Page 41 of Dark Masquerade
Elli smiled grimly when she saw the knife in his hand.I fucking knew it,she thought.The sick, sick fuck. Aldo ran the tip down until it dipped into her navel, then she watched him turn to grin at the camera, raising the knife and making a stabbing motion repeatedly, only just stopping above her skin. She heard herself say, ‘A knife?’and Aldo raised his finger to his lips to the camera, then made a shocked face.“Of course not, Elli. Who do you think I am? It was my watch.”
So, he was planning to kill her to get back at Indio?Tough luck, you sick motherfucker,she thought as she dug around in his drawer and found a flash drive. She copied everything she could to it, then shut the computer down. She scrubbed her fingerprints from everything in the room and went back to the bedroom. Aldo was snoring loudly, and she stood over him for a moment, wondering if she had the courage to kill him. Because right now, she wanted to more than anything in the world.You. You are the reason Indio and I were apart. Your sick fantasies cost Yvetta her life—you won’t take mine.
She tucked the flash drive into the lining of her jacket, then lay down, keeping as far away from Aldo as she could. Soon, she would be in Paris with Indio and away from this man.
She fell into an uneasy sleep as dawn approached and woke a couple of hours later, feeling scratchy and queasy. Aldo was still asleep, and she had to smile—karma, bitch.She left him a note saying she had gone to work and, grabbing her jacket, she went to find Umberto to ask him to drive her to work.
After he dropped her off, Elli walked around to the back of the office and called Indio, telling him everything.
“You did what?” Indio was chuckling helplessly on the other end of the phone. “You drugged him? Elli … it’s funny, but if he’d figured it out …”
“He didn’t. He’s too arrogant to believe anyone would ever see through his sick plans. And it worked effectively, too. Motherfucker had been doing it to me for months—I’m assuming to keep me pliable—so it was time he got a taste of his own medicine.”
Indio wasn’t laughing five minutes later when Elli told him what he had found. “That does it,” he said. “You need to get out of that house now.”
“I’m at work, silly.”
Indio drew in a shaky breath. “I don’t care what you do, just …don’t got back there.”
Elli sighed. “Okay. Oh,fuck…”
“What?”
“My passport is there. Look, one more night and I’m gone, I promise. I’ll get Viv to say I have to be in Paris tomorrow night for an interview.”
“Good. I have an idea. A friend of mine, Benoit Vaux …I can arrange for him to be your ‘interviewee.’ You’ll interview him at his home, and I can come get you from there.”
A thrill ran through her. “I can’t wait.”
The day raced by and before long she was back at Aldo’s place, the place she’d never been able to call home—and now she knew why. Besides the obvious fact that Aldo was a sick freak, Indio was home to Elli. No one and no other place could ever be.
She got through dinner, giving a performance worthy of an Oscar, even as her nerves jittered. After dessert, Elli wrapped her arms around Aldo’s neck as he checked some emails and peeked over his shoulder. “Hey, baby.”
Aldo turned his head to smile at her. “You’re in a good mood.”
“I have good news …well, for me, anyway.”
He pulled her onto his lap and kissed her. Elli went along with it, smiling at him and not even giving a hint at the fierce hatred inside her. She nipped at his bottom lip with her teeth playfully, and Aldo grinned. “Tell me.”
“I am interviewing Benoit Vaux tomorrow.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Vaux? Wow, that’s a coup. He doesn’t like publicity normally.”
“Well, I’m a serious journalist, and he’s a serious man. So I’m flying to Paris for a few days to see how he works. He’s very kindly offered me one of his guest rooms to stay with him.”
“Really?” Aldo sounded skeptical. “So he goes from uber-privacy to having a journalistlivewith him?”
Elli thought quickly. “Okay, I admit, he’s a friend of Vivienne’s, and she’s calling in a favor. I have to pack …do you know where I left my passport?”
“In the nightstand, next to mine. I put them in there when we came back from Seattle.”
She kissed him and hopped off his lap. “Cool, thanks.”
She was almost at the door of the study when he called her back. “I might come with you,” he said thoughtfully. “I have a few contacts I wouldn’t mind catching up with.”
Fuck.Elli kept the dismay off her face and smiled. “Well, that would be lovely …except you should know, I’m grumpy when I’m trying to get a story down.”
Aldo laughed. “So stay out of your way. I got it. You weren’t grumpy when you interviewed me.”
