“Georgia, I need you to listen very carefully,” a heavily accented Italian voice that didn’t belong to Niccolo had said without any preamble. “The Espositos are coming for you. If you want to save yourself and your baby, you need to do exactly as I say.”
Her terror at the mention of the Espositos and her baby in the same sentence had been instant. Just to recall those particular words had her protectively cradle her fledging bump.
“I need you to leave your flat through the back door,” the voice had said, only just cutting through her fear. “Go to the park that backs onto your garden. When you see the first bus coming, wait until the last moment before getting on. Stay close to the driver. Do not take the underground until you’re in central London. I’m going to text you an address and a code to enter it. Memorise them and then get rid of your phone. No one should follow you, but you need to imagine your every move is being watched. The address is your safety, but it will only be safe if you make it there without being followed.”
“Who are you?” she’d whispered.
“The only person who can save you from the Espositos. Now go.” The line had disconnected.
Terrified, she’d obeyed.
The journey to the flat she’d been holed up in for four hours was nothing but a blur. She’d switched from bus to bus and then criss-crossed London’s underground network, too busy scaringherself with her thoughts to have much consciousness of what she was doing.
Niccolo had explained all about the Espositos when he’d made his insulting offer to her. Mafia in all but name.
No one should follow you, the man had said, and it was theshouldthat had done all the heavy lifting in Georgia’s fears. How was she supposed to know if she’d made it to the address without being followed? She was an interior designer, not a member of the security services! How was she supposed to know if there were men currently looking up at the windows she’d drawn the curtains on?
The flat was in Bayswater, an affluent part of the city, on the top floor of a converted Victorian townhouse on a wide street bustling with life. She couldn’t work out if its busyness made it safer than her own flat. The flat she shared with her twin in the suburbs where the underground terminated was off their town’s main high street, but the town itself was so sleepy that even the pubs went to bed early.
Here, the windows did a good job of insulating the flat from outside noise, but it was still ten times noisier than what she was used to, and she paced the vast floors trying to stop her heart from palpitating at every distant shout and blare of a car horn.
Nerves had pulled her insides into such a tight ball that she wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, but she needed to eat, if only for the baby. The kitchen pantry contained a decent array of dried and tinned goods, while a huge chest freezer was filled with portions of homemade meals. Seeing those portioned meals brought her no closer to figuring out who owned the place. It was fully furnished, but there was nothing personal in it. No clothes. No photos anywhere. The only thing she could confidently say about the owner was that he or she was rich, not just because the place was five times the size of her own shared flat, but throughthe location – the rear windows looked out on Hyde Park – and the quality of the fittings and furnishings.
The only thing less than modern about the interior was the phone she’d discovered when she’d first arrived and made a tentative search of the rooms. She’d felt very much like a character in a horror film, so much so that she’d had to psyche herself up to pull the wardrobe doors open and check under the beds. She’d actually screamed at the figure behind the shower screen that had turned out to be her own reflection.
The phone had been stuck, forgotten, in the back of a drawer in the kitchen. It was one of those old-fashioned phones that had been considered cutting edge when Georgia’s parents were her age, designed for making calls and text messages and nothing else. She’d examined it with the same tentativeness that she’d searched the rooms, but, even though it had a charger wrapped around it, had been too frightened of it being a trap to plug it in and make a call on it. Not that there was anyone for her to call. She didn’t know anyone’s numbers off the top of her head. They were all stored in the contacts of the phone she’d left behind in her own flat.
She had no means of calling Niccolo and finding out if he was safe. Not that she should care if he was safe. She didn’twantto care, not after the way things had ended between them.
She’d been taken to the heights of heaven and then dropped. The landing had been the most painful thing she’d endured in her life.
What the hell had happened, she wondered despairingly. Why had the Espositos decided, today of all days, that she was suddenly a threat?
She had no way of knowing. Without her phone, she was cut off from the world.
Putting a portioned meal labelled as lasagne in the microwave, she hugged her arms for warmth and wonderedagain about the man who’d called her. Who was he? Why was he helping her?
Was she supposed to just wait here until he made contact again? And why the hell was she even trusting him? She knew the answer to that: it was because he’d mentioned her baby and the Espositos in the same breath, but as easy as the answer was, it gave no guarantees that he was one of the good guys. It also begged the question of how the hell he even knew about the baby.
Other than her doctor, Georgia hadn’t told a soul. The life growing in her stomach was a secret too dangerous to be told. Of course, Callie had guessed, and Georgia knew Callie had told Dante, but there was no way Dante had told Niccolo and no way in the world he would have told the Espositos. Dante loved Niccolo like a brother and was as determined to protect him as Georgia was.
God, why did she evenwantto protect him?
Because he was the father of her baby, that’s why. The father of her baby, who must by now be married to another woman, might even at that very moment be consummating the marriage and making another child. A child who would be half Esposito.
How did the Espositos know about Georgia and her baby?Didthey know? Or was it only the man who’d called her, whoever he was?
By the time she’d forced half the lasagne down, her head was spinning with so many thoughts and questions she felt dizzy and overcome with exhaustion. Sleep had been elusive for so long she couldn’t remember what a proper night’s sleep felt like. These past few days, she’d barely snatched any sleep at all.
There were four bedrooms, the beds all made up, but the thought of sleeping in one of them brought to mind the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. If someone came for her, she wanted to be prepared, and so instead of climbing into a bed,she stripped the duvet and pillows off one and made a nest for herself on a sofa in the living room. Its position next to the door meant that if she kept the door open, anyone coming into the room wouldn’t see it… or her… to begin with.
After turning off all the lights except the landing light, Georgia climbed into her makeshift bed. Less than a minute later, she was back on her feet and heading to the kitchen. What use was positioning herself into the place she was least likely to be seen if she had nothing to protect herself with for when or if shewasseen?
Arming herself with the biggest, sharpest knife she could find, she returned to the living room and put the knife on the floor at the side of her head.
Cocooned in the duvet, Georgia closed her eyes.
The soft click of a door had Georgia’s eyes pinging open a beat before her exhausted brain woke from the doze she’d finally fallen into and a beat before ice injected into her heart and her pulses set off in an accelerated canter.
