eight
I begin to pace the bathroom the way I had his bedroom that night, my hand pressed to my forehead. “I killed someone. I killed him.” I stop walking and face the mirror, reprimanding myself. “Stop saying that. You didn’t kill anyone.” I look to the ceiling. But what if I did? My knees go weak, and I sink to the edge of the tub and press my hand to my belly. It makes sense that it had to be something this bad for my mind to shut down as it has.
I bury my face in my hands and think of Gallo and the fingerprints. My hands drop to the ledge of the tub. How does Niccolo connect to this? Did he know the man I think I killed? Is he hunting me for revenge? Or is he the man and I didn’t kill him? I just tried? No. I wouldn’t be with a gangster. Unless . . . did I not know who, and what, he was? No. I didn’t kill him. My stomach rolls. I might have killed him. I have to tell Kayden. Now. Before the truth is exposed and Gallo finds some way to take Kayden down with me. I push to my feet and stand there. I don’t want to tell him. I have to tell him. I have to tell him.
Stiffening my spine, I face the door and start walking, and I don’t stop. I exit the bedroom and start down stairs that in daylight I can tell are some sort of frosted glass, the railing stainless steel. Reaching the bottom level, I step across shiny white tiles and enter a living area that feels modern and chic, with light gray furnishings. I step farther into the room, finding no one around, amazed to find a walkway running above my head and the entire length of the room, also made with the etched glass-looking material.
There is another stairwell leading up to that second level, but I choose a door to my left that I’m gambling leads to the kitchen. Once I’m there, I consider knocking, but it’s a kitchen, not a bedroom, and Kayden did tell me to come down when I was ready. I push open the door, and, holding it open, I bring another white and gray room into view, with three men gathered at a round, all-white island.
To my left, Nathan, Kayden’s doctor friend, sits on a high-backed gray bar stool, his brown hair styled neatly, his blue suit and tie obviously expensive. To my right sits a man who is his polar opposite, with wavy, longish dark brown hair, his features chiseled, the slogan on his obviously worn black T-shirt in Italian. And standing in the center, directly across from me and the only one of the three I truly care about right now, is Kayden.
My eyes meet his, and I feel the connection punch me in the chest. His expression is tight, his eyes hard, and everything that happened between us an hour before is in the air between us now. The kiss. His hand on my breast. Him naked in the shower. But mostly, his anger. “Can I talk to you alone, please, Kayden?”
“Nathan’s on a tight schedule,” he says. “He wants to check you out before he leaves.”
“I’m fine,” I insist. “I feel a lot better.”
“Not for long if we don’t get some additional medicine in you,” Nathan assures me. “And I need to evaluate you before I give you additional drugs.”
That gets my attention, and I look at Nathan. “The pain is going to come back?”
“Not if we keep you medicated.” He pats the stool. “Come sit.”
My lips clamp together, and I bite back everything I want to say to Kayden and cross to the island, claiming the seat and giving Kayden my back in the process. “Let me get a few supplies out of my bag,” Nathan says, and I nod, glancing at the dark-haired man in the seat across from me.
“Ciao,” he says, giving me a two-finger wave, surprising me with a fleeting glimpse of a box-shaped tattoo on his wrist, with script up his forearm. “I’m Matteo.”
“Hi, Matteo,” I greet him, trying to figure out why he and Kayden have matching tattoos. And what do they mean? “Thanks for letting me stay here.”
“Always happy to help a pretty woman,” he assures me, motioning to Kayden. “And as a bonus, now Kayden owes me a favor.”
“You owe me at least ten,” Kayden reminds him.
“At least it’s not eleven,” Matteo rebuts, winking at me, and I like him. Actually, I like Nathan as well, but neither of them feels even remotely familiar the way Kayden does.
“Okay,” Nathan says, “I’m ready for you.”
I rotate to face Nathan, who’s now to my left, which means I’d be eye to eye with Kayden if Nathan wasn’t standing between us, us holding up a small light. “I just need to check your pupils.” He flips it on and tilts my chin up, giving each eye a check and popping the light into his pocket. “They look good,” he says, his hands sliding to his hips under his jacket. “On a scale of one to ten, what was your headache like yesterday versus today?”
