Bloody Heart (Brutal Birthright #4) - Sophie Lark Page 0,7

faster.

That ten minutes together in the car seemed like hours. And yet, I can hardly believe it happened at all. No one else would believe it if I told them.

I can’t tell anyone about this. For one thing, my father would be furious. Also, as foolish as this sounds, I don’t want to get that man in trouble. He stole the car, yes, but he didn’t hurt me. He didn’t even take the Benz with him.

Actually . . . he was quite a gentleman. Not in manners—he was rough and abrupt, especially at first. His voice sent shivers down my spine. It was deep and gravelly, definitely the voice of a villain.

He didn’t look like a gentleman either. He was huge—both tall and broad, barely able to fit in the car. His arms looked as thick as my whole body. He had ink-black hair, rough stubble all over his face, black hair on his arms, and even the backs of his hands. And his eyes were ferocious. Every time he looked at me in the mirror, I felt pinned in place against the seat.

Still, I believed him when he said he wasn’t going to hurt me. Actually, I believed all the things he said. The way he talked was so blunt that it seemed like he had to be honest.

I press my palms against my cheeks to cool them off. I feel flustered and hot. My hands are hot, too—they’re not helping.

I can’t stop thinking about his eyes looking back at me, that rough voice, and those insanely broad shoulders. His huge hands gripping the steering wheel . . .

I’ve never seen a man like that. Not in any country I’ve visited.

I feel my phone vibrating in my little clutch, and I pull it out. I see a dozen missed calls and many more messages.

I pick up the call, saying, “Tata?”

“Simone!” My father cries, his voice thick with relief. “Are you alright? Where are you? What’s happening?”

“I’m fine, Tata! I’m okay. I’m at the History Museum, at the corner of Lincoln Park.”

“Thank god,” my father cries. “Stay right where you are, the police are on their way.”

I couldn’t leave, unless it was on foot. I never got a driver’s license.

It only takes minutes for the police to arrive. They pull me out of the car and surround me, putting a blanket around my shoulders, asking me a hundred questions at once.

All I say is, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” over and over.

They take me directly back home, on my father’s insistence I’m sure. He’s already waiting out on the front porch. He pulls me away from the police, telling them not to ask me any more questions.

Mama keeps kissing me and holding my face between her hands like she can’t believe it’s really me.

Even Serwa is awake and down from her room, wrapped up in her favorite fuzzy robe. She hugs me too—not as hard as Mama. I hug her back just as gently. My sister is ten years older than me, but a head shorter. I rest my chin on her hair, smelling her familiar scent of jasmine soap.

Once the police are gone, the real interrogation begins.

My father sits me down in the formal living room, demanding to know what happened.

“A man stole the car, Tata. I was in the backseat. He told me to get down and cover my eyes. Then he dropped me off.”

The lie comes out of me with remarkable ease.

I’m not used to lying—especially not to my parents. But there’s no way I could explain to them what really happened. I don’t even understand it myself.

“Tell me the truth, Simone,” my father says sternly. “Did he touch you? Did he hurt you?”

“Yafeu—” Mama says.

He holds up a hand to silence her.

“Answer me,” he says.

“No,” I say firmly. “He never touched me.”

It was me that touched him.

“Good,” my father says with immeasurable relief.

Now he hugs me, wrapping his strong arms around my shoulders and squeezing me tight.

I wonder if he would have done that if I had been “touched?”

“You missed your party,” I say to Mama.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, tucking a lock of pale, shimmering hair behind her ear. “Mon, Dieu, what a city! I knew this would happen. Everyone said it’s all criminals and thieves here, shootings every day.”

She looks at my father with reproach. It’s always his choice which appointments he takes, where we go. Only twice has my mother put down her foot with him—when she was pregnant with my sister,