Chapter Nineteen

Myla

Michael Alvarez is lying on a table. He is naked. There is plastic wrap over his body. The room is wallpapered with the images of all the women he’s turned into sex slaves and all the kids who overdosed on his drugs. There are more on the ceiling, so many they are overlapping each other. I am in the outfit I wore the night I met him. The shirt pink. The jeans black. The boots with tiny silver buckles. I stand over him, a knife in my hand.

“Bella,” he murmurs. “Don’t do this. You love me. I love you.”

“I hate you,” I say, looking around the room. “They hated you.” I raise the knife, waiting to feel guilt over what I am about to do, but I do not. I want him dead. The world is a better place without him. But then something happens. The image shifts and it is me naked on the table, him standing over me, holding the knife. 

“You betrayed me,” he says. “And know this, bella. I will kill everyone you love.”

 I gasp and sit up, blinking the television screen into view and an image of Dexter, holding a knife above his victim. “Easy, sweetheart,” Kyle says from beside me, his voice bringing everything back to me. The living area floor. Chinese food. A Dexter marathon. Ten days of hearing nothing from Michael Alvarez. “You had a nightmare.”

“No more Dexter,” I say, pressing my face into my hands. “Turn it off. I just dreamed I was Dexter about to kill Alvarez, and then it reversed, and he was Dexter, about to kill me and everyone I love. How can he be this silent this long?”

He grabs the remote and turns off the TV. “You said he’s done this before.”

“He has, but I was always happy when he was gone. Now, I just want him to come here. I want to kill him.”

“We’re all fighting over that honor,” he says, pulling me into his arms, my head resting on his chest, his heart thundering beneath my ear, his hand on my head. I shut my eyes and the nightmare slams into my mind: “You betrayed me,” he says. “And know this, bella. I will kill everyone you love.”

I sit up. “Kara and Blake are still in Italy, right?” 

“You were with me when I talked to Blake tonight. You know they are.”

“Right. Yes.” I lay back down and stare into the dimly lit room.

“That’s it,” Kyle says, sitting up and taking me with him. “You are making yourself crazy.”

“Dexter made me crazy. We’ve watched it every night for over a week.”

“You were obsessed,” he reminds me. “You wanted to watch it.”

“Because you got me addicted to it.”

He glances at his watch. “It’s midnight. We need a plan to relax you. A hot bath. Cartoons.”

“Cartoons?”

“No serial killers. Guaranteed.”

“Good point.”

“Or there is always my favorite distraction. Naked, wild, hot sex.”

“I vote for naked, wild, hot sex.”

He stands and pulls me to my feet. “A woman after my own heart.” He scoops me up and starts walking toward his bedroom, despite the master suite being closer. We avoid that room, I think because it reminds us of Michael Alvarez. It does to me and I don’t know why. Michael has never been here or in that bed. And hopefully he never will be.

***

Day Eleven 

Still in my pink silk robe, I’m standing at the bathroom sink flat ironing my hair when Kyle walks in, already dressed in a blue pinstriped suit and looking like sin and sex. He leans on the counter next to me. “I have something for you.”

I set down my flat iron and face him, frowning as he holds up several jeweled bobby pins. “What are those?”

“A special tracking device the FBI has been working on for you,” he explains. “The first two have the actual chips in them. The third is just a hair clip that you can give to the staff and tell them you want it to be a part of your accessory line. That will keep it from looking odd that you’re wearing them all of the time.” He indicates his watch. “I have a tracker here as well.” 

I take the bobby pins and fold my hand around them. “You’re afraid we’ll get split up.”

“I’m not going to let us get split up,” he promises, his hand settling on my hip. “But if we get ambushed and Alvarez is not present, we’re going to have to let them take us to him.” He gives me a keen look. “Are you prepared for that? Because if you-”

“I am. I can. Whatever it takes to get him.”

His expression fills with what I think is admiration. “You are so very brave, Myla.”

“No. I’m just pissed off. I’m angry. Whatever it takes to get him. Let’s do it.” I turn to the sink and slip those bobby pins into my hair, and I revel in the idea that I am now the single most dangerous person Michael Alvarez ever met.

***

I wake on day twenty-four of Michael’s silence in Kyle’s arms. Yesterday was day twenty-three. Tomorrow will be day twenty-five. I wonder if this is a test or a strategy to make us both crazy. “Do you know what I want?” Kyle asks, letting me know he’s awake and knows I am as well. 

Rolling around to face him, I curl my fingers on his freshly stubbled jaw. “Coffee?”

His lips curve. “Coffee is good, but I was thinking bigger.”

“Pancakes again?”

“Yes and no. I want to wake up with you in my bed.”

