Page 11 of A Game So Reckless

I swallow and scrape damp hair away from my face. My mind is in ragged-edged pieces. I can’t seem to latch onto anything to make sense of this.

The only word left in my brain is that word from the dictionary, the one I stopped at years ago.Apparition.

The appearance of something shocking or unexpected…

Or a ghost.

A ghost who must have saved me. He had to have been real.

Every breath you breathe belongs to me now, pet.

I remember that much. And I remember the vicious drag of my body against his as my vision blinked away to black.

And then he was gone. And now I’m here.

Alone.

Not for long. A cheery-sounding ding, the same sound that heralded Darragh’s unexpected arrival –apparition– sounds from behind me. From the same elevator that I took up here with Dario, my papà and Curse come rushing out. Curse has a gun in his hand, his dark eyes sweeping the rooftop as Papà hurries straight to me.

If I expected some kind words from my dearest papà in the wake of me almost dying, I’m sorely mistaken. He grabs my shoulders and hauls me up into an unsteady standing position.

“What happened?” he hisses, giving me a small shake when I don’t answer immediately. “What the fuck did you do?”

“What… What didIdo?” I repeat raggedly, sure I must have heard him wrong.

“Rocco’s already checked. The service elevator’s lock code is in place. Cheap-ass security system apparently hasn’t been saving any footage for the last two months which nobody discovered until fuckingtoday. Nobody knows what the fuck just happened except for the fact that you were the only two up here.” His brown eyes harden. “And now, you’re the onlyoneup here.”

I try to process everything he’s just said.

No security footage.

The elevator’s code is back in place.

Darragh’s been planning this. Down to the most minute of details.

He knew where to go and when to get here.

He knew where Dario was.

I’d almost want to admire it if my papà weren’t looking at me like I’d just set a hundred million of his dollars on fire.

Why did Darragh alter what had to be one tight escape timeline just to stop and save my life?

Especially after what I witnessed?

“Rispondimi!Answer me,ragazza!” Papà gives me another shake, harder this time. “You’re the only one up here, meanwhile your fiancé’s fucking brains look like smashedgelo de meloneon the pavement! I’m about to have so manypoliziotticrawling up my ass that I’ll be shitting them out for days!”

I stare at him in stunned horror. What the hell does he think? That all five-foot-one of me somehow managed to push Dario over the glass barrier? Or that I was so shrill and terrible to him during our first meeting that the man dove headfirst over the edge just to escape the fate of taking me on as his bride?

Papà knows I didn’t want to marry Dario. Everyone with eyes and enough braincells to put two and two together knows it.

Testarda come un mulo.

Stubborn enough to kill a man just so that I don’t have to marry him?

Now, telling the truth feels out of the question. Ridiculous. Throwing Darragh’s name in my papà’s face when he’s somehow left not a single fucking trace of his presence behind would be absurd. I wouldn’t be surprised if Darragh even managed not to leave fingerprints in the elevator that he’s apparently managed to freeze back into its secure state. It would be like trying to blame some phantom from a fairytale.

Apparition.

---