Six Deadly Steps
Page 18
By the time I look up, Isabella’s picking up the clothes Kelsie dropped and piling them on the hotel blanket.
“Put your own clothes back on. This isn’t going to work. Instead of getting naked, we need to be leaving.” Or something. To be honest there’s way too much leg and boob for me to keep track of my brain.
Neither of them listen.
“Why not?” Kelsie asks.
Isabella picks up without hesitation. “I’ve been on house arrest for five years. I don’t have social media. Beppe keeps everything very private. Or kept.”
They need to stop talking, because they more they explain, the more sense they make. Any pictures of Kelsie are of when she’s thirteen. There are a few in circulation from the fire at St. Theresa’s, but they’re paparazzi photos and blurred. You just see a lot of hair.
Shit… We’re doing this?
Kelsie adds, “You said so yourself, I do kind of look like her.”
“From afar, with glasses.” My eyes turn toward Isabella, scowling when I find an Isabella in Kelsie’s clothing. “Tony will notice.”
“Not if Kelsie doesn’t let him get close.”
“That may not be easy, but I can use the dye packs as a way to keep bodies around me.”
“Dye pack! As in one,” I correct.
“They don’t know that.” Kelsie smiles widely because ten-million dollars will go a long way. “He’s either coming here or showing up at the private airport. Either way, he’s coming for her and for you. I’m your only way out.”
“She’s right, Luca. This is the only part of my plan he doesn’t know because it wasn’t planned out.”
I growl and run my hands through my hair, gently tugging on the ends while I shut my eyes and conform to the new plan. Not that I have a choice. “So, you take all the risk? What if he’s coming here to kill Isabella Sanitni and kills you?”
“He’s not,” Isabella remains adamant.
“Get her to safety, far away from here, and out the United States.”
“And if you die? Breaker will have me killed.”
She smirks as she puts on the boots. “Tony Astori wouldn’t take me out. He’d trade me in, especially if he wants leverage with the East Coast. Breaker’s a dick, but he’s family.”
Family she’s willing to betray.
“We’re messed up,” she responds to my reaction—a very long eye roll. “But so are all of you.”
“She’s right.” Isabella holds the gun spread between both her palms. “I told Logan Slade I’d be alone.”
“He won’t buy that. Leave two of the drinks and some of the trash, and maybe the makeup bag, and take the rest with you.”
Isabella hands over her burner phone. “War and Peace is on audio. We don’t know when Logan is coming. And there’s a dye pack in there and a trigger that only works after a few yards. It’s in case they take the money and run.”
“Good thinking. I’ll lie and tell them there are ten.”
“Yeah, and give them the one-foot mark. Just in case.” I gather the trash in the one grocery bag we have while Kelsie hugs Isabella.
“Ten million,” Kelsie confirms. “It’s not a lot of money for the Santini heiress.”
Isabella smiles softly and walks out with me. When we walk in the dark toward the old beat-up car, she looks back at the factory and tucks herself close to me, resting her cheek on my shoulder.
The whole time she’s thinking, I’m checking for an audience—a sound or anything—but nothing.
“Do you think she will be okay?” she asks me.
“Kelsie’s always okay.”
“She’s going to be really pissed when she finds out I don’t have ten million dollars. Beppe’s broke.”
Oh… This is going to be interesting.
“Probably. I just spent all my money on a hotel in the Algarve, but we’ll get it to her, eventually. She’ll just have to wait to escape.”
“How are we going to make ten-million dollars?”
I promised to tell her anything. Anytime. “There’s a bit more to the hotel business.”
She stops to look at me before opening the door to the ugly green car. I’m pretty sure this was red and a lot more dented than this.
“A bit more how?” She shakes her head. “Nope. No, I don’t want to know right now. Let’s just get out of here and make a new life somewhere else. Surprise me when I’m thousands of miles away from Chicago.”
Both of us get inside and shut the doors. I start the car up and ask, because I know she won’t like it, “What if you don’t like the surprise?”
She reaches for her seatbelt and glances around, waiting for someone to pop out of the darkness. When nothing comes, she turns to me as I pull out onto the road. “Then I’ll tell you, and we make a change.”
Both of us know change isn’t easy, and flexibility is something most crime lords prefer in the bedroom, but she’s right. Now is not the time to hash out details. There’s nowhere left in the US for Isabella Santini, but she’ll always have a place right next to me.
As long as she wants to be.
On our way into town, Isabella reaches into her pocket to find the com from earlier, and she puts it her ear. “Do you hear something?”
She brings her finger to her lips, shushing me. Someone must be close for the com to work.
When she’s done, she rolls the window down and chucks it into the air. “What happened?”
