Veronica's POV
I still hate myself for breaking down and almost admitting to Derek that I was raped two years ago. He thinks Alex assaulted me but I feel like I would know if I was sexually assaulted again, I'd feel it the next day... maybe.
It's easier to believe I haven't been raped again, I'd rather live in ignorance than go through that pain one more time.
Derek told me they captured him, so I immediately got ready to leave.
I don't have any other clothes, I had to put on the same dress I had before and it somehow smells of vodka and Irène's perfume.
I don't have any of my stuff here and my phone is probably in Alex's room.
Oh God, my keys too!
I don't want to leave Derek, we only spent a day together but I'm already used to it, it feels natural.
I know he won't let his guard down so there is no point in being here. I have some cash for the cab and the payphone Derek got me.
"Ugh, can I steal his jacket?" I ask myself as I pick up his jacket. It's still pretty cold outside despite being early.
I decide to leave it there and I put on my shoes. I turn off the lights and I walk out of the hotel room.
Once I get to the lobby I spot Derek at the entrance. He looks shocked to see me.
Probably because I didn't tell him I'd leave this fast.
He walks to me confused and he puts his phone in the back pocket.
"Where are you going?"
"You said you figured it out with Alex."
"Oh, god, no. We lost him," he says frustrated and I shush him because of the lady at the reception staring at us.
I pull him toward the elevator and I wait for him to speak once the doors close.
"We had to move him to get the recorded confession the right way, but when Irène and I stopped to fuel the car, he escaped from Dominic," he explains annoyed.
"You don't sound that worried."
"We'll catch him. It's not like he can go to the police and report us." He laughs.
Well, yeah, he can't. He is just as guilty as us.
"Why would you even leave?" he asks and I don't know what to say even though I know why.
We go back to the hotel room and I take out my shoes again. I'll have to sleep here again.
The worst part is that I love it.
"I don't have my clothes... underwear, phone-"
I say as I press my back against the wall. He takes out his shoes and he sits on the bed as he looks up at me.
"Underwear?" He chuckles.
"Yes, idiot. I have only the same panties I had that night. And well, this dress has an inbuilt bra," I explain embarrassed as I point to my dress.
"So, don't wear any then?" he jokes and I roll my eyes back amused. He knows what he is doing.
I look at the window and I notice it's barely midday.
"Remind me why I liked you." I try to keep a serious look on my face.
Derek stands up and he comes dangerously close to me. But the cold wall brings me back to reality.
"I think I can remind you why," he says in a husky tone seemingly forgetting that he is not supposed to flirt with me.
"Are you flirting with me?"
"No, not in the slightest."
"Hmm..." I try to hide my smirk but I fail miserably.
Suddenly I realize that he said he wants me, but he is refraining from it because he is afraid I'd get hurt.
But I'm so used to getting hurt.
I reach the back of my dress and I unzip it with one hand, knowing damn well I'm not wearing anything but my hand-washed underwear.
When he realizes what I'm about to do he doesn't take his eyes off mine, as if he is scared of what he might do if he looks at my body.
The tight dress is unzipped but still perfectly hugging my body. He isn't stopping me, he is waiting for me to continue.
Derek stands up and my heartbeat fastens but I hold my chin high as I look at him.
He stops near me and I unconsciously press my exposed back against the wall again.
"What are you doing?" he asks as he is so close to me I can smell his aftershave.
"Getting this dress off, you don't want me to leave, don't you?" I ask innocently but he doesn't buy it. "And since you are so fine without me wearing anything..."
I stretch out my arm to reach the end of his shirt but he grabs my wrist and looks down at me, he is still several inches taller than me even without shoes.
"Don't do this to me, Ronnie."
"Why? Does Antonia do it better?" I ask bitterly.
He shakes his head in disbelief and he takes a step backward, letting go of my wrist.
I close my eyes exasperated. "I don't want to be here."
I don't mean it. I'm just insanely jealous. It's consuming me.
When I try to zip the dress again, it breaks.
I sigh annoyed as I try to zip it with both of my hands and he stares at me.
"Turn around," he orders me and I listen, even though I'd rather annoy him.
I stare at the beige wall as I turn around, his body right behind me and my back exposed.
Derek places his hand on my lower back and holds the zip with the other hand.
I accidentally breathe heavy and I mentally scold myself for it. I know what he is thinking.
I didn't even do anything and she is already enjoying it.
I can hear him saying that in his mind, but he won't say it aloud.
His warm fingers graze on my bare skin and I swear he does it on purpose. He doesn't have to, but he touches me anyway.
He tries to zip the dress and it fails, so he puts his hand on my hips as he holds the cloth and tries again.
Somehow, this is way more erotic than I thought it would be.
He zips the dress only by half and suddenly I feel his hot breath on my ear, whispering, "stop teasing me."
I involuntarily smile as he fully zips the dress, his touch lingering for more than necessary.
I turn around when he is done and I underestimated how close he is when our noses lightly touch.
I was about to make a snarky comment but I forgot what I wanted to say as I feel his breath on my lips.
Fuck.