“A ten yesterday. A one today.”
“Excellent,” he says. “Let’s get some vitals and I’ll give you some more drugs.”
“So as long as I take the drugs, I won’t relapse?” I ask, as he removes supplies from a leather briefcase.
“Not unless you run through a church parking lot in a thunderstorm,” he says, a smile ghosting across his lips.
I lean around him and point at Kayden. “Don’t even think about saying anything right now.”
Kayden lifts his hands in surrender, his lips curving, a hint of the tension between us slipping away. “I wasn’t even considering it.”
“Oh hell yeah, he was,” Matteo says.
Kayden responds to him in Italian, and they start talking back and forth as Nathan finishes checking my vitals. “You need to learn Italian,” Nathan observes.
“Yes,” I agree. “I do. Are you American too?”
“Canadian,” he corrects. “I came here for a woman and fell in love with the country, and out of love with her.”
“Ouch,” I say.
“Better to find out sooner than later,” he says, returning his supplies to his bag and retrieving a bottle, which he sets on the counter. “Take one now with a full glass of water and then four times a day for five days.”
“What are they?” I ask.
“The same anti-inflammatory I gave you by injection before you woke up. I use it often for patients suffering from migraines. You should be feeling pretty darn good by the time you run out. If for any reason it stops working, though, Kayden knows how to reach me. I’ll stop by his place to check on you in a few days.” He slips his bag on his shoulder. “And now, I am a day late for Valentine’s Day and therefore have a date I can’t miss.”
Valentine’s Day. The day for lovers, and I am pretty sure I killed the man Kayden called mine. “Thanks again,” I choke out, and then realize I haven’t asked about my amnesia, and he hasn’t brought it up. “Wait. Sorry, but how common is memory loss with a concussion?”
“Rare to the extent you’re experiencing it, but it happens. The important thing to know is that it’s not life threatening or debilitating.” I grimace at that, and he holds up a finger. “I saw that look. I wasn’t dismissing your problem. I was simply trying to ease your mind. And you’re already remembering small things. You’ll remember the rest.”
And I both wish for and dread that day.
His hand comes down on my shoulder, a friendly gesture that is missing all the fire of Kayden’s touch. “We’ll talk more about this when I stop by to check on you at Kayden’s place.”
I nod. “Yes. Thank you again, Nathan. I really needed help, and you were there for me.”
He smiles. “And now Kayden owes me a favor.” He glances at Kayden. “Or ten.” He lifts a hand and heads for the door. Matteo says something to Kayden in Italian and takes off after Nathan, and just like that, I’m alone with Kayden.
Desperate to get my confession over with, I rotate and say, “Kayden,” only to discover he’s already standing in front of me and I’ve just pressed our legs together. I tilt my chin up to look at him. “I . . . You . . .”
He arches a brow. “I what?”
The words don’t want to come out of my mouth. “About what happened upstairs—”
“Matteo is coming right back.” He opens the bottle and pops a pill onto his hand, holding it out to me. “You need to take this now before you end up in bed again.”
He’s right. The last thing I need right now is to turn into a mess like I was last night. I reach for the pill, my hand going to his palm, the touch electric, and his fingers close around mine. My eyes dart to his, and I try to read his still unreadable expression. I wait for him to say whatever he intends to, but he is silent. He just looks at me, his gaze probing, and I realize he’s waiting for me to say whatever I wanted to say.
“I know you’re not him,” I say, my voice hoarse, affected in a way that is all about this man and what I have yet to tell him.
The door opens behind me and Matteo enters, saying something in Italian to Kayden. Kayden responds and then refocuses on me. “Take the pill,” he orders.
Frustrated at the interruption, I pop it into my mouth, and then accept the bottle of water and chug several long swallows. Kayden takes the bottle from me and sets it on the table. “You need to hear what Matteo has to say.”
“I have to have a conversation with you first.”
“It has to wait.” He turns to his friend and orders, “Tell her what you found.”