“Apparently, the guy they had on Slade was calling it in. They are both on their way to the factory.”
I grab her hand and lace our fingers together. “We’ll be long gone by the time they figure it out.”
“I still have to call Donovan and Steele.”
“You can do it from the airport.”
Epilogue
The Algarve
Isabella Cabrali
Old Algarve had a beach. Here a beach. There a beach. Everywhere a beach, beach!
Luca failed to tell me the Algarve was full of fucking beaches, but I have to hand it to him. Given my fear of water, it’s probably the last place someone will look for me. The day after we escaped, Luca’s father told him everything that went down. I wish I could have seen Tony’s face when he saw Kelsie Salvatore descending the airplane instead of me. According to Charlotte, he stormed her building demanding to speak to her, but Charlotte’s in Paris, not that far away from me and well-protected.
Needless to say, I spend most of my time in the hotel, at a safe distance from waves and large bodies of water. Most of the time, I write or do yoga in the hotel. I prefer to stick close to Luca. After so many years apart, there’s always a hollowness when work keeps us from each other.
I hope it’s always this way.
It’s only been a few months, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been: writing, publishing fiction under my new identity, and working on my own messed-up version of War and Peace. Sometimes I take a break to go out on the rooftop veranda and gaze at the sunset, or admire how the yellow tone of the sun brings out the green in the blue-green water. The limestone coastline cuts through the sand, hugging the oceans borders, and soaking the warm colors from the bright sun, infusing everything with a golden tone.
My picturesque, sun-kissed landscape. That I find beautiful and deathly terrifying all at the same time.
Luca’s hotel, or rather the luxury rooms he had converted into an apartment, overlooks Mercy Point, a gorgeous cove with golden stone and arches. Flanking it on one side is a grotto, where lovers go.
One day, I’d love to get married down there. To feel comfortable with the water between my toes as Luca and I become one. No rings, just love. Just the exchange of promises between two people who would risk a war to spend eternity together.
I run my hand over my baby bump, as I lean against the railing of the balcony to see the other end of Mercy Point. Two solitary rocks stand tall and wide, protecting the entry into the cove, like soldiers of the Queen’s Guard.
When the sea is angry, the whit
e of the waves crashes on the high-standing rocks, thrashing between them and around them, and spewing foam over them. They stand unwavering.
On other days, when the sea is calm and the boats come in, despite the lack of profundity—I see everything from my balcony.
The drug exchange.
The drownings.
The life I had thought I once left behind.
I escaped the Mafia, but I didn’t escape the life of a Mafiosa.
I just upgraded my status.
Want to meet the Beneventis?
Brutal & Raw
Or know more about Kelsie in this STANDALONE?
31 Kisses
This is the End of the Escaping the Mafia Series:
Escaping The Mafia
Escaping the Mafia
▁ ▄ ▅ ▆ EᔕᑕᗩᑭIᑎG TᕼE ᗰᗩᖴIᗩ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▁
She’s Willing to Start a War For Love.
Escaping the Mafia is not simple, especially when Isabella's father is known to chase enemies across state lines and obliterate them, so she has to be careful—and smart.
This Mafia princess comes up with a deadly plan. One million dollars to any organized crime syndicate who will help her with her six steps to freedom. The smell of easy money brings different crime syndicates to her side, and with their help, she destroys her own family. Nothing like a little revenge on the open road to happiness.
Each book is written by a different author and revolves around one of the deadly steps.
One, distract. Evelyn Kiss
Two, liberate. Cam Johns
Three, eliminate. Nikki Belaire
Four, escort. Sophia Peony
Five, war. S.G. Zertuche
Six, love. Sonya Jesus
About the Author
Sonya’s a nerd—a cool nerd—who loves science, books, make-up and unicorns. She even has unicorn slippers and unicorn plushes adorn her office. It’s not obsession (or so she says), it’s simply an ode to her imaginative side.
She believes in fairytales and in the beautiful things a mind can conjure. She’s a firm believer of empowering the crazy fictional ideas, putting them down on paper (figurative paper because she’s not a fan of writing in notebooks), and letting them flourish into a story.
Don’t believe me? Ask her in any of her social media. She’s all about those connections.
“There’s so much potential in a dream… a thought… not exploring it seems like such a waste of something absolutely beautiful.”
Also by Sonya Jesus
The Westbrook Collection
The Complete Knights Series
Don’t Dare Love
Don’t Dare Fall
Don’t Dare Touch
Don’t Dare Live
Soccer Gods Series
BASH (Coming Soon)
Do you like Mafia Romances?
Check these New Adult Romances.
Beneventi Family Series
Brutal & Raw
31 Kisses (Prequel)
Santini Family
Six Deadly Steps