My heart was pounding, but I was grateful for anything that spared my life for at least a few more minutes. The room was totally silent, and it allowed me to finally hear what stopped Arturo—footsteps drumming across the floor above.
I could have screamed out. Everything in me believed that it was Ashton. He’d somehow managed to find out that Arturo had taken me, and he had tracked down. Yet, with Arturo still standing within arm’s reach of me with a cleaver, there was no denying that it was safer to keep my mouth shut. There were no visible stairs from the room I was in, but Arturo kept tracking the direction of the footsteps to a door in the far corner. There only appeared to be one set of heavy footsteps, but it could also just be someone stepping slowly and deliberately.
Finally, the wood creaked as the footsteps made their way down the stairs. The silence of the room apart from the moving feet was eerie and overwhelming, but I had no other choice but to sit and wait. The door in the corner opened, and Arturo grinned while my heart sank even further. Anthony Carducci stepped into the room.
“Looks like we’re having a bit of fun here,” he said.
“Took you long enough,” Arturo replied.
He grunted. “The cops were on my ass almost as soon as I left. I think my car may be bugged.” Anthony looked over at me. “Have you been talking to the police?”
I, of course,didknow who had been talking with the police, but after all of the trouble I’d already caused, I wasn’t about to mess up things for Callista any more than I already had. “I don’t know who’s been talking to the police. Theydoseem to be zeroing in on you, though. Give me a second to feel bad about it.”
“I’m going to make sure that you can’t run that stupid little mouth of yours ever again,” Anthony growled.
Arturo looked back down at me. “I was just about to start cutting her open. Where do you think I should start?”
Anthony walked forward and grabbed my tied hands. He lifted them and looked down at the ring on my left finger with his nose wrinkled in disgust. “Let’s start here.” He pulled my arms out, displaying them for Arturo. “Right across the wrists should be good.”
A vile smile curled across Arturo’s face. “It would be my pleasure.”
A gunshot made me jump so hard that my whole body shook. Blood splattered across my face and down my dress, and I watched as Anthony Carducci dropped to his knees. The little bit of life left in his eyes focused on me until he finally slumped forward onto the ground, and then they glazed over.
Dead.
“Dad!” Arturo yelped. He turned toward the door, but then another gunshot rocketed out, and Arturo dropped to the ground next to the chair as well.
The basement door opened further, and Illiana stepped through it with a pleased look on her face. “I’ll admit, for the build-up, the ease was a little anticlimactic.”
Another pair of bodies shoved around Illiana and entered the room, and to my shock, Ashton was one of them. He ran over to me and grabbed my face in his hands. “Ash?” I whimpered.
“Baby.” He kissed me despite the fact that I was covered in blood and shaking. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” He was already scanning my body for any signs of damage.
“I’m okay, Ash,” I replied. “How… Why?”
“I told you, I’d do anything,” he said, and with that, he got to work untying the ropes from my wrists and ankles.
“Dead, both of ‘em.” I looked up, and Carmine was standing up from hovering over Arturo’s lifeless body. He looked down at me, a touch of panic in his eyes. “You good?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Did you find me?”
He grinned. “Of course I did.”
Ashton finally got the ropes loose, and I stood to wrap my hands around him. I looked at Anthony’s and Arturo’s bodies on the floor, Anthony on his side, and Arturo facedown. They wanted me dead so badly, but that didn’t stop me from feeling bad about the fact that most of Ashton’s family was now dead. I didn’t know what that meant for him or Callista.
I looked up at Illiana. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “Oh, my dear,” she said and lifted her gun, pointing it right at me. “I wouldn’t thank me just yet.”
Chapter Twenty-Two:Denise
Once again, I found myself more surprised than I should have been. Half the plans I’d made, I’d made with the assumption that, when all was set and done, whether Illiana got to kill Anthony or whether Anthony got to kill Illiana, and despite the fact that they’d both promised to let me live if I could carry out my missions, they would turn on me anyway. Somewhere between marrying Ashton and speaking with Illiana, I started to develop some hope that I might actually find a way out of the maze I’d spent my whole life running through. The one that I’d previously been convinced was nothing but dead ends. I could see the light shining over an exit and believed that I could reach some semblance of escape.
I should have known that I wasn’t so lucky.
“You said you’d let him live,” I said to Illiana.
“I did,” she responded.“I lied. You should have known that, dear. It’s what we’ve built our fortune on. If I end him here, that’s three for three of the Carduccis. You’ve already done the footwork of tracking down Callista and telling her the truth. She’ll see that I’m her best option and join me instead. I’ll make the most of her, and then I’ll go find Gabriel, and we’ll be one big happy family. That’s what you always wanted, right, Denise?”