I want to shout at him that no, no, it does not have to wait, but Matteo is quick to demand my attention. “Let’s talk about Ella,” he says as he reaches under the island and produces a file he sets in front of him.
“You mean let’s talk about me,” I correct.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s talk about you. Only you don’t exist. There is no missing ‘Ella’ that’s traveled from the United States, or anywhere else for that matter, in the past year.”
“I took your fingerprints when you were asleep,” Kayden adds.
I cut him an incredulous look. “You did what?”
“Gallo is going to be at my doorstep looking for you,” he says. “I had to know what we were dealing with.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, yet somehow those prints feel more private than the clothes he stripped off me. But I want answers, and I glance between the two men. “You ran them through the database?”
“I did,” Matteo confirms. “And there was no match.”
“That makes no sense,” I argue, convinced he’s made a mistake. “I’d have to have prints on file for a passport. How can you even run my prints? Isn’t it a government database?”
“The right hacker can get anywhere he or she wants to get,” Matteo replies. “You have no prints on file.”
My throat thickens. “Try again.”
“I always double-check myself,” Matteo adds. “You could be an Italian-American who lives here.”
“I don’t speak the language,” I argue.
“You don’t remember speaking the language,” Kayden corrects.
“I don’t speak the language,” I assure him. “I might not remember everything but I get strong feelings about things. I do not speak Italian.” I eye Matteo. “Do they fingerprint for driver’s licenses? Wouldn’t I be on file here if I lived here?”
“No fingerprints,” Kayden replies. “Just a signature.”
I look between them. “This is crazy. I have to have a passport.”
“You might have had one,” Matteo responds, “but you don’t now. You might have been erased.”
“What does that mean, ‘erased’?”
“It means,” Kayden explains, “that someone as talented as Matteo could have been hired to wipe out your records.”
“Are you telling me that even if I remember who I am, I don’t exist?”
Kayden holds up his hands. “Back up. We don’t know you were erased. We’re just talking through reasons you might think you have a passport but you don’t.”
“And if we find out who you are,” Matteo adds, “I can re-create your identity.”
I gape at him. “Re-create my identity? Forgive me if that isn’t comforting.”
Kayden rotates the bar stool around, his hands coming down on my arms. “You aren’t a stack of documents. No one can erase who you are.”
“They don’t have to. I did it for them. My fingerprints were my link to my past. My way of finding me.”
“We both know you can find you, when you’re ready.”
“I don’t have a switch the way you seem to think I do. I can’t just flip it. Why would someone wipe my identity?”
“For all any of us know, you had your identity wiped.”
My lips part in shock. “Why would I do that?” I ask, but even as the question leaves my mouth, I picture myself opening that box and revealing that gun.
He pushes off the stool, his hands settling on his hips. “You were running when I found you,” he reminds me.
“From the Italian mafia,” Matteo adds. “That’s a good reason to disappear.”
“And you colored your hair,” Kayden says. “You knew you were on the run before you lost your memory.”
Again, I see a flickering image of that box and that gun. “What now?” I ask, rotating to face the table again.
“We keep working on my plan,” Kayden says, motioning to Matteo.
Matteo responds by sliding the folder in my direction. “This is your new identity,” he announces. “It’s what Gallo will find when he pulls your fingerprints.”
“New identity,” I repeat, tension stiffening my spine. “I don’t even know my real identity.”
“That’s the point,” Kayden explains. “If you don’t have an identity, Gallo and Niccolo will keep focusing on you. We need you to become someone distinctive that shuts down all interest in you from all directions.”
It makes sense. I don’t like it, but it makes sense. “Yes. Okay.”
Kayden jumps on my acceptance, already moving ahead. “A few important details. Since you’re sure your name is Ella—”
“It is Ella,” I say, jumping on his hint of doubt. “My name is Ella.”
“Then we can be certain that anyone looking for you will be searching by the name Ella,” Matteo interjects.
“So no more Ella,” I say, knowing there is no other way. Not with a mobster after me.
“Yes and no,” Kayden confirms while Matteo announces, “Your new legal name is Rae Eleana Ward.”
