He didn’t give me a chance to respond. Turning his back on me, he switched off the light, plummeting the room in darkness and with it my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. Did I offend him? Was I too brash? I reached out a hand to touch him and it froze mid-air because I had no fucking idea what to say. Fuck, I was just eighteen. This was all new to me. I hadn’t even fucked a girl to know the difference. To know whether I would’ve wanted to fuck a man. I withdrew my hand, biting my lip in contemplation. What if Lorenzo hated me tomorrow morning? What if he didn’t want to look at me? I clenched my fists at my sides and with one final glance at him, I stood and went back to my room, anxious what morning would bring.
****
“RAYDEN.”
I cracked open an eye, trying to make out the whispered voice. Then opened the other eye when Zena’s face hovered over mine. I jolted upright, knocking my brow against hers. “Ow,” we both mumbled while she stumbled back. I rubbed the aching spot, letting out a relieved exhale when I realized I was in my room and not Lorenzo’s. “What’s up?” I asked, squinting at the bedside clock. 11.00 a.m. “Fuck, I slept through the morning.”
“Rough night.” Her laugh lacked mirth before she said, “we need to go. Now.” Her eyes darting around as if someone was listening in on our conversation.
Then her words registered. “Go where?”
“Get the fuck out of here. Escape.” She looked at me, there was something different about her. Then I noticed her red-rimmed eyes. “What’s wrong, Zena, you look like you’ve been crying. Did someone hurt you?”
“It’s nothing.” She rubbed at her brow where we head-butted. “But we need to go now. I tripped the electricity, so all the power to the property has shut down which means there’s no cameras, no alarms.”
Gobsmacked, I stared at her. “How did you do that?”
“Not now.” She grabbed jeans, t-shirt and a jacket from the closet and threw it on the bed. “Get dressed. I have no idea how long it will take to get someone out here but we need to go.” She held up a bunch of keys.
I vaulted off the bed and exchanged my sweats for the jeans. “What’s that?”
“Car keys?”
I froze while slipping my t-shirt on and looked at her. “Whose?”
“Never mind. Let’s go.” She was already striding through the door.
Pulling on my sneakers, I didn’t bother lacing it up and raced after her. She was checking the hallways when I reached her. The unusual silence had me whispering, “where’s everyone?”
“Let’s go.”
I hurried after her toward the garage, still wondering where all the guards had disappeared to. There were at least five at any given time. When she slipped behind the wheel of a black Mustang, I stopped. “You want to take this car?” My stomach muscles tightened and I glanced around, expecting a surprise attack or worse, a bullet to the head.
“Would you get the fuck in, Ray, we’re kind of short on time.” Then as if she noticed my anxiety, she sighed. “Do you trust me?”
I looked at her for a moment then jumped into the passenger seat. It was only when the car roared through the gates and we were a couple of miles away with no gunfire following us, did I breathe. “How the fuck did you pull this off?”
She glanced at me. “Possession is nine tenths of law, Rayden.”
“Huh?”
She laughed, shifting her gaze back to the road. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Where was Lorenzo and Remo?” I asked, glancing out the back window.
“I drugged all of them.”
My head snapped to her. “Drugged who? How?” A sudden image of dead people lying all over Lorenzo’s house flashed through my mind. Then I thought of him and what he must’ve thought when he woke to find me gone from his bedroom.
“I found a bottle of sleeping tablets in the kitchen, I crushed it and dropped it in the coffee,” Zena’s words pulled me out my reflections, wide-eyed and shocked.
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“I couldn’t sleep the other night and asked Maria if she had anything. She didn’t notice me looking when she retrieved the tablets from the drawer.” She shrugged.
“That’s fucking genius but how did you know it would work on all of them?” Suddenly not convinced that Remo and Lorenzo would be affected by drugs, they were tough fuckers.
“I waited for Lorenzo and Remo to leave then offered coffee to the rest of the staff,” she said, confirming what I thought about those two.
