Page 8 of Ivory Sins
“That's okay,” he says, tucking a hand into the pocket of his jeans pants. His eyes rove over me and he seems to flirt with me. “You look even more stunning now than you did back then in college.”
“Wait, you know me from college?”
“Yeah,” he says, his lips curling into a smile. “I know a lot about what you did back then.” His tone is casual, even and mild, but the sinister implications of his seemingly harmless statement are not lost on me.
My heart skips a beat and my smile fades away as I stare at him, wondering what exactly he means.
He says nothing else, but I can feel the tension growing between us and my chest is constricting. He keeps his smile, playing lost, but I’d bet that he knew exactly what he said.
Luckily, Marco’s timing is impeccable, and he intervenes at the perfect time.
“Uh, I was just catching up with an old friend,” the man answers, breaking eye contact to look at Marco.
Marco's gaze intensifies, but the man doesn't flinch, unfazed by the glare in Marco's eyes.
He looks back at me and adds, “Red really was your color back then, wasn't it?”
I freeze on the spot, my heart pounding like a drum in my chest. I try to speak, but I can't seem to find the right words. I'm numb, physically and mentally.
“Well.” He exhales sharply. “I'll see you around, Livvy-loo.” He walks away, mingling with the crowd.
My heart sinks into my stomach and I swing into having a full-blown panic attack, my body almost dropping to the floor.
“Ollie!” Marco rushes to catch me before my knees hit the ground. “Are you okay?” he asks, his tone laced with concern and urgency.
“I'm fine,” I say, struggling back to my feet, leaning against him for support.
“You don't look fine,” he says, trying to catch my eyes. “Ollie, who was that?”
“I don't know,” I reply honestly, my chest rising and falling.
Whoever he was, he called me Livvy-loo, a name that only people close to me back in college called me.
This man knew too much, and that can't be a coincidence.
Fuck.
5
Marco
Ithoughtthestrangerfromthe street looked really familiar. I recognized him from somewhere, but I wasn't sure where—well, not until I did a little digging.
Tracking people is a sort of my thing, and I'm pretty good at it. Concerned about whatever he said to Olivia that put the fear of God into her, I had to find that asshole.
He disappeared into the crowd that day, and I couldn't go after him because Olivia was already having a panic attack. I've asked her repeatedly what he said that had her all spooked, but she's yet to give me a straight answer.
I can't sit back, waiting for her to be honest about it.
There was something off about him, and his weird statement,“Red really was your color back then, wasn't it?”echoes in my mind even till now.
So, I get to work, decide to find that asshole and find out for myself what the hell is going on.
It took a while, but after having my guys pull up the camera footage from outside the coffee shop on the day of the encounter, I could track him.
My tech guy zooms in on the man and runs a facial recognition scan on him. After a while, we find a match.
The man's name is Hunter Calderon.
