The Fancy Pants Club — Chapter 24 - A Change Meeting

Monaco, France (One Year Ago)

~ Daniella ~

My mother’s family has a grape wine business and with that, of course, they have a vineyard. Since I was little, every harvest time I visit here with her for both as a vacation and additional manpower. I enjoy being in France more than I do in New York. I had begged my mother a couple of times for us to settle in her childhood land, but due to our business circumstances, it always ended up with a no.

The time the grapes are harvested is considered to be the émile Family’s secret of superb wine quality, and since I am my mother’s daughter and an émile, I am shared with this well-guarded secret. At early dawn, when mist still lingers and the vines are at their freshest proved to be the best time where the picker can choose the most promising batches.

Hardworking and excited as I am, I was in the vineyard earlier than the supposed perfect time. There were no workers yet except for two old maids who I can see a few yards away from me. Wearing a coat, boots, and skinny jeans, I let myself get immersed with the surrounding nature as I stood in one of the thousands of vine rows.

The dark sky had the beginnings of a violet and orange tinge. The grey and white clouds were feathery and easy to look at. Fresh cold air flushed my lungs as I inhaled deeply. There were chirping of birds nearby and I would have reveled on the sweetness of their tune if not for the gunfire that suddenly resounded throughout the entire area.

I spun around to where I think was the source, but as I did, a towering shadow of a man bumped into me and threw me off-balance. With a yelp, I fell on the ground with an unceremonious thud on my back. I hadn’t had time to collect myself when the intruder’s hand quickly shot up to my face and covered my mouth to stifle what had been a supposed glorious scream.

Fear of my safety easily tore right through me. I am not a coward, but under these circumstances, it was natural to feel this way, especially when I saw his face covered with a blood-splashed black motorbike helmet. My heart rate double-worked all the more when my distraught eyes strayed to the man’s other hand. It was holding a freaking deadly weapon: a silver gun. The fact that he was wearing an ensemble of black leather coat and pants didn’t help at all too. He looked dangerous all in all.

Thinking that this was the gunman, instead of pulling his hand away from my mouth, I collected soil in the palm of my hands and in a flash, threw it in his face.

The face shield was pulled up, so his eyes were the only part that was visible and the only part that I could use to my advantage. Unluckily for me though, he had damn quick reflexes and easily swerved his face to the right to avoid my meager attack.

He held my mouth tightly enabling me to get suffocated and this time, I panicked. I squirmed and thrashed my hands in every direction.

‘Unhand me!’, ’Let me go!, ‘Help! Help!’ were the words that clouded my thoughts as I fought myself back to freedom.

His dominating strength came not a surprise when he swiftly pulled me up the ground and situated himself on my back. This position turned out to be in his advantage because it locked me in my place with his strong free arm on my waist.

This time, feeling helpless, stream of tears slipped from my eyes.

“Be still and stay quiet woman, ” was his swift decree behind me. It was muffled by the helmet a bit but I could still make out the words just fine.

“Mmmmh...” was my answer but if not for his hand restraining my speech, it would have come out weak, ‘Please release me...’

“I will not kill you, I promise, ” he stated as if to reassure me, but like hell, I would believe.

I squirmed again, tossing my legs and shaking myself.

In response, with his hand still on my mouth, he pressed my head against his right shoulder and leaned in close to my forehead.

“You are just in the way of my escape, my fiery nymph, ” he stated. “I can’t have you screaming now and give those who chase me a location. You will be the downfall of me and you, unfortunately, will go down with me since they see you as an accomplice, so be obedient and stay still. I will be out of your hair once I make sure I am not followed anymore.”

I didn’t nod in affirmation but calm myself a bit I did as he pulled me with him, effortlessly, like I was just a sack of cotton and we took off like a mouse undetected by the cat. He freed me from my mute state and that’s the time when I was able to breathe the cold air again.

I dared not scream. It was not like I trusted his words that instant, but with him holding the gun, it was safe for me if I do as what he ordered.

With his right hand holding tightly my left and I following behind him, we eased our way into the rows and rows of grapevines. As we did so, the whole time I heard him grunt in pain and let out a string of native curses I heard way back from my Russian classmates in high school.

I admit he did have an incredibly sexy voice, but then again, I was too frightened to even give much thought.

Why was he grunting in pain was far beyond me, but when I paid closer attention to his gait, I found that he was actually limping slightly. Then, when my eyes caught sight of his left arm that had once cinched me in place, I saw what looked to be a knife slash in his coat sleeve, right above the elbow joint, and blood slowly gushing through it.

As if on cue, another gunfire reverberated in the air a couple of distance away from us, and then I heard my captor growl out a heavy, “Shit!”

The pieces of evidence were enough to tell me that this man was telling the truth. He was on a run. He was trying to escape from whoever was firing the shot. Although holding a gun himself, in that instant, I realized that he wasn’t even the bad guy after all.

“Why are you being chased?!” I asked out-of-the-blue when that question popped out of my head.

“None of your concern, ” was his clipped answer.

I heard another gunfire very close to where I was. I jerked because of it, closing my eyes as if it would shield me from the incoming bullet. What happened next caught me off-guard. My captor actually pulled me in a tight hug.

