“Mr. Sokolov is unconscious, but I can arrange for a brief visit. I’ll have someone come fetch you, Mr…”
“Salvatore,” I mutter.
Her eyes widen and it’s not hard to see that my name means something to her. She clears her throat. “Right. Someone… will be with you soon.” Turning on her heels, she disappears back through the glass door and I’m left alone with the unimaginable turmoil inside.
Ivan looks nothing like his usual powerful self, lying pale, plastic cords pushed into his veins, chest tubes, a ventilator hissing softly, smelling of antiseptic. I don’t even sit. Staring at him, taking in the beaten man, I then spin around and hurry out of the ICU, out of the hospital.
Standing in the dark, on the abandoned driveway outside the main entrance, waiting for Dustin to come back and pick me up, I have to take deep breaths to push back the nausea. In the chilly night, the air comes out as white clouds on every ragged exhale. He has to live. I need him. With a twitch, I remember Christian, pull up my phone and tap Nathan’s number.
“Uncle?” His voice is rough and he sounds as if he’s been through the wringer. “It’s one in the morning.”
“How’s Christiano? Is someone with him?”
He sighs. “Angela hasn’t left his side. They’ve pumped him full of meds.”
“But will he make it?”
“Fuck’s sake,” he groans, “can we talk tomorrow? I haven’t slept in forty-eight fucking hours, man!”
“Talk to me,” I snarl. “I’m having a really shitty day and I’ve just about had it with everyone and everything!”
“They can’t say, Luci! I don’t fucking know! All right?”
I grit my teeth as I try to exhale without it turning into a scream. “Did someone talk to you? Have you heard about what’s going on down here?”
“No, Uncle, I haven’t, and I can’t say that I—”
“They shot Ivan,” I grit out. “They shot up my club and my house.”
Nathan is silent. Along the street comes a black car at a high speed. Dustin is coming to pick me up.
“Who?” breathes Nathan, “who the fuck is attacking us?”
“Take care of your woman and your kid. See to Christian, make sure he has everything. Stay out of San Francisco. Call me as soon as the docs tell you anything. I’ll sort this.”
The black Mercedes comes to a halt in front of me and I disconnect the call. Dustin rolls down his window and leans out. “How’s the man?”
“Alive,” I growl. “For now. Take me to Carmen.”
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. I hop in the backseat and we’re off, chased by our demons, going fast, weaving in and out through the sparse traffic.
The Moreno-Payne household is quiet. The windows are dark. I have my finger on the doorbell but think better of it. Waking up the whole house would be counterproductive. Instead I throw Carmen a quick message. It takes a few moments, then it’s being read. She doesn’t answer, but I soon hear movement from inside and the door swings open.
“What are you doing here, Luciano?” Carmen’s eyes flash, black and fiery, as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“We need to talk. Pronto.” I cock my head for her to let me enter.
“I don’t like having you in my house.”
I explode. “After all these fucking years, Carmen!”
She clenches her jaw and then yelps as I grab around her waist and lift her. Moving inside, I kick the door shut and let the squirming little woman back down.
“Luci! You piece of shit!” she hisses.
“David’s in danger. You all need to relocate. Today. Use that brilliant mind of yours,” I put my finger to her forehead, “and don’t leave one single trace.”
Her mouth falls open as she widens her eyes. “Wha—”
“Everything’s been shot to hell. I’ve been attacked in my own home. They disabled my guards. I’m gathering everyone, and I mean everyone. We’re going to war.”
“War?” Her voice raises a pitch. “Ahh, Dio! I don’t want to know! What do we do? They’re going for David?”
“They will for fucking sure. I need you all out of the country. I can’t be distracted. I need to be invulnerable.”
“I understand,” she says, and I know she does. Carmen is a remarkably clever woman, the mother of my son, and one of not even a handful of people who have bested me and lived.
“You all have passports with other identities, right? I know you do.”
“We have,” she says.
I put my hand on the door handle. “Then put them to use. Today. Go to your parents. Go to Colombia, Carmen. Travel simple, inconspicuously. I don’t want to see you here tomorrow, got it?”
