Tess’s heart gave an extra-hard thud as she stopped dead, suddenly very conscious of the oppressive darkness that seemed to press in on her.
She had put herself in exactly the sort of situation the police had suggested she avoid.
Teetering feverishly on the brink of panic, she took a couple of deep breaths that made her cough, not calm. The hacking sound echoed off the high walls on either side as she resisted the messages from her feverish brain that made her want to turn around and run. That was a bad idea on two counts: she wasn’t capable of running and she was actually closer now to the other side—the main street, where there were lights and people and safety.
‘You’ll be fine...fine, totally fine, you are not a victim...not a victim...’ Her mantra stalled as the figure appeared at the other end of the alley. He barely paused before he began to walk towards her.
Tess opened her mouth to scream and nothing came out. She was living a nightmare, the horribly familiar recurrent one where she was paralyzed. She couldn’t breathe. As if something malevolent were sitting on her chest—someone malevolent.
‘Relax, I’m here to look after you, darling—’
It was not a scream but it was a noise. Desperately she tried again to raise the alarm...
* * *
‘Without knowing the details of your sister’s case I can’t be sure, but from what you tell me I doubt very much if she would be a suitable candidate for the treatment.’
Don’t kill the messenger!
Danilo let his eyelids lower to hide his expression before letting the tense breath escape his lungs in a carefully managed exhalation.
‘But if you would like me to see her...?’
Danilo’s lashes lifted.
The man sitting opposite saw the question in the dark depths. ‘Obviously you’ll want to discuss it with her?’
‘Who?’
‘Your sister. I understand that she had already had several unsuccessful treatments?’
From somewhere the memory of the angry words of the kid he had warned off his sister the previous month came back to him. ‘You don’t want to see me here again, but what about what Nat wants? She wants to see me, and I want to see her. I love her. When are you going to let her live her own life?’
‘She wants to walk.’
The man’s understanding expression aggravated Danilo, who got to his feet and tipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘I will be in touch.’
Her own life.
A life. That was what he wanted for his sister. It was to that end he had taken her to every top spinal expert, he had made himself familiar with every new piece of research. He would not give up, but he would ask her and she would agree with him.
She always did.
Frowning at his annoying inner voice, he waved away the driver who had got out of the limo to open the door.
‘I’ll walk.’
As he strode, hands dug in his pockets, along the pavement shining from the recent shower, he was lost in his own thoughts so he barely registered the sting of unseasonal hail that began to fall again, quickly covering his hair in icy, white fragments that clung to the dark strands. It was a typical British summer.
There were moments in life where a man was forced to face up to his failings, his weaknesses. He’d been in London the night that he’d faced his, the night of the accident that had robbed his parents of their lives and left his teenage sister in a wheelchair.
He should have been there, he should have been at the wheel of the car, and if he had things might have been different. He’d never know because he’d had a better offer, a night with a beautiful blonde in London. The excuse had come so easily.
Self-disgust churned in Danilo’s belly as he relived the moment when the police had finally tracked him down to the hotel room. By that point the city sky had been streaked with morning light and his little sister had been in a hospital bed in Rome fighting for her life for over seven hours. And she had been alone because their parents had been lying on a mortuary slab.
He’d put a night of casual sex ahead of duty to his family.
If he’d not been such a selfish bastard...well, who knew? Things might have turned out differently. Would his more youthful reflexes have made all the difference? He’d never know; that was his punishment. Compared to Nat, though, he’d got off pretty lightly and she’d done nothing to be punished for, but one thing he did know was that while he had breath in his body he would not stop searching for a cure for his sister.
It was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, he had no doubts. And yet...? His frowning contemplation of the wet pavement deepened as he trudged along it with the surgeon’s words—discuss it with her—floating around in his head. He kept picturing Nat’s face the last time her hopes had been raised by the promise of a miracle cure and then dashed. She’d looked so bleak.
He shook his head, refusing to acknowledge the doubts in his head. His little sister was the strongest person he knew and he had to stay strong for her, stay positive, and one day she would walk.
He was so deep in his own thoughts that he’d walked past the alley before he registered the sound: a woman’s cry, filled with fear. His response was hard wired—there was no question of walking on and pretending he’d not heard. A few seconds later he was at the entrance to the cobbled alleyway; the overhead street light illuminated the scene and seconds told him all he needed to know.
The guy had hold of the woman and she was trying to escape.
Danilo struggled to hold back the red mist that threatened. Bullies were a species that always challenged the objectivity he prided himself on. He could spot one at fifty paces, and like muscle memory the sight of a bully in action always awoke the fifteen-year-old in him, the one who had yet to enjoy a spectacular growth spurt that had seen him grow twelve inches in as many months and the musculature that went with it putting him safely beyond the attention of those creeps in life who looked for victims who were seen as weaker or different.
* * *
The man didn’t see him coming so he put up no resistance when Danilo took hold of his collar and physically dragged him away from the young woman. One glimpse of her pale face, too pale to be pretty—the cheekbones too sharp, the eyes too big, the mouth...actually the mouth was pretty good—cranked up his chivalrous levels several more notches.
She reminded him of Nat, not that there was any physical similarity. Nat was beautiful, not plain, and his sister was tall, not tiny. Still, he’d not been there for Nat when she’d needed him, but he was here now.
‘What the hell...?’
The guy let out a frustrated bellow, flailing wildly, his arms windmilling as he was set down on his feet yards away from the cowering figure of the woman. Apart from her, he didn’t look so big—and obviously he didn’t feel it either, when he turned and saw Danilo standing between him and his victim.
The aggression in the man’s face diminished significantly but the wariness in his eyes was mingled with calculation as he held out his hands and smiled.
‘This is a misunderstanding...’ He spoke while moving in a direction that would give him access to the woman now hidden from his view behind Danilo.
Danilo negated his ploy by shadowing the move before allowing his glance to linger on the scratch that was seeping blood on the guy’s cheek. Good for her, he thought approvingly.
‘I don’t think so. Do you want me to call the police?’ he asked the woman without taking his eyes off the other man.
‘I just want to go home.’
The