“I am in your bed.”

“My real bed in New York. My apartment is only a few miles from where Kara and Blake live.”

“I’m curious about your man cave. Take me there.”

“I will, Myla. I am going to take you there.”

I smile, and it is a smile I feel to my soul, but it fades quickly. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid it won’t happen. I’m afraid. I hate that I’m afraid. How can I be afraid of so much when I lived so many months without that emotion?”

“It’s called waking up,” Kyle says. “I’ve lived it after a few undercover operations. It’s bittersweet pleasure. You’re you again, but what you did when you weren’t is still there, haunting you, sometimes clawing at your soul.” 

“There is something to be said for what you don’t know, or let yourself realize, not being able to hurt you,” I say. “It worked for me.”

“But it can hurt you,” he says. “It just takes you off-guard when it does, and when that happens, that’s when you’re broken.”

I sink deeper into the pillow, not sure how I feel about that, because I am waking up, and when Michael returns, I’ll be awake to live it. 

***

On the twenty-seventh night of silence, three eves before the opening event at the store, I remember falling asleep in Kyle’s arms, his heart thrumming beneath my ear. But it is not long before a fit of nightmares follow, mostly about my months with Michael Alvarez. I remember Kyle comforting me. I remember falling back to sleep. I remember the first moment of tragedy in my life. 

I am in the corner of the closet, fifteen going on twenty until this moment, when I feel ten, tears streaming down my cheeks. Kara, not much older than me, is hugging me. “Shhh,” she whispers. “Don’t cry.” The sound of my mother’s scream fills the air, and I sob, but Kara covers my mouth. The memory flashes forward, to the funeral. I am dressed in black, on my knees in front of my parents’ caskets. Kara, is beside me, hugging me. “We will always have each other. Remember that, sis. We are not alone.” 

I sit up straight, looking around the brightly lit room, to find Kyle missing. Throwing off the covers, I hurry through the apartment and find him in the kitchen in nothing but pajama bottoms, his chest bare, his hair a sexy, mussed up mess. His eyes light on me and then narrow with concern. “What’s wrong? Aside from a night of nightmares.” 

“I need to talk to my sister.”

“Are you sure?”

“I said what you don’t know, or let yourself realize, can’t hurt you, but you were right. It can and if it takes you off-guard, you are broken. If anything happens to me, and I was keeping a distance to play some role with this monster of a man, it would break her.” 

Understanding fills his eyes. “Now?”

“Now.”

He reaches in his pocket and removes his phone, punching in a number. “I need Kara, Blake.” There is a pause. “Kara,” he says his gaze connecting with mine. “I have a call for you.”

I hear her sob from the distance and my eyes start watering. My hand shakes as I take the phone and press it to my ear. “Kara.”

“Myla,” she whispers. “I can’t believe it’s finally you.” 

I turn away from Kyle, walking toward the living area. “I’m sorry I haven’t called. I can’t explain what kind of mess my head is. I mean, it’s not. I found a place to put it all, but I just…I didn’t know how to be both people.”

“I don’t care. I am just so very ready to hug you again. And I want to ask so many questions, but I know this isn’t the time.”

“Not yet, but I’ll tell you.”

“Are you okay? How is it with Kyle?”

“He is…I am…”

“Oh no. Or, oh yes. You’re in love with him.”

It’s not until that moment that I know the truth. “It’s soon. It is but….”

“You are.”

“Is that bad?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the greatest guy. I love him too.”

“Is that why you drugged him?”

She laughs. “Serves him right for trying to be a macho man and protect me.” She goes on to tell me the story, and then all about Blake. When we hang up, I find Kyle in the shower and join him, hugging him. 

“How’d it go?” he asks. 

“She says you’re pretty great.”

“What did you say?”

“You’re pretty great.”

His lips curve. “I’ll take that for now.”

“For now?”

“There’s more to come,” he promises. “Wait and see.”

I press my head to his chest, and let myself believe that the “more” that is to come is good. It’s not plastic, knives, and serial killers. It’s my sister. It’s Kyle. Maybe it’s even me designing clothes. But when I get dressed, an odd sense of foreboding begins. And when I pick out my dress for the day, I choose the peach one again that zips all the way to the waist, and gives me easy access to my gun. 

Fifteen minutes later, my hair pins in place, similar ones now in production, Kyle meets me at the door, his gray suit and silver tie perfection, but for just a moment his gun peeks from beneath his jacket, indicating he’s left it unbuttoned. He feels it too. We take the elevator in silence, the edge of expectation in the air. Now I know why I needed to call my sister so badly. Today is the day Michael Alvarez returns. We both know it.