Knight (Unfinished Hero #1)(7)

And still, I found my head tipping down so I could look at my feet. Feet that were walking me toward the elevator.

Knight shifted his arm high and I ducked under it to enter and he entered after me.

The doors started closing as he tagged the button B2.

I stared at the doors.

Yes. Sheer lunacy.

“You’re called?”

My neck twisted and my eyes moved up to his to see his looking at down me.

“What?” I asked.

“Name, babe.”

“Anya.”

He stared at me.

Then he asked, “Anya?”

“Anya,” I confirmed.

“Anya,” he repeated and I nodded. “And you think my name’s unusual?”

“Yes, I’ve never met anyone named Knight,” I informed him.

“And I’ve never met anyone named Anya,” he informed me. “What is that?”

“What is what?”

“Your name.”

“It’s a family name. As in, my grandmother’s.”

“Before that,” he stated.

“It was her grandmother’s,” I shared.

“And before that,” he pushed then explained, “Origins.”

“Russian,” I told him.

“You’re Russian?” he asked.

“My grandmother was,” I answered.

“She grow up here?” he asked.

“No, she grew up in St. Petersburg when it was called Leningrad. But she died here.”

His head cocked slightly to the side but his face remained impassive. “Died?”

I nodded. “Seventeen years ago.”

“Babe, what are you? Twenty-three? Four?”

“Seven.”

His head righted. “Twenty-seven?” He sounded like he didn’t believe me.

“Yes, twenty-seven.”

He studied me but didn’t give anything away.

Then he stated, “Still, she had to be young.”

“Liver failure. She was Russian as in, from Russia. She drank vodka like it was water and that’s not a stereotype. That’s very real.”

And it was. And she passed it down to my aunt, unfortunately.

He looked to the doors, muttering, “That’s the f**kin’ truth.”

I kept my eyes to his profile and asked, “Are you Russian?”

The doors opened and his hand came to me, not to my upper arm this time, to my elbow and he propelled me out, answering, “Fuck no.”

His answer was emphatic and therefore insulting since I was half Russian but I didn’t call him on this. I also wondered at his knowledge of the Russia vodka drinking habit but I didn’t ask about it. I simply walked with him through the brightly lit, cement underground parking garage.

He took me to a sleek, shining, low-slung, gunmetal gray sports car the like I’d never seen. It was so clean, it was gleaming and it looked like it had been driven there direct the from the showroom floor. I had no idea what it was and the only clue was on the back it had the word “Vantage”. I’d never heard of a make or model named “Vantage”. All I knew was, like his bedroom, apartment and clothes, it was fabulous.

He moved me to the passenger side door and opened it for me.

“What kind of car is this?” I asked, aiming my behind to the seat.

“Aston Martin,” he muttered, eyes to my feet that I was swinging in and that was all he said before I cleared the door and he threw it to.

Aston Martin. I wasn’t sure but I thought some James Bond or another or several of them drove Aston Martins.

Wow.

I buckled up and looked around, experiencing the feel that, like everything that had anything to do with Knight, was pure opulence.

He got in, didn’t buckle up but started the car and it purred all around us.

Yep, pure opulence.

Then he wrapped an arm around my seat, twisted around and looked back to reverse. Once out, he straightened, put the car in gear and away we went.

Fast.

Crap.

We were at the second level of parking under the building and I was reminded of one of my few (but I had them) irrational fears and that was I didn’t like underground parking. Sure, there were huge cement pillars I knew someone with a great deal of schooling designed to hold up the weight of the big building. But all I could think was, if that dude was drunk one day at work, screwed up and the building came tumbling down, there was no hope for me. It didn’t help that Knight had a high performance vehicle that he clearly liked to explore the boundaries of its functionality so now he was scaring me in a different way.

He hit a button as we were speeding up the ramp that would take us to freedom and luckily slowed for the gridded gate that kept the riffraff out to slide up then we were out of the danger zone and idling at the entrance to the street.

I took a breath.

Knight called, “Babe.”

I looked at him to see he was looking at me or, more accurately, looking at my hand that had a death grip on the armrest of the door.

Then his eyes came to me and he declared, “One, been drivin’ since I was twelve. I know what I’m doin’ so you can quit tryin’ to fuse with the car, relax and enjoy it. Two, I kinda gotta know where I’m goin’.”

“You’ve been driving since you were twelve?” I asked.