She nods, her features grim. “It won’t be easy on David. He won’t understand.”
“I prefer him alive and confused,” I growl. “Do it.”
Then I leave, slamming the door closed behind me, my heart heavy, every step toward the unknown future harder and harder.
Chapter 22
Chloe
Send me away?
I stand naked right inside the locked door, still damp, little drops from my hair spattering on the floor. My heart slams a dizzying staccato in my chest, and an ache spreads that has nothing to do with the assault. I want his warm skin on me again, the safety in his arms. For a few moments I felt secure in a way I can’t recall ever feeling before in my life, not since I was a little girl anyway, no matter how absurd it is.
Shivers wrack my body, and my mind balances on a knife’s edge between crumbling into a weeping, screaming mess, or pulling myself together. One second I think I can actually choose, and then it’s too late. A single tear slips from my eye and it opens the gates to the dam. I stagger to the huge bed and curl up under the comforter, wrapping it tightly around me and scream into a pillow only pausing to gasp for air.
Initially, the house is loud. Men’s voices. Slamming of doors. Faint sounds of cars. Then it quiets down, and as my stomach begins to churn with hunger, I have soaked both sides of two pillows with my tears. Every time I think I’m about to collect myself, my cruel brain flashes images before me of flesh shot to pieces, drenching me in blood, of memories from when the door was slammed open and the three fucking Russians entered the bedroom. I was reading. I was just reading a book. I had a few moments of peace and quiet, and they ripped me apart when they threw themselves over me like ravaging hyenas, screaming, hooting, tearing the clothes off my body.
I anticipated rape and death. It’s what they told me in their broken English. No one would save me. Everyone was dead and I was next. I couldn’t fathom that the most powerful man in the world was dead. That my beast was dead.
And then he wasn’t.
A part of me wants to think that I’ve never felt such hate before, but it isn’t true. I’ve hated with every fiber of my being. It’s as if hate has a chamber of its own in my heart. The person, whoever they were, who murdered my parents. The man who recruited my baby brothers to hide away guns and drugs, then lured them onto a path of violence and crime. The old man I trusted but who never lived up to his promises and I don’t think he ever meant to. Christian. Christian Russo who hurt my friend, who broke her bright soul, who beat me so badly that I thought I was going to die.
And then Luciano Salvatore.
I have hated Salvatore more than I thought possible. His brutal touch is burnt into my soul. His beatings, his assaults.
But when I thought he was dead I didn’t rejoice, instead my heart broke.
And then he wasn’t.
He’s no knight in shining armor. He’s the dragon in its den. He’s the terror that lurks in the dark. But he saved me. He cradled me to his chest, broken, bloodied Chloe, holding me tight.
Speaking of Salvatore. Where is he? I have nothing to tell me the time, but the hunger has finally driven me out of my wallowing and back on my feet. There’s a large adjacent bathroom in here as well and I take another shower. I don’t think I can ever feel cl
ean again. I wish someone would just hug me. I need therapy. I need someone to care about me. I cry again, my face turned up in the stream. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Body and hair. Four times, trying to rid myself of the near-physical memory of their grabby hands, the cock down my throat, I still wish I could scrub myself hard enough to bleed. There are bruises in the shapes of fingers on my breasts and my arms. My upper lip is swollen and has a laceration that I keep prodding with my tongue. I’m sore, but it’s still nothing compared to what could have happened. I’m so fucking thankful I wasn’t raped in its fullest sense.
Thankful to him for coming for me.
I rummage around his drawers and closet and pull on briefs, a pair of black jeans, socks, a wife beater, a T-shirt, and a dark gray shirt. The jeans fall to my feet if I don’t hold them up, but a belt does the trick and I have to fold up the hem so as not to stumble on them. I look like a clown, but at least I’m finally warm and I smell good. I smell of him.