Fucking Alex. It's his fault. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for his creepy ass.
"I know what you are trying to do," he says and sighs. "And you know why we shouldn't."
"Our safety is screwed already. They are probably already following us."
"Answer me honestly, Veronica," he says as he looks at me, our faces still close.
I gulp down hard. I know what he is going to ask me. It was our problem a year and a half ago, and not much changed.
"Do you think you are more ready now than you were two years ago? If I had to let go and forget about your safety—which would be incredibly stupid—would it change anything? Would you still hide things from me? Would you still insult me to push me away whenever you get scared?"
I look down at my feet, not knowing what to say. I know I'm changed but I haven't reached the point where I'd be able to tell him why I cannot sleep some nights, why I have random triggers or flashbacks.
It makes it easier now that he knows that Alexander might have done something to me but it's not Alex that is tormenting my sleep and affecting my mental health.
It's that rapist.
I can't get over it, I feel weak. It's been two years and something and I still think about it.
Attacking back is never the right answer, but sometimes it's the only answer you have.
"Wow, that's nice coming from you. Didn't you repeatedly lie to me the whole past year?" I say annoyed, maybe it's not fair. We lied for different reasons but mine weren't less 'honorable' than his.
I walk past him and I put on my shoes again, for the third time today and I don't say anything else. I know he is staring at me.
The tension completely changes, it goes from sexual to anger in less than a few seconds.
"You can't go back to your dorm."
"Why not?" I ask annoyed. "Isn't Antonia coming over soon?"
"Immature," he mutters and I chuckle bitterly.
"Maybe. But I'm right."
"I'm not talking to her. Last time I talked to her was when she visited me in the hospital after you left. I asked her to stop."
I look up at him and I change the subject, kind of happy he ditched her. "Don't you have to kidnap Alex again?"
"Irène is handling that."
"You let her do your dirty work?"
"She kind of pointed a gun at my head."
"Jesus Christ. Aggressive much," I say.
She wants to get revenge on him first, simply because she was right. There is nothing else Irène Leroy loves more than proving she is right.
"You are staying here tonight. But I'll probably be busy with torturing Alex," he says in slight amusement.
"Don't you think I'm capable of seeing him?"
He looks at me with an indecipherable expression as he hands me his jacket.
"Your call."
I smile brightly. I'm ready to see Alex as he suffers for what he did to us.
~
"How did you manage to lose Alex?" I ask Dom as we head to the garage Derek rented.
"I got distracted and he hit me."
"Rookie mistake," Irène mutters as she checks the gun and then puts it in the back of her mom jeans.
"Enough talking. We need to find him," Derek says and I look him up and down. He is so much serious and dominant when he isn't only with me. I soften him up.
He noticed me staring, so I quickly look away still feeling the tension from our previous conversation. Irène stares at me as if we fucked.
After Derek closes the garage and walks to the car with Dominic, Irène pulls me aside.
"How was it?" she asks me in a whisper, as we stare at them walking in front of us. Luckily they can't hear anything.
"We didn't do anything. We just slept," I say disappointed.
Why am I disappointed? Why do I so badly want to do something with him even if he goes back to ignoring me?
"Nah, I don't buy it. You were close at least, huh?" she asks and I tilt my head back and laugh.
"Well, I was about to take off my dress and expose my tits, but other than that everything was chill," I say with amusement.
"Hmm, I'd pay for that."
I slightly push her away as a joke.
"Jesus," I mutter.
"Next time take it off, promise he won't resist," she suggests and I shake my head.
Would he resist? He keeps saying we need to be safe, but something tells me he would forget about that if we sleep in the same bed again tonight.
"I think it's idiotic that he is only rejecting you to keep you safe," she continues as we almost reach the car, and Derek turns.
"We are far from safe, baby," she whispers as I look at Derek.
She is right. The fact that I'm hanging out with them right now puts me in so much danger.
I look at the time and it's 2 pm. Tomorrow I have class but I know I'll miss it.
"What were you two talking about?" Dominic asks with curiosity.
"Normal lady chat," Irène replies. "Whether she should sleep with this guy or nah."
I widen my eyes as I get in the backseat with her and Derek turns to me surprised while Dominic laughs.
"Who is this mysterious guy?" Dom asks and I look away shyly.
I don't reply.
"That's not for you to know," Irène says jokingly.
After thirty minutes we reach the campus. I'm going in with Irène. It's better if Derek stays in the car.
Irène and I get out of the car to look for Alex and hope he isn't on campus so we can steal back my stuff.
We walk down the hallway until we reach his dorm and we quietly unlock his door.
To our amazement, it's empty and his backpack is missing. He always takes it wherever he goes but I bet it's because it's filled with 'stuff.'
The security guards here are useless, they'd rather beat me up for pulling Shanice's hair.
I want to check on Nicole, I know she is okay because Dominic talked to her but I want to see her.
Irène said we cannot waste time. We go back to the car and just as Irène and I get in the car, she gets a message.
She looks at it for a few seconds and then she furrows her eyebrows.
I hover over her phone to see what it is and my mouth's immediately agape when I realize it's the video of her fucking James, the one she sent to Nicole.
