All Chapters of He Wants Me Dead Or Alive : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

110 Chapters

Kylie Visits

Rosa's POVKylie showed up at seven with a bottle of wine and a look on her face that I didn't trust.She hugged me too long at the door and then held me at arm's length like she was checking for damage. I let her do it because I knew she'd been worried. I hadn't called enough. I hadn't texted back fast enough. I had been in this building for over a week now and I had stopped explaining myself to anyone, including her."You look good," she said. "Annoyingly good. I was hoping you'd look worse.""Thanks.""I mean it. I brought sad wine and everything. This is celebration wine now. I'm going to have to drink it bitter."She walked past me into the penthouse like she owned it, her heels clicking on the floor, her eyes moving over everything. The windows. The furniture. The art on the walls that I had stopped noticing three days ago. I watched her take it all in and I knew exactly what she was thinking because I had thought the same thing the first time I saw it. This place is obscene.Ra

Followed

Rosa's POVGetting the run approved took three days.I asked on Monday. Raffaele said no. I asked on Tuesday. He said he would think about it. I asked on Wednesday morning while he was pouring coffee and he looked at me for a long time before he said fine, but Klaus goes with you. I told him Klaus ran like a refrigerator with legs and would slow me down. He said then you don't go. So Klaus went with me.That was how I ended up on the sidewalk at six in the morning with a man twice my size trying to keep pace while I warmed up. He wasn't terrible, I'll give him that. He stayed behind me, kept his mouth shut, and didn't complain when I pushed the pace faster than he probably wanted to go. We did three miles along the river, then cut west through the city, then looped back toward the building. Standard route. Boring. Safe.Or so I thought.I spotted him at the intersection of LaSalle and Jackson.He was standing by the newspaper stand, dressed in a gray jacket and jeans, nothing special.

Four Walls

Rosa's POVHe told me at nine in the morning.I had just finished breakfast. I was lacing up my shoes for a walk, just a short one, just to the corner and back, because I had been inside for two days and the walls were starting to feel like they were getting closer. I had the route planned. I had Klaus ready. I had done everything the way he wanted.He stood in the doorway of the kitchen and said, "You're not going out today."I stopped lacing my shoes. "What?""No building exits. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not for seventy-two hours."I stared at him. "You're joking.""I'm not."I stood up so fast the chair almost tipped over. "You can't just lock me in here like a prisoner. I had a tail. I lost the tail. I did everything right.""You did everything right. And someone still knew where you were going to be." His voice was calm. Too calm. "Until I know how, you don't leave this floor.""This floor," I repeated. "Not the building. This floor.""Yes."I walked out. I didn't say anything els

Still Trapped

Rosa POVI woke up and the anger was gone.Not all of it. Some of it was still there, tucked under my ribs like a splinter I couldn't quite reach. But the sharp edge of it, the part that had made me want to throw things and scream at him and punch walls, that part had burned itself out sometime in the night. What was left felt worse. What was left felt like settling.I lay in his bed for a long time after he got up. The sheets smelled like him. The pillow still had the dent from his head. I told myself I was just resting. I told myself I wasn't staying there because it was warm or comfortable or because some stupid part of me liked waking up next to him. I told myself a lot of things. I didn't believe any of them.When I finally got up, he was already in the kitchen.He had made coffee. Two mugs. Mine had the right amount of sugar. I didn't remember telling him how I took my coffee. Maybe I hadn't. Maybe he had just watched me close enough to figure it out. That thought should have ma

Possible Enemy

Rosa POVThe last day of the lockdown was the strangest one.I woke up and he was already awake. He was lying on his side, watching me, and he didn't look away when I opened my eyes. Most people do. They get caught and they look away. He just kept looking at me like my face was something worth studying. I should have said something sharp. I should have pushed him or rolled over or told him to stop being weird. I didn't. I just looked back at him for a long moment and then got out of bed like it was nothing.The morning was quiet. He had paperwork spread across the kitchen table, some kind of contract written in formal English that was technically correct but awkward in ways that were going to cause problems later. I read it over his shoulder while I drank my coffee and then I sat down and started fixing the sentences that didn't sound right. He didn't ask me to. He didn't thank me. He just slid the papers toward me and let me work."What's this word?" I asked, pointing to something in