It’s been dark outside for a long while when I finally hear steps in the hallway and a key rattle in the lock. The door swings open. My heart thrashes in fear, in hope, in longing for another human being. Salvatore stands in the doorway and makes no move to enter the room. His gaze travels along my body, making me extremely self-conscious about wearing his clothes.
“How’s Ivan?” I ask as I wrap my arms around my chest, hugging myself.
He pushes a hand through his hair and sighs. “Hanging on by a thread.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“How are you?”
I can’t help that my chin trembles as if I’m a child. “I need someone to hold me,” I whisper.
He’s silent at first and the moment stretches. “Yeah, that’s not gonna be me. You hate me, remember?”
My heart sinks. Right now, I don’t. I want his arms around me so much that my skin aches with emptiness. “I—”
“I’ve arranged for a plane. You’ll be transported to a private airfield and removed from the city.”
“I—What?”
“It’s not safe for you here.”
Hysterical laughter bubbles up in my throat. “Safe? Listen to yourself!”
“These are my final words on the matter. I’d have recommended you bring something along for the flight, but you don’t want to set your foot in the other bedroom, and you’re already dressed. Someone will pick you up. Goodbye, Chloe.” He takes a step back, his eyes look dead, his face shut off, then he closes and locks the door again.
I dart up off the bed and slam my fists on the door. “Hey! Don’t leave me! What do you mean sending me away? Where?” There’s no reaction from the other side, and still I feel his presence, as if he lingers, but it’s probably only my imagination.
My insides crawl with anxiety by the time the door is unlocked the next time. I rush toward it and stop flat when it swings open. Rose, pale, her blonde hair in a ponytail, no makeup, jeans, boots, and a red leather jacket. Her face is serious and there’s nothing reminding me of the girl I first met, the seductive prostitute.
“I heard,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
I scoff. “Sorry is the only thing everyone around here ever is.”
She raises a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Are you ready to go?”
I throw up my hands. “Go where?”
“Doesn’t anyone tell you anything, girl?” She glances into the hallway and then reaches for me. “We really need to move. Please.”
I look around me. It’s instinct. In any kind of normal life, I’d grab keys, phone, purse. It strikes me hard when I realize I have absolutely nothing. Not even the clothes on my body, down to the last thread, are my own. It’s as if I don’t exist. When I leave this room, this house, nothing remains of Chloe. My eyes dart to Rose’s. Leave. I get to leave. I can get the fuck out of here and make a run for it. With a thudding heart, I take Rose’s hand and step out into the hallway. My gaze darts inadvertently toward the other bedroom, the slaughterhouse, but the door is closed and there’s no sign of the horrors that took place in there a mere few hours ago. When I turn toward the exit, my stomach plummets. There stands a guard. Tall and dark, clad in black cargo pants and looking like he’s going into war with the guns, the radio equipment, and the security vest. Okay. Not running.
Rose entwines her fingers with mine and pulls me toward the man. “We gotta go, Chloe.”
As the three of us move through the house, I listen to faraway voices, trying to discern Salvatore’s, but I can’t, and Rose keeps pulling, urging me to go faster.
I’m pushed into the back of a car, Rose jumps in next to me and slams the door shut, buckling us up. The guard hops in behind the wheel and we’re moving in the next instant. It’s dark outside. I crane my neck to look at the digital clock on the panel. It’s 6:14 a.m. I don’t know when I ate last and I feel faint. Breakfast yesterday, I think. We move fast on winding roads, through the suburbs, toward industrial areas. Rose holds both my hands, her thumb stroking back and forth. My stomach churns at how serious she looks. The sky is getting brighter. An orange hue tints the horizon as we pass guarded gates and come to a stop on an airfield outside a small plane. Our driver hops out and pulls the passenger door open, cocking his head impatiently.
Rose unbuckles me. “Go, go, go.”
I put a leg out, then I spin around. “Are you coming with?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t. Matron needs me.”
“Who?”
A fleeting sadness sweeps across her face, then she waves her hand impatiently. “Never mind. He said he’d call you. You need to—”
“Miss Becker,” barks the guard, his voice a deep baritone. “You have one second, or I’ll carry you onboard.”
