It happened so fast that, while the car rolled, my mind hadn’t even had time to catch up. Once it did, we were righted, but everything around me seemed distorted. Blurry. I reached up a hand and touched my head. I hissed. Blood ran along my forehead, stinging my eyes.
“Stefano,” I croaked.
No answer.
I said his name again, groping for him, but there was still no answer. Then I laid a hand on my stomach, wondering if the impact had hurt the baby.
My baby.
Even though tears didn’t come—maybe I was in shock—something came from a part of me that I’d never met before. That something was worry straight from the deepest depths of my heart and soul.
The thought of something happening to my baby sent me into a hollow, silent panic. Then I felt a flutter, a slight movement, and I relaxed, but didn’t feel totally at ease.
The breath hissed out of me when I went to move, to try and open the door. Was my rib broken? I coughed, and it hurt even more.
Where did the truck even come from? Even though I was going fast, I was paying attention. No lights. It had no lights on. It was a demon slamming into a bright light.
The next second, my door opened and a man reached in and cut me out of the seatbelt. After he did, he yanked me out onto the street by my hair. I cried out without meaning to. My chest was on fire.
Sense finally made it to my brain. The man wasn’t there to help me. He was there to kill me. The man started to fight me for the watch on my wrist. I knew it was a man because of his hairy arms.
Was he robbing me?
“Give it to me, you bitch!” He slapped me hard across the face. “You keep fighting me, I’ll chop your wrist off for it!”
I froze at the sound of his voice. I focused on him, truly focused on him, and the breath left me completely. He ripped the watch off, flung it on the driver’s seat of the Ferrari, and then emptied a can of gasoline all around the car. Maybe even inside of it. He walked closer to me after, his boot in my face.
He knew about the watch.
He knew that was my direct line to safety, to someone coming for me.
Capo finding me.
Saving me.
Capo…was he? I couldn’t even stand the thought.
I tried to crawl away, but it was no use. The madman dragged me by the hair to his waiting truck, flinging me inside. My head spun, my eyes kept going in and out of focus, and I couldn’t even call him by his name. It was on the tip of my tongue, but my mind refused to feed the words to my mouth.
He kept mumbling things, what he was going to do to me, where he was taking me, how much I’d suffer, but his voice kept going in and out of boiling water.
The last thing I remembered was seeing the Ferrari go up in flames as we drove away. The devil had finally caught me, and he was bringing me to hell with him.
29
Capo
Asingle shot rang through the air. It wasn’t loud, but loud enough that I heard it. My grip on the rosary became tighter, but after a second, all I heard was a body hit the floor.
My eyes shifted to the left, then to the right.
It wasn’t my body.
I was still upright, the rosary cutting into my palm.
“Amadeo,” Rocco said, “help me untie this damsel in distress before he gets the vapors.”
It took me a moment to comprehend what had happened. Rocco was untying Tito. Achille lay on the floor behind me, blood pooling around his head. He was dead.
