CHAPTER 17
Ella
I’m enjoying running. It’s almost as thrilling as cardio, in terms of endorphin release. Once I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I started to feel a very specific kind of thrill. The first time I ran, I felt so much guilt. This time it is more like a game, and there is no reason to feel bad. Aiden gave me permission, and I know that at any moment, any of the three of them could show up.
I book a flight to South Korea. I stay in a luxurious Seoul hotel. I indulge myself in all manner of Korean food, attend a dance class at a studio, and watch tourists trail back and forth from the DMZ.
Then I fly to Thailand, lie on a beach in an archipelago so beautiful and so complex I feel as though I could be lost here forever. There are a lot of places on this planet where you could truly disappear, I think. They say it can’t be done, but a fistful of American dollars in a remote enough location and I have a feeling I could become nobody at all.
When I get tired of enjoying myself on beaches and indulging in rich cultural experiences, I go to London for some drizzle and stone. It is there, after a cream tea, that I feel a gun pressed into the small of my back as I am cleanly ushered into a black cab.
“Come with us, please,” an Englishman says.
I do as I am told, because I obviously have very little choice. I could gamble on them not shooting me dead on the street, but these days that seems to be less of an outlandish proposition than it used to be.
I don’t recognize the men who get into the cab with me. There are four of them. One driver, obviously not really a cab driver, one passenger in the front, and two at either side of me in the back. They’ve all got big, broad, heavyset builds.
I wonder if Aiden changed his mind and sent some freelancers after me. I kind of doubt it. But it’s not something I’d entirely put past Leo. He’s smart enough to outsource some hunting. Maybe this is his idea of pageantry. Or maybe he wants vengeance for the cabin incident. He likes to forget that he stuffed me in a car trunk for quite some time before I cuffed him and left him to sober up.
We go to a hotel in a big, impressive building surrounded by other big, impressive buildings. Clearly we are in the part of the city where people have generational wealth. I am ushered indoors to a place that looks like a cross between a hotel and an office. There’s a clinical tidiness to it that makes me wildly uncomfortable, on top of being kidnapped by armed men. It also smells like fish and cucumbers, but that’s a secondary issue.
“Upstairs, please,” one of the men with a gun says. They’re all wearing pretty nice wool coats and scarves. I wonder if they’remilitary of some kind. Either ex, or wannabe, would be my guess. More likely ex, because they’re quite disciplined. They’ve been stoic and silent this whole time apart from asking me to get in the car and asking me to go up the stairs.
We reach a door with a notably blank name plate. It’s very odd. Someone went to the trouble to screw a brass plaque there, but not to put anything on it. How mysterious.
The guy I am with taps on the door three times.
“Send her in.”
The man opens the door for me and ushers me into the room. I find a typically English space waiting for me. Lots of fancy chairs. The sort of thing BP kept around in some of the spaces when he wanted to seem fancy.
Okay. This is really feeling like it could be Leo’s work.
But it’s not Leo who I find waiting for me. It’s not someone I know at all. He has a mustache like someone out of the 1950s, and fine brown hair styled the same way. He has muddy brown eyes, and the smooth skin of a man who has had facial work done. He’s wearing a three-piece suit with a tweed vest, and when he speaks it’s with an English accent.
“Who are you?” I ask the question before he can give me whatever spiel he was planning on giving me.
“My name is Eric Mandeville,” he says. I am almost entirely sure that is not his name. “And I have some questions for you regarding the Levin boys.”
Ah, goddammit. I can’t escape this situation. All the money in the world is not enough to get away from it. Obviously I’ve been followed by more than Leo and Luke and Aiden. They’re notgoing to be happy when they find out about this. This is going to really piss them off.
“I don’t know anything about them. At least, nothing about the ones who are still alive.”
He smirks quietly in a way I find grotesque.
“That’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
I reply with a question.
“Why were you fucking Aiden Levin on an island in New Zealand?”
Well, that’s a bold and rather rude question.
“Because New Zealand is made up of only islands. If you’re going to fuck someone, you have to do it on an island,” I deadpan.
In this moment, I really miss Ethel. Ethel would solve this by biting him. I wish I hadn’t run away. I thought there was somewhere I could go that all of this would melt away. They’re getting worse.
