from the bottom and my mistake is realized. I feel the fabric catch my left toe and am sent tumbling forward against the last mantelpiece of the staircase. I cry out as my shoulder makes contact with a bruising sensation and I realize I am on the ground with my ankle twisted definitely in the wrong direction. But the second that I take a breath the pain is almost immediately gone. I know it is the adrenalin. My body and my mind are sending signals to every speck of me that the pain does not matter right now. 

I make my way to the front door and feel dizzy in the light of the glaring sun forcing me to raise my hand against the blare. I blink to regain focus and continue to race down a perfectly mowed lawn. I am limping slightly from my ankle but I ignore it. Where am I? 

Muddy blurs of gardeners cross my sight. I can hear the chirping of birds. They watched me rush past them. But then my eyes fall upon a man with a gun around his shoulder. A rifle. He is wearing a very fine white cotton shirt and black jeans. I spot an earpiece that makes him look like a security guard. As he turns towards me, I can see he is built like a bouncer back in New York or a Rambo movie. His thighs are roughly the same size as my torso. He has a long brownish black beard but his head is shaven. The vessels are visibly pumping blood along the arch of his neck. This is a nightmare… wake up!

I tried to break past him towards a line of palm trees. My twisted ankle makes that impossible as it throbs and I trip. He swings his rifle to the side on a black leather holster. He caught me so quickly before I hit the ground. I feel his hand around my wrist forcing me towards him. I try to pull away but his grip is strong and I say nothing as he leads me towards the building I had broken out from. 

This guard is not hurting me though, which I thought strange. He could have just as easily thrown me over his shoulder. Instead, his singular hold on my wrist is strong enough that I cannot pull away but he is exhibiting no effort in dragging me with his strength either. My slight pull to get away from him is nothing against his power. I don’t stand a chance getting his hand off my arm. I look like nothing but a mouse caught by a cat. 

I look up at the sun shining down on a four-story Caribbean like mansion. My eyes fall to two hefty beige wooden doors with black iron cast fittings at the final stair of about twenty polished marble and stone steps. Those steps are difficult for me to climb but I am going to continue to ignore that pain completely. It is not what is important now. Where is this praetorian taking me? As we reach the top he opens one of the doors and draws me in. We cross several red diamond shape tiles and a long-carpeted hallway to the spiral stair case. In my attempt at running, I had not thought about looking at my surroundings. This mansion is the size of a castle and beautiful. 

The adrenalin is passing to fear now, and I am really beginning to feel my twisted ankle. The limp that I thought was a mere faulter before is becoming seriously painful and harder to avoid. This man, however, does not desist in dragging me. Four stories later, he opened two massive African Blackwood double doors to a library with a sitting area. 

Marcus is sitting casually behind a desk looking at a manila folder. An apple computer is situated in front of him. I can hear Puccini’s La Travata playing. I had seen the opera so many times, the piece was unmistakable. The bouncer pushed me in with a little nudge and shut the door behind the three of us. I can feel his hand on the naked upper part of my back in the dress and don’t like the sensation at all. 

“My property spans twenty miles in either direction in Cuba.” Marcus states not even looking up at me. “If you try to escape, my men will stop you. Is that understood?” 

I look at the door and then out the window trying to understand the situation. Cuba.

“You may go where you like on the grounds except my office.” He said and lifted his hand towards a single shut door with a combination lock on it of bronze numbers. “That area is off limits. Otherwise you may make yourself at home. As long as you obey my rules and do not attempt to leave then you will have no need to fear me.”

There was a moments silence as I say nothing only watch him blankly trying to decipher what was happening. I had been taken against my will because of what I saw him and that other criminal, James, do in New York. Why, why has he brought me here? Why was I still alive from the evening in New York when he killed everyone else? A million questions pound my head.

I can taste the bile wanting me to throw up in the back of my throat again. But I don’t. It did not make sense. He said that he thought I was beautiful the night before. So, he wanted me, did he? Well that was not going to happen. Was that why I was still alive? So that he could keep me as a s*x slave? Don’t throw up. Don’t show him how afraid you actually are, I demand of myself. 

“What is your name?” he asks finally addressing me from his desk with those light blue eyes and I have no intention of answering. 

I look back up at the stone of muscle which is the bald shaven man that brought me to this library. He is two feet taller than me, making him a daunting seven feet at least so I have to degree my neck that much just to see is features. I have never before seen a gun until yesterday in real life. Seeing one now in its clean metallic form hanging over a guards’ shoulder and the way that this rock wall held it so tightly gives fuel to my unease. 

As if Marcus saw that I was in pain he immediately stood up from the desk. 

“Jonah, did you hurt her?” Marcus questioned with an accusing look towards this dauting brick wall that had a name; Jonah. 

Jonah, who I would not have considered afraid of anyone given his potent presence, took a step back immediately and looked at me. His eyes frantically moved over every single one of my features. He was looking for an injury. 

“She is hurt.” Marcus said moving from around the side of the desk, and ignoring the dismay that Jonah was showing. 

Without even looking over my body to know what injury there was he kneeled down before me. I was taken aback, not at all expecting him too when he took hold of the lower part of my left leg. The feeling of his palm gently moving over the line of my calf in either of his hands was not something I had anticipated and immediately stepped back from him. I wanted to tell him to let me go, to f**k off, but I was just frozen and could not speak. He stood just as quickly as I pulled away. 

I hate that my eyes fell without my permission to the unbuttoned shirt he was wearing. It was charcoal black wool blended with red. Being short sleeved and left unbuttoned at the collar, it allowed it to be cool in the tropical weather. That left his muscular chest as far as the first hints of his cut abdomen to be visible. He had not only good taste in clothes, he knew exactly what to wear to look sexy as hell. I felt a rush of air to my lips and immediately forced my gaze away from him to his desk. Not directly looking at him again, I could observe that he was also in a set of dark brown pants. Strangely though, he wasn’t wearing any shoes. He was barefoot, I noted, as he turned back towards the desk. He did not seem to recognize my visual examination of what he really looked like. Damn he was handsome, and I have to ignore that. He is also a trained killer. Remember the night before, I chastised myself. 

“You have a twisted ankle.” He diagnosed. “I will have ice and some pain killers sent up to your room. It will take a few days to heal.” 

“Jonah, show her back to her room.” Marcus ordered in my continued silence and turned back to his paperwork. 

Jonah, the guard, takes my arm and opens the door again. I am very aware of that gun.

“Do you need help to walk?” The barricade of muscle asked me in a light tone like he was asking if I wanted a cup of coffee or a glass of water. 

He had a British accent as well. Not like Marcus from an educated background. No, more like south London. Maybe he was a gangster from there. I would not question it if he told me that he was a money collector or enforcer for an Irish mob or profession similar to that upbringing. 

He offered to help me walk. I thought I was a hostage here? What do they care if I am hurt or not? 

“I’m fine.” I whisper refusing for him to touch me again. 

“I will expect you at seven for dinner.” I could not help but glance back at Marcus’ demand that I attend dinner with him.

Not on your life, I think to myself, but don’t say it out loud. I pull free from Jonah and he doesn’t seem intent to take hold of my wrist again or to push me at all. Rather, he guides me, still limping, patiently down several long passageways, until I find the same room that had I woke up in. He allows me in and closed the door. I lock it immediately. Stupid, like a lock is going to stop one of them.