AMBER - His to Reclaim: 50 Loving States, New York Pt. 2

1. Mean To Me

One

Mean To Me

Amber

“What does everything else mean?”

Cold granite silence. Then…

“Everything else means you’re coming with me.”

My stomach drops. I’m not disabled—that’s what I always insist when I’m invited to speak at schools, classrooms, and programs for the blind. If anything, I tell them, the loss of my sight has made me more ambitious, more intelligent, and more confident than I would have otherwise been if it had remained. Stronger. My blindness has made me stronger than I could have ever hoped to be otherwise. It’s a very inspiring speech.

But Luca has rendered me completely powerless in the blink of a sightless eye. My three years of law school, five years of martial arts training, and six years of occupational therapy all became useless at his negotiation table. Pointless talents that might as well have never been cultivated at all.

He’s no longer the vengeful boy who couldn’t let go of what my father did to him. Now, he’s a ruthless don. And in the end, there’s no real negotiation between us. Only Luca’s display of absolute power.

“You’re going to get up now and walk calmly out of this house to my car,” he informs me as this new reality sinks into my brain. And clever as I usually am, I just can’t come up with a rebuttal to his order. At least not one that won’t put my best friend’s life in danger.

A few minutes after his pronouncement, I find myself in Luca’s backseat. Again. It could be a different car. I’m sure he’s racked up several by now. But I’ve got a sick scene of the crime feeling in the pit of my stomach as we drive off, some “yeah, you f****d up, girl” sixth sense tells me this is the same backseat where we had s*x a little over five months ago.

But I’d die before asking him to confirm that suspicion. “Where’s Naima?” I ask instead.

No answer.

“Why isn’t she here?”

No answer.

“What did you do with her?” I demand in my best courtroom voice.

But that question gets answered the same as the others. With a big ball of silence.

He’s also not wearing cologne today, and I can’t even hear him breathing beside me, no matter how much I strain my ears. It’s like sitting next to a statue, emitting nothing but concrete silence as the driver—who didn’t bother to introduce himself this time—ferries us to someplace unknown. Stop and go city streets, intermixed with the short glides and slows of highways. Eventually, we come to a stop.

“This is where you get off,” Luca tells me.

Before I can respond the car door opens and a voice says, “Hey, Amber, it’s Rock. I’m going to help you out of the car now.”

Either Rock’s good with the visually impaired or he read up. Like a perfectly trained boy scout, he places a hand at my elbow before clasping my palm to help me out of the backseat. Then he keeps his hand right below my elbow as he guides me forward.

Though nothing’s been explained to me, I sense we’re in Manhattan based on the late morning quiet of the street I step onto with Rock, and the lack of accent, foreign or New York, from the doorman who lets us into the building with a cheery good morning.

We walk into a lobby, hushed, cool, and crisp. It smells like a modern construction project to me, thoroughly insulated and without any of the musty damp grandma’s attic smell that most of the 20th-century buildings in New York carry.

Rock guides me to an elevator that goes up and up and up for an impossible number of floors. So, either it’s slow, or I’m in a skyscraper. I get the feeling it’s the latter when the doors open on what turns out to be the apartment itself. My mobility cane plinks against marble floors. The real kind, I guess from the dense sound when my stick strikes it. Not the cheaper, plastic laced stuff that’s so popular these days.

“There’s a set of winding stairs coming up,” Rock informs me a few steps into the apartment. “We won’t both fit, so you’ll need to hold on to the handlebar—”

“Where’s Naima,” I demand, interrupting his helpful tip. “I want to be taken to her. Make sure she’s safe.”

A dull electronic thrum interrupts Rock’s answer. Fabric rustles as he pulls his phone out, and then comes a heavy sigh. “I have to take this. She’s already up in her room. First door past the stairs on your right. I’ll let you go alone, but keep in mind, there’s only one way out of this apartment, and we’ve got a guard at both the bottom of the stairs and the elevator 24/7.”

Way over my daily limit for threats, I walk away from his warning, and carefully navigate my way up the tricky stairs. But as soon as I reach the landing, all precaution disappears. I rush to the right, swinging my cane until I hit a door.

Pushing down on the handle, I let myself into a room that already smells like Naima’s citrusy perfume.

“Nai?” I say, hoping it’s not just a lingering scent.

She rushes into my arms, crying. She’s only four years older than me, and the maturity gap has all but disappeared as we’ve gone from a social worker and visually impaired college mentee to best friends, ready to move in together in order to raise my baby.

But right now our original roles have completely reversed. In fact, I feel like a helpless mother, holding her tight as my swollen stomach will allow as I assure her, “I’ll figure a way out of this, I promise you. I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”

I tell her everything. About the unprotected s*x with Luca and the “hey, you’re already pregnant, dummy” shocker when I went in for my fertility consult. Naima had been right about one thing she told Stone. That first visit had been out-of-pocket, so I’d ended up paying hundreds of dollars for a blood test that told me I was already pregnant with Luca’s baby.

