Page 105 of Enduring Caine
And I knew him.
My heart all but stopped.
“Oh my god, Vin. What’s he doing here?”
Chapter 45
Antonio
IwavedtoCristianand Leonardo at the bottom of the staircase and crossed the distance to my door, while they went off to their own rooms. Samantha had my key and Dr. Weber was staying on our floor, so I knocked quietly. “Bella?”
Coffee with Cristian and Leonardo had been practically pleasant. Maybe my apology meant a lot to Leo. Or he thought my half-drunken state—far improved after the coffee—left me too weak to defend myself. Or he was simply too tired, like the rest of us.
I leaned against the door and tried the handle. Locked. I knocked again, louder. “Bella?”
She knew we only had one key, so I’d expected her to stay up waiting for me. What time was it? I turned my watched over—two in the morning. She’d come upstairs an hour ago. The nightmares continued to invade her sleep every night— although she handled the daytime better than just after the New Year’s incident—so at the very least, she should have been sleeping lightly.
Another knock, louder again. Still nothing.
Those prickles she described began along the back of my neck.
Visions of New Year’s flashed through my brain. To when the Scotts had held her at gunpoint in our hotel room. To my breaking down the door to see Olivia Scott with a scarf knotted around Samantha’s throat, choking the life out of her.
I pounded on the door, yelling her name. “Samantha! It’s me! Open up!”
It was locked, but it was only wood. I rammed my good shoulder into it, pain screaming through the injury in my right arm and the still healing cuts across my back. But none of that mattered. If she was in there and needed my help, nothing would stand in my way.
I slammed into the door again, greeted by the sound of splintering wood.
Leonardo came running up the stairs. “What are you doing?”
“She’s not answering!”
He grabbed me before I could continue my assault. “That doesn’t mean you can destroy the house.”
“You don’t understand!” I wrenched my arm out of his grip and lunged again. “She wouldn’t leave me out here.”
Leo’s gaze swept the floor, from room to room, jaw set firmly. “Are you sure she was even up here in the first place?”
I stopped before I hit the door this time. “She left dinner and said she was coming up here.”
“Who escorted her up?” He was already on his way toward the stairs.
The goosebumps grew stronger, competing with the rapid thrum of my heart. I searched for the face, for the name of the man who’d walked her from the dining room. “I don’t know his name. He had… dark brown hair and… marone, he looked like half the men who work here!”
Leo paused at the top of the stairs when I didn’t follow. “Antonio, Vincenzo is supposed to be working this floor tonight. Do you see him anywhere?”
“What are you implying?”
“Wherever he is, I suspect she is, as well.”
I flagged against the door, the room spinning. Between the alcohol, my medication, and the caffeine hit, my heart was beating too quickly. She was not with Vincenzo. And even if she was, it was not in the way Leonardo was saying.
He was her past.
I was her future.
Leonardo tore out of the security room before I reached it, cell phone in front of his mouth. He yelled into it as he passed me, “We’re looking for Vincenzo and Antonio’s girlfriend, Samantha! Everyone report where you are so I can coordinate the search!”