“Are you hurt?”
His question caught me off guard with how quickly he’d asked it. He had been so invested in listening to that phone call for the whole ride that I felt like a bystander, not a passenger with him.
“What?”
“Did those men hurt you?” he asked.
Without disturbing Maisie as she slept on my lap, I lifted my hand and looked at that scrape on my palm. “No, not really.” I had fallen and my knees and hands were a little scraped up, but that wasn’t anything to be concerned about. Nothing lasting, at least. What would last was the odd sensation of being cared for. No one asked me if I was okay or tired or hurt. As a single mother, it was just me taking care of Maisie. No one was there to ask me how I was doing, and the fact that he had mattered.
He nodded once, as if my answer satisfied him.
“I have arranged for a doctor to check on you, just in case. Both of you.”
“A doctor?”
Another nod.
He was serious. “A private doctor? Who does house calls?”
Just how rich was he?
“Adrenaline can sometimes numb you,” he replied instead of answering me. “If you were harmed from the incident outside your building, I want to make sure that you can recover.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s good.” I shook my head, so confused. “And thank you. But I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“It’s nothing.”
I gritted my teeth.Hewas deciding what was necessary now? He deprived me of following up on that point because he got out of the car.
I scooted over carefully, following him out, careful not to wake up Maisie. I’d be damned if he had the last word like that. As soon as I stood in the heated garage and saw that many other cars were parked, I had a chance to run.
I could take off now after feeling like I’d been kidnapped, coerced into coming with him. Yet, under his patient and tense watch, I knew that if I ran, he would follow me and find me again.
“This way,” he said, gesturing for me to go first.
After a few seconds of hesitation to continue to follow him, he indicated for me to go toward a door. Much like how it seemed like I was in another world in his expensive car, I struggled to adjust to being here. At this well-maintained and private entrance to a building in the city. The lack of broken lights. No litter or garbage floating around at the edge where the wall and the pavement. Solicitors didn’t hang out at the door, begging for handouts. This was a private building where the wealthy live, the VIPs.
The two suited men who had shown up in my apartment, clearly with him, and coming at his beck and call, didn’t enter the elevator with us.
I stood across from Sergei as the doors slid shut, trying and failing to piece together how I had gotten to this position.
Wincing under the strain of holding Maisie for so long, I shifted on my feet.
“Let me help.” He extended his arms, offering to hold my daughter.
It would’ve been nice, but I couldn’t trust him that far yet. Tightening my arms around her, I shook my head slightly and gave him a stony look.
It was one thing for him to order me to come home with him. But I wasn’t handing her over.
He didn’t push. He didn’t make an expression like my refusal to obey bothered him. Before either of us could say anything more, the doors opened to what seemed to be a penthouse level.
Although it was lacking in color and character, obviously a man’s space, I knew that I was entering a residence I would never beable to afford. Surrounded by state-of-the-art appliances and all the artwork and luxurious furniture, I felt like I was trespassing.
With just this foyer space elegant with the mobile flooring under my feet and in the chandelier hanging overhead, I realized that this place was larger than all the square footage of my apartment.
“You can take the guest room here,” he said, speaking quietly so as not to wake Maisie.
Guest room?
