Free Resisting The Tycoon's Seduction (The Berutelli Escape) by Elizabeth Lennox Page B

at the memory. 
    Her phone rang and she searched through the bedroom to find her purse.  When she found it on a chair over by the windows, she had to smile because the only way it could have gotten here was if Zeke had brought it to her. 
    “Hello?” she answered, hoping it was Zeke.
    “Marissa?  Are you okay?” Sierra asked.
    Marissa instantly felt guilty that she’d completely forgotten about her sister over the past twenty-four hours.  “Sierra?  Where are you?  You’ve been gone for days!”
    She heard her sister sniffle and her panic, as well as her guilt, increased.  “I’m fine.  I’m at the hospital.  It isn’t me, Mari,” she explained quickly, knowing that Marissa would assume the worst.  “It’s a man that was at the party several days ago.  Dad had him beaten, Mari.  Badly.  He’s barely alive and,” she sniffled again, obviously fighting the tears.  “And he’s fighting for his life.”
    “Who is he?” Marissa asked, sitting down in the chair next to her purse.  Her body had chilled with her sister’s words.  She was terrified for both herself and Sierra not to mention the stranger her sister was crying for.  Marissa didn’t even have to ask how badly the man was hurt.  Sierra had said the poor guy was fighting for his life.  Sierra wasn’t into dramatics but very down to earth and realistic. 
    “I don’t know his name,” she whispered.  “I just saw him at the party and knew something horrible was happening so I followed Don and Jimmy when they drove out of the garage.  They just dumped him, Mari,” she cried, her voice muffled as if Sierra were covering her mouth from the pain of her words.  “They dumped him in an alley as if he were a piece of trash.”  Sierra stopped for a moment and Marissa could hear her taking a deep, strengthening breath.  “But he’s not, Mari!  I know this sounds ridiculous, but I just know that he’s a good man.”
    Marissa sighed, understanding exactly what was going on.  They’d always suspected that horrible things happened in that office but there was never any evidence for them to follow.  “Sierra, where are you?  Which hospital?  And how do you know he didn’t do something horribly worse?”
    Her sister sniffled once again.  “I just know, Mari.  And you don’t have to come down here.  I’m fine.  Really I am.  I just needed to talk to someone who won’t think I’m crazy.  Besides, they aren’t letting him have visitors yet.  Just family and I don’t want anyone to recognize me or you.  So I’m fine, I merely wanted you to know that I’m fine.  But I’m going to stay here and make sure he’s okay.  Don’t tell Dad where I am, okay?  Can you cover for me?”
    Marissa didn’t even hesitate when her sister asked this of her.  “Of course.  Don’t worry about that.  I’ll make sure to tell Dad something.”  They’d done this for years, covering for each other when one of them needed to get something done.  Because their father was so strict he wouldn’t even allow them to stay over at friends’ houses to study in the evening or stay late at the library.  They’d never had sleepovers nor attended the traditional high school parties unless one of his bodyguards chaperoned.  The only way the two of them were able to have a somewhat normal life was with their special system of covering for each other that they’d developed over the years.  “Let me know what I can do and check in with me, okay?”
    “Thanks ,” Sierra replied sadly. 
    With that, she ended the call and Marissa was left to figure out what to do, how to handle her father as well as Zeke.  Would Zeke understand her sister’s need to protect a stranger?  It was odd even for Marissa to understand why the two of them did things. 
    Marissa gathered up her clothes, shaking her head at the way they were all wrinkled.  She couldn’t go home in these clothes.  Her father would immediately think she’d slept in her