Page 44 of Born a Queen

"Did you hurt yourself?" he demanded. She could hear him moving, probably toward the back of the house.

"No," she was quick to assure him. "I'm just a little stuck."

"Where are you? I don't see you anywhere."

He must be looking for her on the estate lawns. "I'm in the pool house." Well, under the pool house.

Seconds later the door to the pool house opened and she could hear Mateo's heavy footfalls. She called out to him, drawing him towards the hole. He looked over the edge and down at her upturned face. His features conveyed a myriad of emotions. Bewilderment, annoyance, anger, concern. He shuttered his expression almost immediately. She wondered which emotion he decided to settle on.

"Did you fall in?" He knew better, though she supposed he was giving her the benefit of the doubt.

She sighed and thought about lying, but decided truth was better. "No, I was out for a walk and thought I would explore."

"Do you always move shelves and lift trapdoors when you're exploring?" He crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned against the shelf.

"Are you going to get me out of here, or what?" she demanded, frowning up at him.

He actually seemed to think about it, the bastard. Finally, he said, "I should leave you down there. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to keep an eye on you."

He moved away from the hole, his footfalls indicating that he was leaving the pool house.

"Hey! Where’re you going?" she asked, worried he was actually abandoning her in the hole.

A few minutes later he returned with a ladder and a few minutes after that Raina was free of the bunker. She felt much better stepping out from the pool house and into the warm Florida sunlight. She ran her hands down her goose pimpled arms. As they walked toward the house, Raina glanced at Mateo.

"What are you going to do about the underground bunker?" she asked curiously.

"Leave it. It was put there for a reason, a good one."

Raina shivered. The hole was put there specifically for the inhabitants of the mansion to escape to if ever the need should arise. She felt uneasy at the thought that it had been used in the past and could still be used in the future. It was eye-opening to comprehend that now that she was firmly part of Mateo's life, she was also part of the mafia life, which could put her in danger. She kept having these moments of realization. Not like a gradual acclimatization to her new reality, but like these sledgehammer moments. It was disconcerting.

"Sure, do whatever you want with the hole in the ground. But you want might want to clear the body out first."

For a moment Mateo said nothing, then the import of her words sank in and he looked at her incredulously. "There's a dead person in there?"

She grinned at him, opened the glass sliding doors and went inside.

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