Page 52 of Wicked Intentions (Wicked Games 3)
Fourteen
Ryan
Just when I’m about to rip off all her clothes, Mariana breaks the kiss and looks away, embarrassed. “Um. I have to…before we…I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I really don’t care if you shaved your legs or not, sweetheart.”
“I have to pee!”
“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” I sit up, help her sit up, and grin at her, because she’s wearing a look like she can’t decide whether or not to smack me or start kissing me again.
Then I catch sight of her neck, mottled with bruises above the collar of the hideous turd-colored sweater she’s wearing, and my grin dies a quick death.
Whoever the bastard is that did that to her, he’s gonna have to answer to me.
And then he’s gonna wish he’d never been born.
“It looks worse than it is,” she mutters, covering her throat with her hand. Before I can say anything, she goes into to the bathroom and closes the door. The water turns on. I picture her standing at the mirror looking at her bruised neck with those big, beautiful eyes, and I want to break all the furniture in the room with my bare hands.
I blow out a hard breath and stand, turning on the bedside lamp. I can’t stay in one place, so I start to pace. I remove my leather jacket, toss it onto a chair, and listen to the sound of the toilet flushing.
There’s nowhere I can run. They’ll find me. It would be a death sentence for someone I love.
Whatever shit she’s mixed up in, it’s bad. And if it’s really Cosa Nostra, it’s pretty much the worst it could be. The real Italian Mafia makes The Sopranos look like Sesame Street.
Thinking about it makes me antsy. I go to the sliding-glass door of the balcony and step out into the cool, misty night. The fresh air is bracing. Even at this hour, the sounds of taxis honking and people talking drift up from the street below. Like New York, London is a city that never sleeps.
I don’t know how long I stand there looking out at the city lights, but at some point it occurs to me that Mariana is taking a really long time to pee.
I whirl around and stare at the closed bathroom door. I’m across the room in a few seconds, knocking on it.
“Angel? You okay in there?”
No response.
Fuck.
I try the door handle. Locked. “Mariana?”
Nothing.
“Okay. You wanna do this the hard way? We’re doin’ it the hard way.” I step back, wind up, and give the door a brutal kick.
It splinters off its hinges and flies open, crashing to the tiled floor with an echoing boom. I stride into the bathroom, my head whipping from side to side, already knowing what I’ll find.
Or, more correctly, what I won’t find.
“This fuckin’ broad,” I mutter, staring at the open window above the bathtub. It’s the old-fashioned, claw kind, made of cast iron, heavy as a cement coffin. Around one of the feet is tied the corner of a bedsheet.
The rest of the bedsheet hangs out the window.
I rush to the tub, jump in, and lean over the windowsill. Sheets dangle all the way to the manicured boxwood shrubs planted along the side of the building two stories below. An elderly couple with a Corgi on a leash are staring up at me from the sidewalk. The dog is staring at me, too.
The man’s voice drifts up on a current of cool air. “Lost something, have you, mate?”
His wife titters. I resist the urge to flip them off.
Mariana is nowhere to be seen.
