Binding Attractions

Chapter 3

The heavy-looking long, gray curtains covering the windows and hiding the darkness of the night outside told Nadiya’s fuzzy brain she was not in her tiny apartment.

Not only didn’t she have such an awful taste in color, but her tiny apartment didn’t boast of such large windows, either. The curtains were practically from floor to ceiling. And what little of the window frame she could see told her the windows were just as big. Who needed such enormous windows? She mused. Nope, she definitely wasn’t in her apartment. So where was she? Was it time to panic? She didn’t think so. It wasn’t the first time she woke up in a room not her own.

Besides, she was alive and, from what she could tell, she still had all her body pieces attached to her. Nadiya was sleeping on her stomach, her preferred sleeping position. Things didn’t look bad yet. She was going to hold off the panic attack until she knew more.

She blinked a few times to clear her sight and then stretched her limbs across what felt like a comfortable bed with a soft groan. Suddenly, the telling aches in certain areas of her body quickly ensured she remembered the last six hours, and she knew exactly where she was.

In a hotel room with Glisson.

Nadiya closed her eyes and groaned some more, this time from self-disapproval. However, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Once she met Su at the club and Glisson had joined them, the end had been inevitable. Like always.

After a beat, she opened her eyes again and took in the hotel room they were in. Nadiya had to double-blink. Now that she was piecing things together, the large windows really held more meaning. Unlike their previous encounters when Glisson seemed to prefer a cheap room paid by the hour, the room she was in looked more classy and pricy.

That certainly had Nadiya sitting up straight and really giving the room an appraising look. The abrupt movement made her nauseous and wish she could just lie back down for another hour or three, but she forced herself to focus.

The room was large. Almost as large as her entire apartment, from what she could see. She realized she had been right about the bed she was on. It was comfortable and large; she guessed a king-size. The sheets were definitely more classy and soft to the touch. And they were tangled all around her naked legs.

There was a large fifty-five-inch television mounted on the wall opposite the bed. Two tub navy blue single-seat sofas sat between the bed and the television. They were the kind she admired in magazines but had never gotten to the point of purchasing; budget issues. To complete the set, a glass coffee table with black thick legs sat between them with a shaggy rug in various shades of blue underneath.

A small table and single chair were tucked against the wall to the left, with an antique-looking lamp in the corner.

For art, the wall above the bed held a three-piece abstract painting in shades of yellow and gold.

More details caught her eye. A newspaper on the coffee table and a white shirt thrown over the back of one sofa. They had Nadiya thinking Glisson hadn’t paid for this room for an hour of s*x with her.

Gingerly, she got out of bed and made her way first to the sofas and then to the wardrobe that had suddenly caught her eye. Just like she suspected, she found three suits hanging there and several shirts and socks folded neatly on the shelf.

Now, Nadiya didn’t know a Giorgio Armani suit from a custom-made Brioni, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the suits before her cost more than a thousand dollars. They screamed ‘expensive’ in every stitch and thread.

She turned around and gave the room another look. It seemed Nadiya had been drunk enough not to care where she ended up. Of course, she could console herself into thinking she had let her guard down because she had been with Glisson, but trust wasn’t something she threw around like cheap popcorn at the park ducks.

She had to face the fact that she had been reckless. Extremely so. She had consumed too much alcohol and hadn’t even noticed where she was taken. That truth planted a seed of unease in her gut.

Glisson was good-looking in the traditional kind of way. He had an impressive body that showed dedication to workouts. But the thing Nadiya had really liked about him was the air of a bad boy he carried with him like his favorite cologne. He always wore leather and shades, and had arms full of ink, just like her.

Nadiya had never asked what he did for a living. They just weren’t that kind of friends. But she had assumed. Maybe he was a mechanic or something boring, like an artist. Because she knew he couldn’t be in formal employment with the tattoos all over his arms. The point was, none of her assumptions explained the room she was in. A man didn’t pay to stay in such a room and own that quality of suits unless he had money to throw around. Perhaps he was a trust fund baby? She gave it some thought and shook her head no. It didn’t fit.

For a moment, Nadiya felt like the epitome of the saying about assumptions and a certain body part.

She moved away from the wardrobe, determined to find her clothes. She hoped she would feel more at ease once she was dressed, but she knew only leaving the hotel room would ease the apprehension building in her bones.

As she pulled on the black vinyl pants she had worn to the club, she finally heard the water running in what sounded like the shower. Nadiya realized Glisson was in the bathroom, which was the closed door on the other side of the room near the bed.

She quickly clasped her strapless bra back on and was searching for her missing crop top when she spotted a laptop under the coffee table.

Nadiya looked over her shoulder at the closed bathroom door, then at the laptop again. Her hesitation lasted barely half a minute, and then she was moving.

She sat on the rug facing the bathroom door. Every bone in her body told her she was making the wrong decision, but she was already engaged and the adrenaline was pumping.

Upon opening the laptop, Nadiya discovered that Glisson hadn’t shut it down on his last use, and the device hadn’t gone to sleep, so there was no need for a password.

“Thank God,” she muttered under her breath.

A password wouldn’t have stopped her, but she would have needed more time. And Nadiya highly doubted Glisson planned to shower for hours. There was no explanation she could give for going through his laptop if he caught her. At least, no explanation that would save her from the definite repercussions of being nosy. So she had to be fast.

With that in mind, she gave the home screen a quick glance before quickly checking for recent activities. That was always the quickest way to find out what someone was doing.

Some part of her hoped she would find pictures of bikes and cars. Or maybe embarrassing baby photos. Hell, he was a red-blooded, healthy man. She would even expect to find some porn. But what she found seconds later was nothing so innocent.

Her blood ran cold in her veins, and a shudder overtook her body. Nadiya had opened a recently accessed folder with several photographs. And they were pictures of dead people.

There was no doubt in her mind that the men and women lying motionless in pools of dark red were anything but real and not some creative Hollywood fabrication. It was in the way their bodies were positioned and the look in their eyes. Like they were frozen in shock and horror.

She went through half a dozen pictures before she closed her eyes and thought she was about to lose the contents of her stomach. And at that time of the night, after several hours of clubbing, it would be nothing more than half-digested beef jerky and fermented alcohol.

What was Glisson doing with a folder full of pictures of dead people? Oh God, Nadiya thought, had she hooked up with a necrophiliac or worse, a serial killer?

The thought made her skin crawl, and she immediately shook her head. She didn’t know Glisson that well, but she didn’t want to jump to the worst conclusion at the drop of a hat.

She closed the folder and opened another recent window he had been on. It looked like an encrypted messaging software.

Any iota of hope Nadiya had held on to that Glisson was just a normal guy flew out the window. Right before her eyes was a brief message with instructions to eliminate the target before midnight tomorrow. A picture was attached to the message and Nadiya’s chest squeezed tight when she saw the target was just a teenage girl with wide, innocent eyes and a beautiful smile.

Glisson had responded to the message. He confirmed he would be in touch after the job with proof. She guessed it would be another picture like the ones she had seen.

There was no longer any doubt in her mind. Glisson Barkley was an assassin. And Nadiya was half naked in his hotel room, snooping through his laptop while the man took a shower.