I tried to choke it back, but it was too late. A strong hand seized the back of my neck, grabbing a handful of my hair as I was hauled from my hiding place.
“Got you,” an unfamiliar, greasy man leered, brandishing his gun in my face.
This was it. This was how I died. Just like Liz…
Thinking of her made me glance down, and it was even worse from this vantage point. Blood coated her entire blouse, soaking the white fabric in crimson. I’d never been good with blood, but for the first time I was relieved when my ears started ringing and my vision went dark. Angelo could shoot me if he wanted. I’d never know.
Someone grunted a curse as my body went limp and I fell into a dead faint.
two
BILLIE
Someone was stroking my hair when consciousness returned to me slowly. It wasn’t in a creepy or threatening way, it was… soothing. Gentle. Their fingers combing softly through my dirty, dark blonde hair with reverence.
“Bella,” a husky male voice murmured, “I can’t believe you still faint at the sight of blood.”
Angelo. Holy shit, it wasAngelo.
“What the fuck were you doing here tonight, Bella? After all this time…” He released a long sigh. “Shit, what a mess.”
He didn’t yet know I was awake. I hadn’t opened my eyes and he seemed to be talking more to himself than expecting an answer, so I played possum. It wasn’t easy, though, when the boy I used to love was sitting close enough to kiss, his fingers stroking the side of my face.
Where was I? I was lying down, somewhere comfy, but the last thing I remembered was the guy who’d pulled me from my hiding place. The one who was going to kill me.
A door opened, and the air shifted like Angelo had moved away. I didn’t dare open my eyes, though.
“Sir, we caught up with the rat,” a man said. “What do you want done?”
Angelo gave a grunt. “I’ll deal with him.”
“What about her?” the man asked. I was going to assume he was talking about me… unless he meant Liz. Fuck, she was dead. There had beensomuch blood. Had Angelo killed her himself? He’d killed the guy in the alleyway, I was sure of it.
“I’ll deal with her, too,” my childhood love said in a hard-edged voice. “She’s not going anywhere.”
The door closed a moment later, and a loud click echoed through the room. Angelo was gone, and he’d locked me in.
Cautiously, I cracked my eyelids open to check if I was alone. When I didn’t see anyone, I sat up. A light wave of dizziness made me sway, but it was gone in a second and I could look around. We were in an office, and I’d been lying on a small leather couch, the faint scent of Italian food lingering in the air. We were still in the restaurant. Why? Why hadn’t he just shot me while I was unconscious?
Someone screamed, and I no longer cared for the why of it all, I just knew I needed to get thefuckout of the restaurant. The way Angelo had said he woulddeal withme gave me shivers of pure terror, and I wasn’t sticking around to find out what that meant. The screams from outside the office said enough.
I’d already heard the door lock, so my only option was the window. It was tiny, but squeezing through a small window could hardly be worse than whatever was happening to cause those screams out in the restaurant. Fuck hanging around to see what they’d do to me for spying on them; I was going to do what I did best.
Fuckingrun.
The window was painted shut. Of course it was.
“Okay, come on, Billie,” I muttered aloud, “come on, think. Think. You can get out of this.”
Determined, I hunted the desk drawers until I came up with a blunt letter opener. Perfect! Or as good as it would likely get. Besides, I just needed to free up the painted part that was sticking the window shut.
Apparently, I was due for a small dose of luck because it only took a couple of minutes to chip the paint away with the letter opener, then the window was open. I needed to drag the chair over to reach high enough to squeeze out, but even so, it was a struggle. My hips got stuck when I was halfway out, and panic made me frantically wiggle my way free.
Of course that then sent me crashing headfirst to the concrete, and I just barely got my hands out in time to save my face taking my full weight.
For a few moments, I lay there in the dirty alley, trembling with shock and fear. Then the back door to the restaurant banged open and I dove behind the closest dumpster to hide.
Two men stepped out, but they didn’t see me. They weren’t even looking for me, they’d just come out for a cigarette, but it left me trapped there because they were between me and the street. The other end of the alley ended in a locked gate.