He reaches for me. I slap away his hand and give Rose one last pleading look, but she averts her gaze.
“Okay, okay, fuck. Fine, I’m coming!”
He grabs my elbow and pulls me with him along the tarmac to the descended stairs that lead up to the plane. It’s windy. The air is easy to breathe, crisp. A smell of exhaust, of oil and wet concrete lingers. The guard follows me all the way up to the plane entrance, his huge body behind me preventing my desperate wish to make a run for it. I’d be down and bundled up in a second, and I bet my flight to wherever I’m going would be a lot less comfortable.
I step inside and turn to take one last glance at the vast outside world, the dark gray hills in the distance, the rising sun. My eyes meet the guard’s. He doesn’t look hostile, just wary. I look down on a white envelope that he holds up between us.
“From the boss,” he mutters. “Be safe.” He smacks his large palm against the steel wall next to my head. “You’re good to go,” he shouts toward the cockpit before he turns and walks down the stairs. As soon as his feet leave the stairwell it begins to ascend and I back up so as not to get hit.
“Miss,” shouts a man’s voice from the front of the plane. “You need to buckle up. You can move around when we’re in the air, but not during take-off.”
I walk up to the cockpit and take in the backs of two men, clad in dark blue suits, wearing caps, looking very much like pilots.
“Where are we going?”
They turn and give me a once over. “Sicily, ma’am. Buckle up now, or you’ll bounce all over the cabin in a few. It gets bumpy for a while when we cross the hills.”
“Sicily?”
A terse sigh from the co-pilot jerks me into action. “Okay, fine!” I turn and take in the passenger compartment. It’s small, but luxurious with plush, beige leather seats with lots of butt and leg space. In the back there’s a lounge area with a bar and couches along each wall. I sink into the nearest seat and strap in.
As we move, I realize I’m clutching something in my hand and remember the envelope. My hands shake as I pull it open. Inside is a letter with a few short words.
You are going to my relatives in Sicily. They know nothing about my business. Treat them with respect.
S.
I trace the letters with the tip
of my finger as the plane moves faster and faster, the acceleration feeling as if it sucks the stomach out of my body. We bounce once, then we fly. The buildings beneath us turn into little pieces of neatly organized Legos while my mind spins with the sudden turn of events.
Sicily?
Chapter 23
Chloe
When the seatbelt sign is turned off, I head for the cockpit again. “How long before we’re there?”
The co-pilot half-turns in his seat. He’s a clean-shaven man with a sharp chin and kind, brown eyes. “Fifteen hours. We’ll make a brief stop and refuel in Paris. But we just got word that we might need to land in Jacksonville too before we leave the States. We don’t know for how long.”
“Fifteen!” I groan. “Is there any food around?”
“Sure. There are prepared meals in the back, in the fridge.”
“Oh, thank God!” My stomach growls loudly at his words and I spin around and make my way to the lounge area, raiding the fridge, finding it stocked with meals in plastic packages, both breakfast food and main meals. There are bottles of juice, sparkling water, red and white wine, beer, and tiny booze bottles. My hands shake as I rip open a breakfast package and stuff my face. I put vodka in a glass of orange juice and gulp it down. Who’s gonna care? I can get shit-faced. No one’s here to tell me what I can and can’t do.
A part of me is excited, the tiny part that doesn’t feel imprisoned, violated, and completely at the mercy of a ruthless, uncaring man. Sicily! Europe! Fucking hell! I’ve never been out of the States.
I sleep, but twitch awake over and over from quickly escaping nightmares of hands that grab me hard, threats of rape, of death. In some of the dreams it’s Salvatore who hurts me. In some of the dreams he holds me and makes me feel safe. I haven’t looked at the bruises again, but I sense them all too well. We end up spending the day in a hangar outside Jacksonville and I’m bored out of my mind. I down more wine and, after some fiddling, kick life into an entertainment system and watch two movies back to back. I become best friends with one of the couches, a throw blanket, and a couple of pillows, my mind a little too fuzzy to focus.
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