Chapter One
Gabriella Romana speedwalked as bestshe could through the narrow streets she’d navigated all her twenty-five years. Naples was a vibrant city, a mishmash of the ancient and the modern, tall, colourful buildings and narrow, cobbled streets; a city brimming with history that dated back millennia.
It was a much more modern history that Gabriella was fleeing.
She could only pray she had enough time to escape.
She’d slept in the Espositos’ home. She’d embraced Valeria and Siena and then breakfasted with them. Kissed their cheeks. Shed some more crocodile tears. And then, when the mourners had been preparing to leave for the funeral itself, she’d received a call.
“Gabriella, you need to get out of Naples. You’re about to be exposed.”
Her stomach had plummeted, her skin turned to ice.
Her biggest fear had come to pass. Niccolo Martinelli had betrayed her.
In hindsight, she should have run five days ago. When it had become clear Niccolo had jilted Siena at the altar, the father of the bride, the most powerful man in Italy, had suffered a fatalcardiac arrest. The hunt for Niccolo had started while Lorenzo Esposito’s body was still warm.
Yes, Gabriella should have run as Niccolo had done, but even if she’d been alert to the danger his disappearance had put her in, it had been impossible. She’d travelled to Accardiano for the wedding with the Espositos. She was a bridesmaid, Siena’s closest friend. At Siena’s insistence, she’d been staying with the family since their return to Naples.
That bounty though…
A million euros.
It wasn’t the money that had shocked her into thinking of escape or even the bounty itself. It was realising the hunt included Niccolo’s lover. If Niccolo was going to save his lover, Gabriella was his only bargaining chip. Her life for theirs. She needed to run.
A plan had formed. She would wait until Lorenzo’s body had been placed in the mausoleum and the chief mourners gathered to gorge themselves on food and drink in the Espositos’ ostentatious mansion, and then leave and never come back. Never look back.
If she could have fled the moment she’d received the call warning her she was about to be exposed, she would have done, but she’d been a part of the herd being ushered into the row of limousines. Escape in that moment had been impossible.
Her only saving grace throughout the funeral service had been the tremors of fear wracking her body being mistaken for grief. Afterwards, she’d taken the limousine back to the Espositos’ home, waited until a decent crowd formed, and then slipped out unobserved.
What Gabriella hadn’t counted on was the public’s pilgrimage to Lorenzo Esposito. The streets were so densely packed with mourners a snail could have made it through the crowds more quickly. The thirty-minute walk to her apartmentblock had taken over an hour. She hadn’t even considered hailing a taxi. The few she’d seen couldn’t move for people.
One of three apartment blocks situated in a U around a central shared courtyard originally designed for families and children to hang out and play in, her apartment was on the top floor of the left-side block, locally known as the West Side. As a little girl, Gabriella had loved the film its nickname had been taken from, had identified so hard with Maria that she’d even hoped for a blood feud with another family just so she could fall in love with one of the sons (although preferably without any star-crossed lover death). The irony of what had come in her adolescence was something she still struggled to understand. Struggled even more to understand how the embers of it still glowed so brightly inside her.
Clocking her Vespa, still parked where she’d left it before she’d travelled with the Espositos to Accardiano for the wedding, she beckoned Ciro, the de facto leader of the latest generation of adolescents who’d taken over the courtyard and made it their own.
“Has anyone been to my apartment today?” she asked him. She couldn’t see any suspicious vehicles, but it was always better to play safe. There were no internal corridors in the buildings, only external walkways, making it practically impossible for anyone to come and go without being spotted.
“No, all good.”
She thanked him and hurried away before he could draw her into conversation. The last time that had happened, he’d brazenly asked her when they were going toget it on. Seeing as Gabriella was eleven years older than Ciro and had often babysat for him when she was the age he was now, her answer to that had been a roll of her eyes.
That was teenagers for you, she thought as she took the stairs to the top floor two at a time. An adolescent’s life was ruled bytheir hormones; overnight, sex became the first and last thing on their minds. She should know. She’d been the same once. It was to her eternal shame that the object of her adolescent desire was still the only object of it. She couldn’t even take pride in never acting on it. How could she feel pride for resisting the devil when she’d comforted him for the pain he was suffering and had spent the past week aching to comfort him some more?
A monster was still a monster. His family had still destroyed hers, and the child who’d longed to be Maria had matured into a woman who’d rather die than take Maria’s path. The one good thing about being forced to run now was that she could finally escape him and all the impossible feelings he evoked in her.
Her mind now racing ahead as quickly as her legs were moving, Gabriella pushed the devil from her mind and mentally set out what came next. She would get her gun, her real and fake passports and stash of cash from their hiding place in her mattress, and go. No hanging around, not even to grab treasured photos. She’d be in her apartment a maximum of two minutes, and then she would get on her Vespa and head to the train station. From there, she would take the first train leaving the city, whatever its destination, and then she would keep moving, from city to city, country to country, until she found a place she could blend into and feel safe in.
The rest of her life would be spent hiding. She was prepared for that. She’d accepted that would be her fate years ago. It was the best fate she could hope for.
Reaching her apartment, she looked over her shoulder and scanned the courtyard one last time before unlocking the door and slipping inside.
The front door opened into a small kitchen. She hurried through the narrow divide separating the cooking side from the small dining area and pushed the living room door open.
Her heart stopped before her feet did.
There, sitting on the sofa, his arms spread over the top of it like a lazy Jesus, the wildness in his eyes belying the huge smile on his hateful face, Tommaso Esposito.