“Keep your body aligned with mine. Move when I tell you to move, ” he groaned.

My hands which found their way tracing his back felt warm, wet, and sticky.

“Oh my God! You’re hit! You’re hit!” I shouted.

“Keep your mouth shut woman!” he said through clenched teeth.

“But you’re hit! You need to go to the hospital!”

“Do you think that I could do that now?!”

As I looked up, I saw his eyes burning with fury. There was no fear I felt with it because I had great faith it wasn’t directed to me. It was directed to the people chasing him.

And again, in the back of my head, I asked why?

“No. No...” I whispered softly whilst blinking my stupidity away. Of course, he couldn’t go to the hospital with these men hot on his trail. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“Point taken, ” his eyes softened and regarded me with an emotion that I couldn’t comprehend. I don’t know what it was but it got my heart thumping suddenly.

Amidst the lack of enough light, I could see how beautiful his eyes were. Blue and green with a ring of hazel were the most significant colors. It captivated me, but my trance was cut short when he looked up, scanned the area, and then shouted, “Now, move!”

“What?!” I asked, glaring.

“Run woman! Run!”

I didn’t know I had the legs of a gazelle for I practically sprinted off to where he pushed me. He was following close behind. Really close for I felt his hand glued at the small of my back.

Like wild animals, we ran into the safety of a medium-sized barn my mother used to call the storage room. Inside, I crashed myself into a rattan chair with my hands gathered on my face, eyes closed, breathless, and with my knees shaking.

I heard him groan again, so I looked up to find him kneeling on the brick floor with his right hand on his left shoulder.

“You really should get that checked out, ” I suggested. He still hadn’t gotten my sympathy but my worry was inherent to any person with a gunshot wound on their shoulder.

“I will, ” he hoarsely replied, looking at me. “But for now, I need to get you into a safe place, away from them and away from me.”

“I can just run away from you if you let me go, ” I pointed out.

“And let you get caught by them? They spare no innocent souls, woman.”

I blinked thrice. Now that just got my attention and sympathy and made me realize that he really was worried about my safety.

But then, when I pieced together his words, my eyes immediately widened.

“Oh no, the workers?!” I voiced.

“Those old women you were with in the vineyard?” he clarified.

I nodded and then gasped. “Are they... Did they...?!”

He didn’t reply, but the depth of his eyes seem to answer it all.

“Oh, God.” I placed a hand in my mouth in reflex, not realizing that my fingers had already gotten soiled with his blood.

I smelt the metallic odor of the crimson liquid. I got a little taste of it through my lips and because of that, it made me involuntarily retch.

“Pull yourself together!” he grounded and stood up.

As he strode towards me, I gripped the armrests of the rattan chair bracing for whatever he was about to do.

He pulled out a white handkerchief from the back of his pants - the only opposing color from the sea of black he was wearing - and reached for my hands.

“Here, use this to wipe the blood away, ” he said as he started rubbing my fingers whilst half-kneeling in front of me.

He acted as if he wasn’t soiled in blood himself. He acted as if he wasn’t wounded at all... as if his life wasn’t in danger. It was heart-swelling to watch, and yes, I could say that my heart really did swell out because of it.

I don’t know what I was thinking, but I let him do the task instead; never taking the handkerchief to clean my fingers myself. My eyes rested on the silver gun he placed on the ground near his knee and blankly stared at it for quite some time.

“What’s your name?” Out-of-the-blue, he asked.

I glanced up. “Pardon?”

“I asked what your name is.” He shook his head and cleared his throat as if he was disappointed with something. “Or better yet, don’t answer. We—”

“Daniella, ” I cut in. “My name is Daniella.”

We exchanged glances... yes, heavy ones, until my attention was caught on a certain dark figure lurking and eavesdropping us from the barn window.

My breathing stopped when I got a clearer view of what he was holding. It was a gun and its mouth was pointed directly at my companion’s back.

What happened next was me not thinking about the consequences.

“No!” I screamed as I pushed him aside and jumped in front to take the bullet instead.

Pain. Excruciating pain was what I instantly felt in the upper part of my abdomen. With both hands, I nursed the area and felt heat and panic rising inside me when I saw blood gushing profusely into my hands.

In the blink of an eye, a strong tug in my elbow brought me lying down the ground, and then I saw my captor sitting awkwardly in my side with both hands lifted in the air and with the silver gun pointed at the window.

The ensuing events happened so fast, so sudden that the only thing I could make out from my numbing brain was the dark figure being shot at, the barn door opening to admit men in suits, and more gunfires being released.

I guess he won for one by one these men dropped lifeless on the ground. Thank God.

“Daniella. Daniella!” I then heard my captor shout. He scooped me from the ground with both of his arms and lifted me up to meet his face.

From my blurring vision, I saw how painful his eyes looked. Was he sad? Disappointed? I couldn’t make out at all for his helmet was still on the way.

Then, as if he answered my silent complaint, he took off the cursed object with one hand.

I smiled. This nameless man holding me had become my intruder, my captor, and my savior all at the same time.

“Daniella, open your eyes!” he ordered but sadly, I couldn’t comply. My body was so weak I could no longer feel my legs and hands anymore.

The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was this detailed tattoo on his right neck; of a black spade in the center and four red spears on the sides.