Page 35 of Icebound

But apparently, they hadn’t noticed. “She’ll be all right,” Luc said earnestly. “It’s just a phobia.”

“I can’t afford phobias.”

“Then don’t take her to the gala,” Luc lashed back.

“If I don’t, she is of no use to me, and I’ll have to get rid of her. Como is so crowded I’d have a hard time getting rid of her body.”

Stop it! she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t afford to make another mistake. She was going to lose it. She was going to start screaming at them, she was going to…

The bright light of day shone in the windshield, and they were out, into a bright, sunny afternoon. In Italy.

She sank back against the seat, shaking. She’d managed to live through it.

“You see,” Bastien said. “Your little pet has survived. For now.”

“She’s right, you are a bastard, Jean-Marc.”

And to Chloe’s fury, he just smiled.

It was late when they approached a city, and she looked up from her seat in the back as Bastien parked the car. They’d pulled up to a small, seedy-looking hotel and Bastien climbed out, stretching after hours in the cramped car. She couldn’t help but watch, and she cursed herself. No matter what he was calling himself, the man had a beautiful body, tall and lean and strong, and she watched him move with just the tiniest trace of sexual interest. Maybe she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life in frigid celibacy, no matter how much it felt like it now.

“Make sure she doesn’t say anything,” he said in French to Luc, and Luc nodded, turning to give Chloe a reassuring smile.

“We’re stopping for the night,” he told her. “It would be too late when we arrived in Como to get settled.”

‘Where are we?” she asked in a small voice.

“Outside of Milan,” Luc said, but Bastien frowned.

“You don’t need to answer her questions,” he said in French. “She doesn’t need to know anything.”

“She needs to know where she’s going and what she’s doing,” Luc replied in the same language. “How else is she going to be of help?”

“She just needs to be quiet and do what she’s told. Though she’s not the most obedient of creatures.”

Chloe kept herself from snarling in annoyance. The fact that she could understand every word they said was one of her few advantages, and she wasn’t going to give it up readily. They hadn’t really said anything of use—she had no idea where they were going apart from the fact that she was going to need an evening gown, and she’d like to see Bastien try to come up with one. As far as she knew, she would accompany him to some kind of ceremony where he would accomplish something, and then they would leave.

It all brought back that night so long ago, when he’d dressed her in elegant black and escorted her to a horrifying bloodbath. Would this night in Como be the same?

She would be naïve to think his mission involved anything but murder. Could she stand by and let him do it? In their tumultuous past, he’d only killed people who deserved to die. Maybe he had his sights on a third-world dictator or an evil Russian oligarch. Even so, could she let it happen?

“Get out of the car, bébé,” he said to her then. “I’m tired and I want to sleep.”

She obeyed, gutless wonder that she was, keeping her head down and her expression to herself. She really wasn’t cut out to be a docile hostage anymore.

The lobby of the tiny hotel was small and overstuffed, and the woman behind the counter looked to be a hundred and three years old. It smelled of garlic and mold, and she shivered slightly.

“We’ll take two rooms,” Bastien told the old lady in his perfect Italian, another language she wasn’t supposed to understand, and Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. At least they were giving her a room of her own.

He concluded his negotiation, then turned to her. “It’s time for bed, chérie,” he said with his false affection. “Room 5 at the top of the stairs.” He handed her the old-fashioned key.

She’d understood that much, and she started up the dark, winding stairs, dragging her suitcase behind. Luc stepped forward to help her but Bastien stopped him, threatening another snarl from Chloe. When this was over, she was going to make him pay for a thousand things.

When this was over. Would there ever be such a time? Would the two them survive? The room was small and dark, even with the lights on, and she looked at the bed warily. It was a double bed, bigger than the cot she’d been subsisting on, and dropping her suitcase, she went to sit on it. It wasn’t bad—not too hard and not too soft, and she looked forward to stretching out tonight⁠—

The door opened and Bastien walked in, and she cursed herself for not remembering to lock the door behind her. “You’re in the wrong room,” she said coldly.

“No, chérie, I am not,” he said, locking the door behind him with his own key. “I’m tired. Take off your clothes and get in bed.”