Basically, our momentary hookup had been a perfect storm of bad timing. After the miscarriage, I’d gone the c****m and pill route with Pascoal and never had so much as a scare. But after our break up I’d immediately stopped taking the pill in preparation for fertility treatments. That was just a few weeks before Sylvie’s party, which gave any birth control still left in my system plenty of time to wear off before I accidentally hooked up with Luca in the backseat of his car.

“I was so stupid, and I didn’t know how to tell you, so I just didn’t. But this is all my fault, and I’m so sorry you got dragged into this.”

Strangely, my confession is what stops Naima’s panicked tears.

She takes a deep breath. “No, this isn’t your fault. Who wants to co-parent with a mafioso? I would have kept it secret, too. And now that I know the whole story, I’m glad that azaroso with the g*n decided to take me prisoner too. If Luca’s going to straight kidnap you, I want to be here, trying to help you get out of this—not back in Jackson Heights worried to death about you and the baby.”

This right here is why I love Naima. Why I consider her a sister, even though we’re both only children and not related by blood.

“Plus, if we’re going to be kidnapped and imprisoned, this place isn’t bad at all,” Naima says, her voice taking on a new cheer. “Like three of the walls are all window, and the room looks like a five-star hotel! There’s only one bed, so we’ll have to share, but it’s huge! And there’s not too much extra furniture. A few chairs and one of those half-couches, half-loungers—I think they call them settees. Anyway, I can just move them against a wall so they won’t get in your way—”

The door suddenly clicks open, and Naima cuts off with a scream. “Stone’s back!” she says, panicky as she wraps her arms around me.

I shake my head, because Stone’s scent is a whole bunch of soap and “not really here,” without a trace of cologne. But the man who’s entered our room smells more like Luca. Expensive, refined.

“No, that’s not Stone,” I explain to Naima.

“No, it’s him. It’s definitely him. He’s back to kill me now that they’ve got you trapped here!”

Before I can answer her, Rock says, “Hey, hey, don’t be scared. I’m not Stone. I swear I’m not Stone.”

I feel Naima’s body loosen inside my arms. Then she pulls away from me.

“You look just like him,” Naima says. She sounds both cautious and pitiful.

“I know. Have since the day I was born. He’s my identical twin.”

“Oh…” Naima says, her voice becoming even smaller. “Uh…sorry I screamed.”

“No, I’m sorry, sorry he scared you,” Rock answers emphatically, his voice careful and gentle like he’s dealing with a cat too petrified to come down from a tree. “There wasn’t any need for that. Your name’s Naima, right?”

“Right,” she says. And though she’s a thirty-six-year-old woman, she sounds more like a shy teenager now. “And you are…?”

“Rock,” he says, “It’s really nice to meet you, Naima—though of course, I wish it could’ve been over something like dinner.”

She giggles, and I just stand there, stunned. Because I swear, it sounds like I’m back in the Longacre Theatre, listening to Jane and Calogero meet cute in the first act of the A Bronx Tale musical with my assistive app.

After exchanging introductions, Rock and Naima go over the details about packing her bags and mine and bringing them here. Like this is a previously planned vacation, not a total snatch and grab.

“Is it okay if I make a list?” Naima asks shyly. “There are a few extra things I’ll be wanting, including a picture of my parents.”

“Nai, c’mon,” I say. “We won’t be here that long. I’m going to figure a way out of this.”

“Of course, I can make sure we get you that picture of your parents,” Rock answers as if I didn’t say anything. “Just tell me which one or I can have our guys bring over all of them. Whatever you want,” Rock answers. Somehow he sounds more like a concierge than a warden, totally at the bidding of my monstrous ex-husband.

At least he does when he’s addressing Naima. There’s a lot less enthusiasm in his voice, when he informs me, “You should also make a list, Amber. Luca will be having dinner with you tonight and every night from now on, and he says he wants you to cook.”

My brow furrows. “He wants to have dinner with me? And he expects me to cook it?”

“Yeah, he does,” Rock replies. Final answer, as if cooking for my kidnapper should’ve totally been on my list of expected outcomes.

I stand there stunned, and Naima snaps out of her super early case of Stockholm Syndrome to say, “There’s no way Amber’s going to cook for that man. He’s holding her prisoner! Yeah, in a crazy nice penthouse, but still, that’s an outrageous ask.”

However, as Naima protests, my mind works, and after a few moments of deliberation, I come to a decision with an evil inner smile.

“Fine, I’ll cook, just show me to the kitchen.”