Out

Rosa POVThe doors opened at eight in the morning and I walked out.I didn't run. I didn't celebrate. I just walked through the lobby and pushed through the glass doors and stood on the pavement with the sun on my face and the noise of the city all around me. Cars. People. A guy selling coffee from a cart on the corner. None of it cared that I had been locked in a penthouse for three days. None of it had noticed I was gone.I stood there for a minute and breathed.The air smelled like exhaust and pretzels and someone's too-strong perfume. It was the best thing I had smelled in days.Raffaele was behind me. Not close enough to touch. Just there. I could feel him standing in the doorway, watching, not saying anything. He went where I went now. That had happened sometime in the last week. I had stopped fighting it. Not because I had given up. Because I had stopped wanting to fight it. That was different. That was harder to admit."You're blocking the door," I said without turning around.

Intoxicated

Raffaele's POVShe came out of her room at seven in the morning wearing the armor again.I recognized it. The straight back. The careful way she moved, like she was measuring every step. The face she put on when she wanted me to forget that she had fallen asleep on my chest with her hand curled around my shirt. It was the face she wore when she needed to remind herself that this was temporary. That there were terms. That she was still in control.She walked past me toward the kitchen and said good morning like we were coworkers. Like we hadn't spent the night tangled together. Like I hadn't felt her say my name into the dark when she thought I was already asleep.I watched her go.Something in my chest shifted. Not suddenly. It had been shifting for weeks. But this morning it settled into a new position, something harder and more certain, and I knew I wasn't going to let her walk past me like that again without saying something.I followed her into the kitchen.She was already at the

Invading My Thoughts

Rosa POVI sat in Criminal Procedure at nine in the morning and I did not hear a single word the professor said.I was looking at the board. I had my notebook open. My pen was in my hand. But my brain was somewhere else entirely. It was in the kitchen. It was standing across from a man in a gray sweater who had just told me he wanted to intoxicate me. It was replaying his voice, the way he had said it, the way he had looked at me like he was giving me something he had never given anyone else.I wrote down something the professor said. I didn't know what it was. I looked at my notebook later and the word "hearsay" was written in the margin three times in a row, like my hand had just kept going after my brain stopped.This was a problem.I knew it was a problem. I had been telling myself it was a problem for two days. But telling myself something was a problem and actually doing something about it were two different things, and I didn't know how to do something about it because the thin

Watched

He found her outside the library.He had been waiting for twenty minutes. Not lurking. Just standing near the steps, looking at his phone, looking up every few seconds to scan the crowd. He told himself he wasn't being weird. He told himself he had a right to check on her. They had been training partners for years. She was his friend. Friends checked on friends.That was true.It was also not the whole truth.The whole truth was that he had heard things. Things he wasn't supposed to know. Things about a building downtown. About a man who owned half the city and collected people the way other men collected watches. About Rosa being seen there. About her not leaving.He had made calls. People owed him favors. Not many people. Just a few. The right ones.And now he knew.She was living with Raffaele Navarro.Not staying with a friend. Not dealing with family stuff. Living with him.He saw her come out of the library and his chest did something tight and uncomfortable. She looked good. Sh

Raffaele's Father

Rosa POVHe told me twenty minutes before.I was in the kitchen making tea. It was six thirty. I had just finished training. My hair was still damp. I was wearing sweats and an old T-shirt and I was thinking about nothing more complicated than whether I wanted honey in my tea.Raffaele walked in and said, "My father is coming to dinner."I stopped with the kettle in my hand. "What?""He'll be here in twenty minutes."I set the kettle down carefully because if I didn't set it down carefully I was going to drop it. "Twenty minutes. Your father. The Don Navarro. The man who runs everything. Is coming here. To have dinner. With us.""Yes.""And you're telling me this now?""I'm telling you this as soon as I knew.""You knew more than twenty minutes ago."He didn't deny it. He just stood there in his black shirt with his sleeves rolled up and looked at me with that calm expression that made me want to throw something at his head."Twenty minutes," I said again."Nineteen now."I walked out

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