Chapter One
In a small restauranttucked away in Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella, Francesca Marino ate the last of her risotto as she finished the current chapter of her crime novel. Tempted though she was to turn the page, the restaurant was getting busy. Eating in a restaurant was a wonderful novelty, but her table would be wanted.
Catching a waitress’s eye, she indicated for the bill with a smile, and when she paid, gave a tip like they did in the movies. Earlier that day, she’d been the recipient of an extremely generous tip from a group of American tourists and was more than happy to share the wealth.
With a cheery goodbye to the staff, she stepped out into the setting sun. It was now officially summer. For those who lived and worked in the foothills of the Lessini Mountains, it had been summer for months, which Francesca loved. She adored the sun. She quite liked winter too, although she wished they would get decent snow. One winter, she decided, when she’d wrestled more independence away from her parents, she would drive to a ski resort. She loved driving, and it was such a joy to finally have a car of her own. Her brand new Fiat was her pride and joy, and as she was thinking of her little Fiat, she noticed that parkedright behind it on the side of the road was an enormous SUV. She didn’t know what make it was – if a car was bigger than her little Fiat, she had no interest in it – but she knew it was monstrous in size, and she knew the driver had parked so close to her bumper that she would struggle to get out.
She sighed. She would never understand how some people could be so inconsiderate. It didn’t help that she was still a novice driver and that her biggest fear was getting her car stuck in a confined space that would take a thousand turns to get out of.
Reaching into her large bag for her keys, she was mentally working out how she was going to steer her car free without bashing into the monstrosity when the doors of the monstrosity opened, and three men got out.
One glance was all she needed to know they were thugs. Half of Francesca’s family were thugs. Gangsters. Her mother’s side. Francesca found that side of the family fascinating in a macabre way. When her mother’s brother died a couple of months earlier, Francesca had deliberately worn dark glasses to the funeral so she could study her mobster cousins unobserved. According to her mother, the frank way Francesca watched people could be construed as rude. She didn’t mean to be rude; she just found people incredibly interesting. She supposed that might have something to do with being raised in an ancient, converted monastery in the middle of nowhere, the closest neighbours over a kilometre away.
Now that she was finally earning her own money, she could save for a home of her own. Maybe a little apartment here in Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella. Or maybe go a little further afield and buy somewhere in Verona. She’d loved her university years there, even if all she’d seen of the city itself were the streets when her father drove her to and from her lectures.
It took her not even a split second to decide not to ask the driver of the SUV to back his car up a little. She would wait until the gangsters had gone to wherever they were going, and then she would very, very, very, very carefully free her car.
All these thoughts zoomed through her head in a little whirl that abruptly zoomed away when she noticed the gun in the hand of the thug who’d got out of the front passenger seat. The gun was aimed at her.
Her heart stopped.
The man who’d got out of the back, a towering figure all in black with a neatly trimmed black beard and close-cropped black hair, came straight for her. “Good evening, Miss Marino,” he politely said as he swooped like a bat and took her by the arm. “I appreciate that this is a huge inconvenience to you, but I’m afraid you need to come with me.”
Too shocked to react, she just stared up at him as he frog-marched her to the monstrosity.
“Please, get in,” he said when they reached the back door. “Don’t make me do this the hard way.”
The hard way…?
It came to her in a rush what was happening. Her parents’ worst fear was being realised. Francesca was being abducted.
Adrenaline kicked in, and suddenly she was fighting to wrench herself out of the giant man’s hold and opening her lungs to scream, but no sooner had the scream risen up her throat than a giant hand was clamping over her mouth, another wrapping around her waist, and she was being lifted in the air and thrown into the back of the monstrosity.
The sharp scent of leather filled her nostrils, but she paid no attention to it. A form of autopilot had kicked in with the adrenaline, and she scrambled over the seat to the other door. Her fingers clasped the handle to freedom at the same moment her abductor slid in beside her.
“It’s locked,” he said in the same polite tone. The door closed behind him with a soft clunk. Leaning forward to tap the screen separating them from the front of the car, he added, “My apologies for manhandling you.”
Backed against the locked door, Francesca stared at him, hugging herself tightly, not even daring to blink. Her heart was pounding worse than when watching any scary movie. Much worse. Her chest was colder than from any of the nightmares she’d suffered in her younger years.
The car reversed. They were moving.
“Is this real?” she dragged out. Francesca had amazingly vivid dreams. She loved replaying them in her mind, but had stopped sharing them. According to her mother, no one wanted to hear about other people’s dreams, something Francesca found disappointing as other people’s dreams fascinated her. “Is this really happening?”
He opened her bag – she had no recollection of him taking it from her. “I’m afraid so.”
Hugging herself tighter, she pressed a hand to her violently nauseous stomach and watched him pluck her phone out of her bag. “But… Why? Don’t you know who I am? Who my family are, I mean?” She, Francesca Marino, was a nobody. A nothing. Her mobster family, though, were one of the richest families in Italy. They were easily the most powerful, and as she thought this, some of the panic evaporated and she could think more rationally.
“Look,” she said, speaking as quickly as she was thinking. “My uncle was Lorenzo Esposito. My cousin is Mattia Esposito.” She didn’t need to explain those names. There wasn’t a sentient Italian alive who hadn’t heard of the Espositos. “As soon as my family know I’m missing, they will hunt for me, and when they find you, they will kill you, so let me out now, and you’ll live. I don’t know your name, I know nothing of cars, so I’ll be uselessat describing this thing. I didn’t even look at the registration. Let me go, and no one will get hurt.”
He turned his face to her. Was thatamusementin his brown eyes?
He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a phone. “Let me call this famous cousin of yours.”
“You have his number? But then…?” Her words tailed off as the truth she should have recognised straight away smacked her in the face.
Just two weeks after being allowed the freedom she’d spent her whole life fighting for, she was being abducted for the very reason her freedom had been curtailed.
“One second and all will be revealed,” he said smoothly. His nose wrinkled as his call was declined. “Not a problem, I shall face-call Stefano.” He jabbed at the screen again with the hand that had clamped over her mouth. Very quickly, he was smiling widely with his gaze fixed on the screen. “Stefano, put me through to the boss.”
