Danika's POV
"Save me," were the first words that fell out of my lips. I couldn't understand it. This man was everything that I'd been running from for the last seventeen years of my life, yet I reached out to him, my eyes seeking, my lips pleading.
"What did you see?"
I made to shake my head, and then I halted. He knew. I could tell by how he narrowed his gaze, waiting.
The rain bit hard against my skin, but it didn't matter to any of the men staring back at me, imposing even in the dark.
"What did you see?" he asked again, pronouncing each word slowly, yet with a chilling calm.
I should be scared of him. Hell, that was the rational thing to do. Yet, I didn't pull back when he took slow strides forward, until he stopped in front of me. He was drenched now, and his curly hair was plastered to the sides of his face.
Yet, he looked like the devil himself, walking in the middle of hell. Appealing in the way my foster mother used to warn me about.
I pulled my gaze away from his stern expression, my eyes finding the body on the ground.
"You killed him," I whispered.
"I did." The stranger nodded. He had blue eyes that seemed to read into my soul. "Yet, you ask me to save you."
"You won't kill me." I didn't know why or how I was so certain, but I knew it deep down.
"Don't be too sure about that, Piccolina," he drawls, stooping low enough to take one limp strand of hair in his hands. "Anything that comes to me gets broken. I have a track record of that."
"That's not true." I shook my head slightly, shivering when he tucked the strand behind my ear. And it had nothing to do with the rain.
"The number one rule you need to learn in this world, Piccolina, is that nothing is as it seems. Never forget that."
He placed one hand under my knees and the other on my neck, lifting me off the floor so easily, like I only weighed a pillow.
When we got back onto the road, it was devoid of any traffic, the rain sending even the partygoers back into the clubs. The stranger didn't stop until we got to his car, a nondescript black Jeep that looked too high to get into on my own.
The stranger didn't put me on my feet, finding a way to get the door open without moving me. I felt the warmth hit when I was seated, and he leaned in to strap the seat belt around me. I found myself holding my breath, scared of breathing him in.
I knew he smelled of pines and the earth, and that combination made me heady for some reason.
He didn't say a word until he pulled onto the road.
"Where are you taking me?" I muttered. "And where are your men?"
"You should learn to speak less, too," he replied, turning the wheel with one hand. He raked through his hair with his free hand and brushed some droplets of water from his shoulders.
"Here," I whispered, leaning into him. "Let me help you."
He might have frozen, but at the same time, it might have been a figment of my imagination. Still, I didn't feel him move as I used my hand to slowly swat the water away. Unconsciously, I took one short whiff, and I felt it roll in waves around my body.
"Piccolina," he suddenly groans, a husky tone slipping out of his lips. "Don't do that."
"Do what?" I asked, leaning back into my seat.
He regards me from the corner of his eye. "Don't touch me."
"Why do you call me Piccolina? What does it mean?"
"Danika." It was the first time he said my name that night, and surprise racked through me. He knew me. The stranger knew me.
"How did you…"
"Remember the second rule?"
The stranger increased the speed, and I found myself clutching on to anything I could find. He drove like a maniac, filling the previous silence of the car with his roaring engine for the next ten minutes, until we arrived at a huge villa in the heart of the city.
I undid the seatbelt and got out, waiting for him to walk around to join me.
"Where is this place?" I murmured, feeding my eyes. It looked like a fortress, but at the same time, a prison. The walls were high and thick, and there was a biometric sensor at the gates that he had to scan through before the iron sprung open.
"This way." He led me through a path with long lines of trees on both sides. I turned back to look at the gates, but I couldn't find them anymore. The trees were planted in a way that they acted as a barrier to whatever happened beyond them.
And that was no unintentional planting.
"Do you live here?" I asked, barely able to keep up with his long strides.
"I don't."
"Who lives here then?"
"You will, from tonight."
I didn't understand what he meant by that, but before I could get another question out, we had broken out of the path into a much wider space, and a building sat in the middle. It was shaped like a dome, and I could see lights twinkling from the very top and the bottom.
"Do you like it?"
I take it in for a second longer, the contrast of the darkness and solemnity of the night screaming at me. It felt like I was forgetting something important, like my brain was nudging me in a direction that I couldn't follow.
The door opened suddenly, and the last face I expected to see strode out. My legs grew weak, and my eyes threatened to give up on me, but nobody seemed to notice as the stranger headed towards him and patted him affectionately on his shoulders.
"I have found your wife, Nik."