Denial (Careless Whispers #1)(14)

“I’m what?” he presses.

“I know there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

He reaches for me, pulling me to him, his hand nestling intimately over the bare skin under my gown and above my backside. “Please don’t do this,” he pleads, his gentle tone defying the tension wafting off of him. “I know you’re scared and confused, but don’t start doubting me now. I am not your enemy, Ella.”

The way he’s holding me, the way he says my name, weakens my knees and does funny things to my belly, which only drives me to challenge him. “Prove it. Tell me how we know each other.”

He walks me backward until I hit the wall, pressing me against it, his hands settling on either side of my face, his arms caging me. “We don’t have time for this right now,” he says, his gentle tone now hard with demand, but that spicy vanilla scent of him reminds me of why I need the answers he’s not giving me.

“Make time, Kayden.”

“Tell that to Gallo, who, according to my calculations, will be back here with that fingerprint kit in thirty minutes. If we let him run your prints, Niccolo will find you, even if that requires torturing or killing Gallo to connect the dots to that police report and us.”

My eyes go wide. “What? No. No. He wouldn’t—”

“He’s a mobster, sweetheart. People say he cut his own heart out when he was born, while his mother watched.”

My hand goes to my throat. “I can do without the dramatics, Kayden.”

“No. I don’t think you can.” He softens his voice, but his words are just as harsh and damning. “I can’t be gentle when underestimating his evil will get you killed too.”

Shell-shocked, I whisper, “This can’t be real. It has to be a mistake.” Then louder: “I can’t be the person Niccolo is looking for.”

“If it is a mistake, I’ll figure it out, but I can’t do that if we’re both dead.” He pushes off the wall and scoops my clothes off the floor to set them on the toilet. “Clothes. Now. I want us walking out of this building in ten minutes.” He digs his phone from his pocket. “In the meantime, I’m going to make a phone call. Pray the name Ella leads us where we need to go.” He doesn’t wait for my reply, crossing to my left to face the far wall, his back to me, assumably his version of giving me privacy. And I don’t even care. I just want out of this gown and this hospital that’s become a cage. I need Kayden to make that happen, but where he and I go from here, I don’t know. I’ll decide on the fly, but whatever the case, I will make an educated decision that has nothing to do with his damn blue eyes.

Launching myself off the wall, I dart for the jeans that are supposed to be mine, grabbing them and shoving my legs inside, because apparently the other me doesn’t wear underwear. They fit perfectly, but they’re still not familiar, and I promise myself I will remember every last part of my life, down to my socks. I will own my world again and I will own a plan to make that happen. And while I don’t want to be a person who would be involved in any way with a man like Niccolo, I’ll figure out how to fix that, once I figure out how it began.

I squat next to the bag, and hear Kayden say, “I need you to search the passport entry for the name Ella,” and I pause in the process of digging for a bra, another dash of hard-core reality hitting me. He’s asking someone to break the law to help me. He’s also openly admitted to hacking police records and knowing Niccolo. Who knows a mobster? I squeeze my eyes shut. Right. Who? Maybe me, it appears, and I have to face that possibility to get to the other side of this, wherever that may land me.

“No,” Kayden says into the phone, “I do not have a last name,” and while the irritation lacing his tone is intended for the person he’s speaking with, I feel it like a punch in the gut. Why would I remember my first name and not my last? And the answer is instant. My last name would return me to my real world, and knowing what I know about the trouble I’ve found, I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to go back. And it’s unacceptable. I can’t fix what is broken if I don’t even try.

“Coward,” I whisper, scolding myself and refocusing on the urgency to get dressed and the contents of the duffel. I remove a pair of tennis shoes and socks and set them on the floor, my eyes going wide as I retrieve a gorgeous cream-colored bra from the bag, noting the splattering of sparkly jewels over the silk. Searching for the brand, I discover the tag is written in Italian. Or I assume it is. It’s sure not English, and while I remind myself that tourists buy lingerie, Kayden’s words play in my head. We don’t even know if you are a tourist. And this time, I start to wonder if I really am.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Kayden murmurs into the phone. “I know all the reasons this is difficult, but you’re always bragging about how you do ‘magic.’ Now I’m paying you to prove it.” There are a few beats of silence in which he listens, and I struggle to put on the bra without taking the gown off, only to end up a tangled mess. “Within the hour,” Kayden tells the person on the other end of the line, abruptly ending the call, and before I can ask what happens in an hour, he peeks over his shoulder and asks, “Are you dressed?”

“Don’t turn around,” I order, and once I’m certain he’s listened, I tear both the gown and bra from my body, groaning when the hook attaches to the armhole.