Her hands dropped to the spot. “You’ve… been training your body to take a gunshot?” Then she looked up at me. “What if they don’t shoot you there? Will you be wearing a vest?”
“I can’t,” I said. “It has to look believable. I have to bleed.”
“So use ketchup!”
I snickered. “I can’t use ketchup.”
She lifted a hand and brought it across my face hard. It stung, but I’d been through leagues worse. “This isn’t funny.”
It sobered me. I was so used to laughing at my own pain, but I wasn’t the only one hurting anymore. “It’s not. I’m sorry.”
“What about me?”
“You…” It’d been a conclusion I’d come to on my own earlier in the day, but saying it to her was not easy. “This is it for us. After that, I’ll move to a townhome far from here. We’ll…” The lump in my throat came back. “We’ll probably never see each other again.”
Philippa’s jaw clenched and flexed in a pattern and I could see her fighting back more tears. I lifted my hands to her face, but she swatted them away. “Don’t.”
“Philippa.”
“I don’t accept that. I didn’t wait all this time to be with you just to have you snatched away from me,” she said, then her eyes locked into mine with a fierce resolve. “I’m not done.”
“I’m not done either, but… ”
“I’ll just leave with you,” she said. “We can go somewhere else and start a new life.”
It sounded lovely to me, but “My father’s plan isn’t over after that. It’s just the first step.”
“What comes next?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He told me if I survive, he’ll tell me,” I replied.
Philippa frowned. “He could not care less if you die.” I shrugged. She wasn’t wrong. “Why? Why don’t you just leave?”
“Because he would kill me, and now…” I wrapped my arms around her again. “Now I’m afraid he’d hurt you too.”
“I’m just a housemaid,” she replied.
I shook my head. “You and I both know my dad isn’t that stupid.”
“Then I’ll keep my eyes open and look for an opportunity to escape,” she said. “There are bound to be things your father hasn’t told you. I’ll be your contact on the inside.”
That rendered me speechless. It was just like all those years ago when Philippa was willing to help me even with all the other staff telling her my father would be angry if he saw her. He didn’t scare her. I knew no one who didn’t fear my father, myself included. How could someone who’d been through what she’d been through be so brave?
“I can’t ask you to put yourself through that level of danger for me,” I said.
“You didn’t ask me to,” she replied. “I want to.” She set her hands on my face. “Therewillbe an opening. A time when your father slips up and doesn’t realize he’s doing it. That’s when we strike.”
“Strike?” I said. “You mean run?”
Her eyes turned down, and that was the first time I saw it.
Philippa meant to do much more to my father than just leave him behind.
A smile started small and grew larger on my face. “You are truly the most interesting person I’ve ever known.” I kissed her, letting it take away the years of torment I suffered. She wanted Angelo Cavetti dead.
I wouldn’t mind that myself.
“How will we communicate?” I asked. She didn’t have a cell phone and it’d be too risky giving her my new address.
