Angels Chapter 4

Charlotte is in dire peril but both Angelo and herself are distracted

Angelo halted suddenly and turned at Charlotte's office doorway. Charlotte went careering into him and found her nose pressed to the muscular wall of his chest.

 

Hmm, stimulating.

 

She chuckled, took hold of his arms and moved her head back to look at him.

To her surprise, he had a slight Italian air about him, a cologne she recognised from the boutiques of Rome. She avoided his eyes immediately to give herself a few moments to assess the rest of his features. Or, if she was really honest with herself, for some reason Charlotte felt anxious at the thought of making eye contact with this man again, especially at such close quarters. She had no clue why though because she hadn't got where she was in business by being afraid to make eye contact with people.

He was a tall, muscular man, or maybe it was that Charlotte herself was so petite, but her direct line of sight came to the top of his chest. Her eyes drifted upwards slightly to his strong jaw line and the curve of his lips. Despite the fact that everything she'd noticed about him so far screamed alpha male, his lips had a soft almost innocence about them. They looked so beguiling… she wanted to feel…what on earth was she doing?

 

"Charlotte? Charlotte Laroche? Look at me," he ordered, taking her chin in a less than gentle grip and lifting her face upwards so that his eyes could search hers.

 

His were dark, like shining coals with an inner energy in them just bursting to get out. She was caught in his gaze.

 

"When did you drink it? How long ago?" he demanded to know.

 

"Hmm?" she wasn't following him.

 

"The coffee," he prompted.

 

She shook her head abruptly. "Just now," she answered. "Why?"

 

Angelo turned his attention to Giorgio who was busy with a telephone call again.

"How could you let her drink that coffee?" he accused.

 

Giorgio looked up from his call and frowned, placing his hand over the receiver to answer Angelo.

 

"What are you ranting on about now?" he answered impatiently.

 

"Was that, or was that not, your coffee she just drank?" Angelo asked slowly, as if Giorgio was a small child and finding it hard to understand. My God! What was wrong with everyone? You shouldn't have to be a security guard to know about basic safety.

 

"I dunno Sherlock!" he snapped back. "What does it matter? It wasn't a poisoned chalice you know!"

 

It could well have been.

 

Or maybe he was over reacting…just slightly. But he had this feeling… more than a feeling. The heckles on the back of his neck were well and truly standing on end.

 

Charlotte gave a small, polite cough. She'd been observing the interaction between Giorgio and Angelo with interest. If there was one thing she loved more than Italian men, it was two Italian men at loggerheads. Boy, she could just picture them now, wrestling each other, minus their shirts… phew, she needed to calm down.

 

"Shall we move into my office?" she said to Angelo, realising now that people were beginning to notice the scene.

 

They finally entered Charlotte's office and she moved behind the imposing, Italian (of course) cherry wood desk. The rich, dark brown wood with reddish tints shone out into the room and gave the office a luxurious feel. As soon as Angelo entered, he picked up on a faint aroma that took him straight back to childhood memories of visits to his grandfather's villa in southern Italy. The smell of finely crafted wooden furniture and leather seats filled his nostrils and made him feel as if there had been way too many significant moments in that day for it to be explained by chance.

 

Charlotte gestured for Angelo to take a seat. "What seems to be the problem, Mr…"

 

She trailed off, hoping for an introduction on his part. She knew from his clothes that he was security, probably the new guy Frank had mentioned to her, but she paid little attention to security matters; she'd never needed to. The only reason she was talking to him now was because… well, she had to admit, she was a little intrigued by this man. And, in the very recesses of her head, she was vaguely aware of a strange feeling of unease, which had slowly increased since this man had shown up outside her office. It wasn't that she felt uneasy about the man himself, although there was no reason why she shouldn't, but she felt compelled to at least hear him out.

 

"Angelo," he replied.

 

She noticed that he didn't bother to give his last name or shake her hand. Instead, he paced her office restlessly and ignored the seat she'd offered him. This man had a nerve really, either that or extreme self confidence. He didn't seem to give a damn what other people thought of him. But Charlotte quite liked that. He exuberated an authority that didn't fit with his job, and she could well imagine him challenging anyone who stood in his way.

 

"Security's been breached," he came out with suddenly, stopping in mid pace and turning to face her with a seriousness that made her stomach momentarily contract.

 

"What does that mean?" she asked. She'd never faced anything like this before and was unsure of what he expected from her.

 

"It means that there are people in the building that shouldn't be here," he stressed.

 

"People who mean to do someone harm," he went on, "and since you are the CEO of this company, it doesn't take a genius to work out who."

 

She stared at him, not knowing how she should react to this complete stranger but nonetheless having a gut feeling that what he was saying was real. She also made a mental note to reprimand him later for speaking to her like that, but for now…

 

"What do you want me to do?" she asked simply.

 

He took one big stride towards her desk and leant over it towards her. "Speak to Frank. Order him to find the men. They are dressed all in black. They look almost identical," he said, hoping that he didn't sound as paranoid to her as he did to himself. "Get him to lock the place down if he has to, but I want to talk to those men," he insisted.

 

She paused, searching his sparkling eyes for some sign of insincerity, but she found none.

 

"Okay, I'll do it," she said, reaching across her desk and plucking the received off the phone. "Giorgio, I want to talk to Frank, track him down for me will you?" she asked.

"No problem. Your four o clock appointment is here waiting for you Charlotte, a Sarah Richmond executive," he informed her. "Shall I show him in?"

 

As soon as she heard 'Sarah Richmond', something in her brain clicked and overrode every normal instinct she had, as if her power of reasonable thinking had suddenly been drained out of her. It didn't even occur to her that there was no way Sarah wouldn't have come herself, and that even if she had sent a representative, Charlotte would never have agreed to see him, just on principle. But Charlotte wasn't acting as she normally would; there were greater powers involved.

 

"Yes, I'll see him now," she answered, rising from her chair and heading for the door like an automaton.

 

During the telephone conversation, Angelo had relaxed his guard somewhat, relieved and quite surprised that she had actually taken his advice. He was studying an oil painting of the Amalfi coast on the wall behind her desk at the time, and wondering what Charlotte's connection to Italy was, when he suddenly realised what she'd said before she'd hung up the phone.

 

Swinging his head around suddenly, he watched in slow motion as the man in a black suit grabbed Charlotte's wrist and dragged her across the office to a door on the side wall. The door swung open and Angelo heard screams penetrate the room. The noises were again as though in slow motion, or the kind of noises you might hear under water, but the terror behind them were acute. Suddenly, every nightmare scenario he'd ever remembered was happening to him in that office: the inability to move or call out properly, the stomach churning realisation that your darkest fear was actually real, the feeling that you were about to plummet down an endless abyss and never reach the ground. And through all that terror, he suddenly felt Charlotte's tenfold, for it was her who was headed for that abyss. With an abrupt burst of determination, he lunged for her, grabbing her free hand and clinging on to her fingers as the man in black attempted to pull them out of his grasp. The horror in her face mirrored how he felt as she screamed out,

 

"Don't let me fall, oh God, please don't let me go!"

 

In that instant, he 'felt' her essence: the way she loved, laughed, her joy and pain. And then he felt what it was like to lose all that and it was the worst experience he could ever imagine. He was helpless to stop it from happening. Her fingers slipped from his and she fell down the abyss. The door slammed shut.

 

Then everything was motionless. Not only Angelo, or Giorgio, and the other executives outside, but the very air in the offices and the molecules in the surfaces. Every atom stopped in its tracks.