Kidnapped By The Italian Mafia

"Do you think I'll go broke by indulging in La Perla?"

My butler side eyed me in the mirror from where he was brushing his teeth as I applied under eye cream to my face. As usual, my pyjamas consisted of a silky negligee that was modest enough to be worn in the presence of a man who I wasn't intimate with without provoking him. It looked great on me.​​

"Aren't you worth billions of dollars?" Henri asked once he'd rinsed his mouth. The man rose from his hunched over position and took a spray bottle from the counter. I think the most bizarre thing I'd learned about him was that he had a night time skincare routine, which made sense because his skin was amazing.

Still, I wasn't used to a man admitting that he had a skincare routine, and this made it all the better. We would always stand in the bathroom at night doing our faces. It was strangely domestic.

"Billions of euros, my friend. But that's Kat, not Isabella." I quickly sprayed some rejuvenating serum on and fanned my hands in front of my face.

"Right, two different lives." Henri led the way out of the bathroom and I turned off the light behind us. We went to the bed and got in through our respective sides, him grabbing a book and me turning over on my side to sleep.

See? Domestic.

I was passed out and probably drooling on myself when a hand wrapped around my waist and I felt pressure at my back. Henri was cuddling me and basically putting some of his body weight on me, which was weird, but maybe he was a touchy person with intimate settings and his brain relaxed enough in his sleep to pull me closer like this.

Psychology was weird, I didn't know much about it, but anything was possible.

It wasn't until I felt cold metal touch the skin of my t.h.i.g.h under the duvet that my eyes snapped open and I tensed. Henri placed a kiss at my jaw, close to my ear.

"Someone's in here with us."

"Where?" I turned around to kiss him so we could communicate without speaking. I felt him mouth the word bathroom against my lips and pushed a hand into his hair. To make it more realistic, if course. Just in case we were being watched. Right.

There had been a plan we'd come up with for situations like this, and knowing we were ready made me feel very reassured. "I'll neutralise it. You get the bags."

The current situation was less than ideal, and I quickly tried to think of something quick to use as a weapon. My father had taught me that almost anything could be used to kill and I really needed something that could be used long distance.

Luckily, our hotel key card was sitting fairly close to me on the bed, so I flopped a hand out to pretend to check the time and dragged it back under the covers with me.

"Bathroom." I mumbled sleepily, half turning to wriggle around. Henri let me go and I slipped out from under the covers, taking the key card hand and pushing it under my negligee to pretend to scratch at my t.h.i.g.h on the way to the restroom.

As soon as I'd stepped into the bathroom, I felt a presence with me. Like the reserved fiancée I was supposed to be, I closed the door behind me and switched on the light.

The bathroom was completely devoid of any life except my own, but something wasn't right. For one, the window was open. I knew better than to stick my head out to look for anyone who escaped from it and instead drew the glass panel shut, cl.i.c.k.i.n.g the lock into place.

Secondly, there was a plain envelope on the bathroom counter. It was flat and I could only see something like a check in it when I held it up to the light, so obviously there wasn't a bomb or anything in it.

"Hey, the bathroom's clear. You can stop packing." I let him know as I walked back out holding the envelope. "Someone left a message for us."

"How'd they know we were here?" Henri stopped fiddling with our duffel bags and frowned at the envelope. The room was still dark, the only light coming from the moon through the large windows.

"We haven't exactly been hiding, remember?" He nodded at me as I sat on the bed and placed the envelope on the nightstand, ready to crawl back under the duvets and to sleep. "I'm going to open this in the morning."

"Why not now?" Henri asked while putting the bags away. He was done by the time I was slipping back under the covers.

"If I open it now and it's something terrible, I'll lose sleep over it and I'm not willing to do that." Really, my beauty sleep was too important for me. "Thanks for warning me."

"Of course." He smiled and made his way back to his side of the bed, where he unscrewed the silencer. "I'm sorry for touching you like that. I shouldn't have been so forward."

"Henri, I literally kissed you. With sleepy person breath. I should be apologising to you." I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at his politeness because in the moment, such contact was necessary. "I just hope we don't have to keep doing that in the future, it's getting kind of frequent."

"Do you though?"

"Hmm?" I turned around in bed to catch him smirking to himself, and my cheeks felt like they'd caught fire. "Shut up. Go to sleep."

"We didn't talk about what happened in that taxi." He faced me head on and I immediately looked away. There was nothing to talk about, as far as I was concerned. "I know we were trying to be convincing but that was a little too genuine, in my opinion. I mean, you let me grab your a.s.s, that was probably a little unnecessary."

No it wasn't.

"Henri."

"Yes, madame?"

"You're fired."