Kayden’s hand comes down on my shoulder, and I look up at him as he adds, “We went with Eleana so you could use Ella as a nickname. It’s a bit of a stretch to turn your middle name into a nickname, but it’s still doable.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, my throat thick with emotion, and I’m pretty sure I just lost all objectivity with this man, who seems to have understood my need even before I did.
His eyes soften, and I watch what’s left of his anger evaporate. “The hospital staff said you need stability and the familiar. Right now, that’s me and your name.”
My brow furrows. Is he trying to tell me I did know him before that alleyway?
He squeezes my shoulder, drawing my gaze to his. “No,” he says softly, for my ears only, as if I’ve spoken my question. “That’s not what I’m saying, and right now”—he releases me and taps the folder—“everything you need to know about your new identity is inside this. Study it and know it before you let Gallo trap you, because if you make a mistake, he will catch you.”
“And when he says everything,” Matteo interjects, “he means everything. I backtracked to make it look like you arrived here from the United States two weeks ago, including flight data. And since a passport allows you to be here for ninety days, no one will question you being here for quite some time.”
“Does this mean I’ll have an actual passport?” I ask, wondering if I can travel to the States and put distance between me and Niccolo.
“Not yet,” Kayden answers. “Gallo believes you were mugged and your identification stolen. Let him run your prints, figure out who you are, and then I’ll have to take you to the passport office to have identification issued.”
“I have amnesia,” I point out. “Won’t he want me to contact my family?” And the word family punches me in the chest, making me wonder about my real one.
“You have no family,” Matteo says, as if reading my mind. “I made sure of it. We don’t need anyone looking for your relatives to confirm who you are or aren’t and finding out they’re fake.”
“I understand the premise of your strategy,” I say, “but that leaves me alone in a strange country and I can tell you right now, Gallo will use that as an excuse to stick around. He wants dirt on Kayden, and he’ll use me to get it.”
Kayden responds unfazed. “I’ll make it clear to Gallo you’re with me. End of subject, and he can kiss my ass.”
I don’t have time to process how I feel about the nonnegotiable tone of his statement before Matteo announces, “Picture time,” and starts snapping pictures on a camera he has produced from who knows where.
Glowering at him, I hold up a hand. “Can you at least warn me or something?”
“I did,” he says, glancing at his watch and back at me. “And I’ll make the shots I just took work. The passport system is about to do its weekly security update in an hour that, ironically, allows an easy breach. Within an hour you’ll be Rae Eleana Ward, and no one will be able to say different.”
A knot forms in my throat. “I have a love/hate reaction to that news.”
“Make it all about love, sweetheart,” Kayden encourages, “because no one is going to look for Rae Eleana Ward. And we’ve made sure the hospital and police report have different dates and don’t include my name. Once we’re done, you can hide in plain sight, and no one will connect the Jane Doe that was taken to the hospital to you. We’re completely disconnecting you from that identity.”
“What about the hospital staff?”
Kayden dismisses my concern. “You were registered under an alias. We’re covered.”
My lips press together. “I’m still worried. What about the men who followed me? Won’t they keep asking around?”
“I paid a security officer to let me know if anyone is asking around at the hospital,” Kayden replies, apparently having an answer to everything.
“Those men that were following me will know what I look like,” I argue.
“They’re dead,” Kayden announces, not bothering with a preamble.
Stunned, I blanch. “What? How? When?”
“The details don’t matter,” he states, his words as cold as ice. “They would have killed you if they got the chance.”
I give him an incredulous look. “They were human beings that probably died because of me.”
“That would infer Niccolo is a human being,” he replies, “and I assure you, he is not. Moving on. Your passport will have a picture. We’re going to hack in and replace it as soon as it goes live.”
“That includes the police report as well,” Matteo interjects. “I’ve set up a notification ping. I’ll know the minute anything changes on the police report. Basically, then you’ll be a ghost.”
Only there is no “then” about it. I was already a ghost before this, wiped from existence, with no connection to a past I fear I’ll never remember. No one who cares about me will ever be able to find me, and if they did, they might end up as dead as I fear I will be soon.