Page 38 of Master Heimdall

“That could have gone better,” Jared teased.

I was literally shaking and no longer convinced it was from anger.

“Hey, man… Gabe, look at me.” Jared said in a voice he only reserved for the dungeon.

I dragged my eyes away from where I’d last seen Rose before she disappeared from my sight. “What?”

“She was upset and angry, and so are you. Just give her and yourself some time to cool off. Then just take it one step at a time.”

He was right. “I think I majorly fucked up, and I’m sure I’ll have some serious groveling in my near future.”

Jared laughed. “Yeah, man, you really do. And what does she mean by ‘secret’?”

I explained how I’d been keeping work and our relationship separate. When I was done, Jared looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“You’re doing that wimp thing again, Gabe. It’s your company, and you’re the boss. Get your shit together and stop waffling, because from what I saw, that woman is worth fighting for, and she clearly has deep feelings for you, or did at least. You’re a Dom, Gabriel, now act like one.”

I was about to tell him to go fuck himself when the alarm on my phone for Rose’s panic button went off.

Chapter Eighteen

Rose

I had to give my head a shake at how this day was turning out as, by far, one of the worst. I felt like karma was a man kicking my ass and nothing I did was right. Mind you, those days were so rare, usually everything I did worked out in the best possible ways for everyone, but since this thing with Gabe and I, nothing had worked out the way I wanted.

I realized that since working at G&H, I controlled nothing and that was what was hitting me at the moment, a hard-earned epiphany I’d rather not have. If my situation had been the least bit funny, I’d be laughing my ass off at the two knuckleheads who kidnapped me right out front of my apartment. They weren’t big Russian mafia dudes with rippling muscles, or sketchy Americans ex-military gone rogue. No, I got kidnapped by two skinny, good-old boys with poor hygiene and half a brain between the two of them.

Those facts didn’t lessen the fear I felt. Being tied up, on a beat up old couch which I swore had vermin buried beneath its cushions, followed by two smelly, pimply, pretty sure drug addicts, who were shaky and had a gun pointed in my face was enough to have me in tears and scared shitless. I’d managed to press the panic button on my bracelet, before my arms were savagely pulled behind me, and I prayed to anyone listening that Gabriel wasn’t so mad at me that he’d ignore that it had been activated.

After tossing me onto the couch, and threatening me, they retreated to what I assumed was the kitchen, because I heard rattling like dishes being pulled from a cupboard. Nothing seemed anything like the international spy books I loved to read. I determined that despite the lack of anything resembling a proper kidnapping, someone had ordered it, which meant I should remain unharmed until that someone showed up or asked for something like information. I wondered several times if my being kidnapped was because of the guy we were protecting, or something else regarding Gabe, or G&H in general.

Worrying about this gave me plenty of time to redirect the desperate emotions from taking over. It couldn’t be G&H in general, this couldn’t be a coincidence on the heels of someone getting away and this happening. But these guys didn’t fit with the ones who had almost run us off the bridge and they’d seemed determined to kill us, not kidnap us.

It was all too much and I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, finally accepting the fact that I knew nothing about anything. That momentary freedom ended when I began replaying the jobs I’d organized to date. They were all fresh enough for me to recall and even though I only organized their schedules and the delivery of goods required to get the job done, I’d never considered the danger of what all of that meant. Never had I contemplated what that looked like in the real world. Somehow I’d managed to compartmentalize my work from the reality I lived in.

Now, an entirely new reality had set in, and it wasn’t just being in a strange place with kidnappers, or even the chase from earlier. Ever since I’d met Gabriel, everything had changed for me. I was not the woman who’d left Europe to begin a new career in the United States and work for my best friend’s best friend. It was so surreal!

With time to consider my actions today, I had to concede that Gabriel had been right all along about security and safety, and I’d ignored him with a laugh and flick of my hand like he was being way over the top.

I swore if he managed to save me, I’d apologize and stop calling him paranoid all the time. In fact, I’d go further than that. I would promise to follow every rule he set down from now on, that was, if he still wanted me. My behavior was because of the upset, coupled by my hurt of him running from what we’d shared that night in his apartment. It’s like he knew I was going to tell him I loved him and ran for the hills. Gabriel was right about that as well. I’d filled in to punish him. I’d filled in to prove I was right and he was wrong, but the opposite had happened and now I’d be eating humble pie if I got free.

A chill moved down my spine when I thought back to how angry he was and bewildered by my reaction to what he said. If I could do things over, I would have done what I wanted, thrown myself into his arms, begged for forgiveness and we would have gone home and screwed for two or three days.

“Oh, Gabe, I’m so sorry,” I muttered quietly.

Meatheads One and Two entered the room. They looked dead inside and I wondered for the briefest of moments what their lives had been like to cause them to wind up here, doing this to me. The first guy sat down opposite me and the other hovered close.

“If you want to walk away with all your limbs, you’ll tell us where you dropped off your passenger.” His tone was deadly serious. I sure as hell had pegged them wrong. Just another failure to add to today's stack of bad decisions and misconceptions.

Panic welled inside of me and I began to gasp for breath… Breathe, Rose, just breathe.

The guy hovering gripped my ponytail, and pulled so hard, I yelped with pain. He leaned over me, and with my head bent back and my limbs tied, I had nowhere to go. His horrible breath filled my nostrils and I thought I would choke.

“Where did you drop off the passenger?”

Tears leaked from my eyes, more from the pain of my scalp being ripped than the asshole doing the damage.

“I don’t know. The bodyguard told me to pull over in an alleyway right after we lost you. They got out and left. I swear that’s all I know. I’m just the driver who was hired through a temp agency. I don’t even know those men.”