Alexander: if you don't stop looking for me I'll send it to everyone, even open a porn website just for you
How the fuck did he send this message right as we came back from his dorm? Does he have people spying on us here?
Irène smirks as if it doesn't bother her that much. "Old trick. Small inconvenience," she says in a victorious tone.
"I know where he is. His family has a second house two hours away from here," she says as her eyes brighten.
"Two hours?" Derek asks annoyed.
"If you are wrong..." Dom adds.
"Nah, I'm right. He has nowhere to go," Irène says.
Derek starts driving as soon as she tells him the location. The GPS shows two hours and thirteen minutes left.
"What if he isn't alone?" I ask.
"We wait," Derek replies coldly.
Derek goes on a separate street that takes less time to get to Alex's second house.
The street is empty and no cars ahead of us. I want to talk to Derek... I want to ask if he is okay.
He seemed a bit annoyed with me.
I can't ask him anything now, not with them...
I glance at the passing trees with brown and orange leaves blurring out my vision. For a second I consider opening the window to stick my head out, feel the wind through my hair, the coldness on my skin.
As I'm about to roll down the window, the car rapidly turns and spins. It makes a screeching sound as we abruptly stop near a tree. I scream out in shock as the impact makes me hit the head on the soft seat in front.
I don't understand what happened and I look at Derek for a split second.
He turns his head toward me for a bit before gripping the steering wheel with both of his hands and he accelerates.
Irène is shocked and gripping the seat with her hands. She turns her head to the rear window and I do the same.
"What the fuck..." Irène mutters.
The black SUV is behind, now further away as Derek accelerated.
They tried to fucking kill us.
"Are you okay?" Derek asks and I turn to him abruptly, he looks at me through the rear-view mirror. I brush the hair out of my face and I try to calm myself down.
"They tried to-" I gather my thoughts.
"I know. And they won't give up," he says as he turns right. "Alex can wait."
Fuck. Alex absolutely cannot wait. We need to get to him before he gets to us.
"Veronica," Derek calls out my attention and I look at him terrified. "Alex isn't the first priority anymore. We need to be safe."
I nod.
Yeah... it's not like Alex will come to look for us. He ran away, he is terrified.
But he will look for me.
"Don't worry. He won't come anywhere close to you," Irène reassures me but it falls short.
She can't be with me all the time.
Fuck. Everyone is out to get us, I don't even know where to look out anymore.
"Are we going home-" I ask but I quickly realize there is no home.
"We can't go back to Georgia, it's dangerous."
Dominic looks around the street frantically and at the trees trying to spot the black SUV following us on another way.
"Nicole... Shanice." I remember in terror. They will come for them!
"Shanice has a house filled with bodyguards and Nicole is safe away from us. They don't care about her," Dom explains.
"Alex would absolutely use Nicole to get to us," I retort.
"I don't think he wants anything to do with us," Derek adds.
"'I don't think...'" I quote him and laugh annoyed. "That's just an assumption."
He furrows his eyebrows and doesn't say anything else.
"Fine. You want to go back to get her? To get her murdered by the men who almost killed us?" he yells and I lean back in my seat, my jaw tight.
I won't say anything else to him. He is pissed off at me, and I hate him. Case closed.
"And where the fuck are we going to go then?" I yell and Irène looks at me.
Well, I tried to not say anything else but it worked only for thirty seconds.
He doesn't reply.
"I hate you so much," I murmur under my breath and he looks at me through the rear-view mirror.
"We will lay low for a few weeks, let the water calm down, and then you can go back to college," Dom replies instead of Derek.
"There won't be anything to go back to," I say spitefully.
Lay low? I chuckle. They will be waiting for us to come back, the perfect opportunity to fuck us up.
"How did they even know where we were?" I suddenly realize as I stare at the empty field passing quickly by the window.
"They followed us, there is no other way," Irène says.
"There is something wrong..." I say as I look at my phone that Alex kept for a day.
Alexander had access many times to my phone, even months before.
I get a feeling of dread in my chest... as if there is something I should have known from the start.
"They didn't follow us..." I mutter as I search through my phone, every app.
The two now dead men in the SUV honked at me before I even went to Derek's apartment. It wasn't a random thing, they knew.
They knew I was going there.
No one else knew that. But the weirder thing is that Alexander also knew I was at Derek's place before I saw those messages.
How can both of them know where I am... and it's doesn't help that Alexander bought drugs from them several times.
Fuck, Felix sent Derek to hurt him because Alex was going to talk about the drug dealing shit.
That's why Alex texted us the moment I took back the phone from his dormitory. He knew!
The signs were always there... how could I have missed it?!
"What happened?" They all ask me as they notice the shock on my face.
I try to roll the window but it's locked from Derek.
"Open the fucking window!" I yell and he does as I say, even if he is confused.
I throw the phone out of the car window as hard as I can and I hear it smashing beneath the wheels.
"What the fuck..." Dom says.
"My phone was being traced-" I take a shallow breath. "It must have been Alex. He must be working with them... there is no other way! They knew too much," I explain frantically.