Thankfully, the man wasn’t immune to her pleas but he wouldn’t relent. “Why don’t you wait in here for only a moment? A car will be brought round and will drive you home. It is three o’clock in the morning, ma’am. Mr. Antoniv would not be happy if I were to let you leave without an escort.”
Brianna looked up at the man’s face and suddenly, it didn’t look as tough or stern as she’d originally thought. “What’s your name?” she asked with as much courage as she could muster under the circumstances.
The man hesitated for a moment, obviously not used to people seeing him as a human being. “You may call me Stu,” he said with a small bow of respect. “Please, ma’am,” he said, holding the door open for her. “It will only be a moment.”
Stu watched as the delicate beauty stepped into the office. He wanted to get her tucked away so he could wake his boss, thinking that this woman was special to him. Stu had been with Rocco Antoniv ever since the man had made his first million and a death threat had been issued. Stu had been hired by Rocco to find the person who had delivered the death threat and ensure that the person was prosecuted. Stu had never left Rocco’s side since that point in time. Stu had worked for many people over the years, but none had been as generous and moral as Rocco Antoniv. And Rocco had never brought a woman home before so that in itself was a signal.
Brianna leaned against the now-closed doors taking deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. She wasn’t being kidnapped, she just needed to sneak by an overly protective body guard. She could do this. She looked around at the room, not recognizing anything. The driver had pulled up in front of this house earlier in the evening but other than the dark bedroom and curving staircase, she hadn’t seen much of anything else.
The twelve foot walls were impressively filled with books on three sides with tall windows facing the front of the house. The room felt comfortable, as if Rocco worked in here a lot. There was a computer on the corner of the large, elegant desk, but no papers were lying on top of the polished surface. Obviously, Rocco kept his work hidden from view, a fact she should have known about before she’d fallen into bed with the man.
There was a comfortable-looking set of leather club chairs set off to the corner and two more formal-looking chairs placed in front of the desk. Everything looked very normal, if elaborately expensive, but she suspected there were locks and security measures all around. There was no way she could hack into the laptop on the corner of his desk, or even pick the locks on that enormous looking desk.
She stopped her mind suddenly, looking around as her mind registered something her eyes had caught a moment ago. Sure enough, his sports jacket was lying against one of the chairs. Was it...? She glanced behind her at the still-closed door, then over at the jacket. She didn’t have time to think, not knowing how long she had. Within moments, her shaking fingers were digging through the pockets of his jacket and she found the paper. As soon as her fingers touched it, she froze for a fraction of a second. Was she doing something illegal? Her mind quickly went through the potential issues but she just didn’t know enough about the law. Perhaps if she were a police officer, this would be illegal search and seizure, but she wasn’t sure what her legal standing was here. At a minimum, this was probably unethical, wasn’t it?
She considered what another reporter might do and that clinched it in her mind. A hard-hitting reporter would take the letter and run with it.
When she opened it up, her hands were shaking so badly, she couldn’t even read the words. And at the last minute, she simply wasn’t morally able to outright steal the letter. It violated too many of her ethical codes. Instead, she dug her phone out of her purse and snapped a picture of the words before stuffing it right back where it had been. She then folded the jacket, leaving it exactly as it had been when she’d walked in.
With her phone dumped back into her purse, she moved back over to the door. Peering out, she breathed a sigh of relief she discovered that the big guy was gone. Where he’d gone, she had no idea but she wasn’t going to wait and find out. If he was waking Rocco up, she didn’t want to be anywhere near this place when he came down the stairs. She didn’t want to see him again, too ashamed of what they’d done together tonight.
With her purse tucked under her arm, she sprinted to the front door, almost sobbing with relief when she found the door unlocked. She had half expected to find the door locked with some crazy mechanism that only certain people knew how to open. She wouldn’t put it past a man like Rocco Antoniv. But what did that say about her? She’d slept with the man. Well, she hadn’t really slept with him so much as….
No,& she couldn’t think of that. She had to put that out of her mind. She rushed out the door and looked around, trying to get her bearings. She had no idea where she was, but obviously, she was in one of the more exclusive neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. She walked down the tree lined sidewalk, desperately looking for a cab. She wanted to get home, to curl up in her bed and not come out for at least a week.
When she rounded the corner, she was relieved to see two cab drivers chatting on the side of the road, both of them holding a cup of coffee in their hands. “Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but could either of you gentlemen give me a lift home?” she asked, unaware that she looked like a mess. Her hair was messed up, her lipstick gone and her eyes were swollen and red from the tears that she desperately needed to release.
Both men stared at her for a long moment. Brianna’s heart sank as they continued to gape and she forced a weak smile to her face, hoping that would ease the shock of seeing such a disheveled woman at this hour of the night.
“I’ll help you,” one of them jumped up. He opened the back door to his cab in a courtly fashion, his worried eyes skittering from the top of her head down to her shoes and back to his friend, communicating a silent message. “Do you need to speak with a police officer?” he asked gently when he turned back to her.
Brianna’s eyes shot up to his, shocked that he would ask something like that. “Police?” she echoed. She looked down at herself, her smile wobbling more than a little. “No. Thank you very much for being concerned, but I’d just like to get home as quickly as possible.” She glanced behind her, afraid that Rocco would be barreling around the corner any moment. “Please, can you just get me home?” she whispered through the terror that was slowly starting to build up inside of her.