Innocence (Tales of Olympus #1)(75)

“Okey-dokey,” she whispered. She reached up her hand and he clasped it firmly.

“Tomorrow I’ll have another stylist come in,” he said as he swiftly walked to the front door, dragging her along with him.

Well he was full of surprises today. “Where are we going?”

“To the theater. But right now we’re going home.”





Twenty-Three





The driver turned off the boulevard of respectable brownstones into a private drive and radioed ahead for the caretaker to open the iron gates. A twenty-foot-tall railing ran all around the property perimeter, along with a thick evergreen hedge. It hid the grounds from the view of the street, and in the forested areas, delineated the property woods from the rest of the park.

Maybe Marcus hadn’t liked her cease-fire idea after all and he’d brought her out here to kill her and bury her in the woods.

But no, the step forward they’d seem to take back at Paulie’s had felt real enough.

Even now, while Marcus wasn’t talking, just listening to music like normal, his hand was still outstretched towards hers, their fingers interlocking.

So she dared to ask, “Where exactly are we going? I thought you said we were going home.”

“We are. To the Estate.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Cora pressed. “The Estate?”

Marcus let out a sigh, but it wasn’t like she’d ever seen this place before and curiosity was natural. “The Estate is the last layover from the old Ubeli family wealth. Twenty acres of prime real estate, still within city limits. It backs up to the larger Park, which spans many more blocks.”

“An oasis in the center of the city.”

Marcus nodded.

“But hardly a welcoming place, as you can see.” He gestured a hand towards the window.

And Cora got what he meant. As the car crept down the winding drive, she tried to picture a young Marcus running around the manicured lawns of the Estate. Even during the day, the shadows lay long under the ancient trees.

No wonder Marcus now preferred a modern penthouse to the dark Estate.

The Estate house itself loomed three stories over a paved forecourt. Built of stone, she’d bet the house could host twenty guests at a time overnight, and entertain a few hundred in the long ballroom. Tonight someone left the light on in one room upstairs. The rest of the windows were cold and grey, staring at the surrounding forest.

It all had a very Gothic feel. And taking a second glance at the Estate architecture itself, she finally saw it for what it was: a fortress, built by the elder Ubeli to protect his family during a war.

Two more cars pulled into the drive. Cora glanced out the cold windows nervously as Sharo and a few other men she recognized as Shades exited the black sedans in the drive.

“Why did we come here?” Cora asked as Sharo approached the house and opened the lock. Several Shades from the car behind him went inside first, no doubt to doublecheck the house for security purposes. Marcus had seemed particularly on edge lately and Cora had noticed more Shades around than usual.

“You said you wanted a cease-fire. And as my wife, you should be familiar with my family Estate. This is where I usually stay, especially on the weekends when I need a break from city life.”

He was bringing her in. Letting her see all of him.

“My childhood was a very happy one here. Until it wasn’t.”

“Your sister,” Cora whispered. “How old were you when she died?”

“Sixteen.”

Cora watched the way the vein in his throat flexed as he swallowed and she’d bet anything in the world he blamed himself for his sister’s death. But still, sixteen? He’d been a boy who’d already lost his parents, all alone in the world.

“I bet she was wonderful.”

Marcus jerked his head once up and down and then turned away. “Come on, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

It was only about nine o’clock and while yes, the day had come with a certain amount of exhaustion, being in Marcus’s most intimate space had adrenaline shooting like crazy through Cora.

Did he bring his girls here often? To impress them with his family’s wealth? Somehow she doubted that.

Why hadn’t he ever brought her here before?

No doubt tying up a captive and tossing her in the basement here would incur less risk than doing it at the top of one of the most in demand downtown hotels.

What if everything he said in the restaurant was just a lie to get her out here for exactly that purpose?

Cora’s hands trembled as she reached for the seat handle but the driver was already there, opening it from the other side. Marcus came around as well, offering a hand down to her. There was nothing else to do other than take it. The sharp points of her heels dug into the grass as she stood.

“Maybe I should have changed back into my sneakers I wore at the shelter,” she murmured quietly.

“Don’t worry. There’s a stone path right up here.”

“Oh. Okay,” Cora said.

Marcus held her arm as they walked the narrow flagstone path from the drive to the door where Sharo was already waiting for them. Apparently the Shades’ security check of the house had shown nothing awry and Sharo gestured them inside.

“We’d like the residence to ourselves for the evening,” Marcus said and Sharo nodded.