My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches. But my voice comes out level. "Noted."
"And Violet?" She says my name like she's spitting out something rotten. "If you ever contact me again, if you ever come back to Sicily, if you ever breathe Elio Marchetti's name in a sentence that includes mine, I will finish what the compound started. Capisce?"
"Loud and clear."
The line goes dead.
I hang up the receiver, my hand finally shaking. Not from fear. From the effort of not screaming into the empty street that I just negotiated my escape with the woman who tried to have me sold, and the price was swallowing every word I wanted to say.
Welcome to the Marchetti world, Violet. This is how the women survive.
I turn back to the car.
The quarry is twenty minutes from the village, down a road that narrows until the asphalt gives way to packed dirt and gravel. The Audi's suspension absorbs every rut and pothole as the headlights carve a tunnel through the dark. At the end, through a gap in a rusted chain-link fence, I see water. Black and still. A flooded quarry pit that swallowed whatever industry used to live here and turned it into a hole.
I park on the edge. Kill the engine and wait for the silence to swallow me as I rest my hands on the steering wheel. The leather is warm from my grip, faintly smelling like him, the way his things always carry his scent, woven into every surface he touches.
Get out of the car, Violet.
I get out.
The rocks along the edge are loose and sharp underfoot. It takes me two minutes to find one heavy enough, a broken chunk of concrete with rebar still sticking out of it, the kind of construction debris my brain automatically categorizes. Poured aggregate, probably mid-century, poor mix ratio based on the crumble pattern. My architectural-restoration brain, performing site analysis on a rock I'm about to use to sink a stolen car into a quarry.
Cool. This is fine. Everything is fine.
I open the driver's door, shift into neutral, and wedge the concrete chunk against the gas pedal. The engine screams as the RPMs spike. In one smooth motion I shift into drive, step back, and close the door.
The Audi lurches forward. It crosses the gravel faster than I expected, hits the lip of the quarry, and just a moment it hangs there, front wheels over the edge, balanced on the chassis like a scale deciding which way to tip.
Then it goes.
The sound is not what I expected. Not a crash. Not a splash. More like a deep, percussive swallow. The water opening to take the weight of it, and then closing over the hood, the roof, the taillights that glow red beneath the surface for three seconds, four, five, before the dark eats them.
Bubbles rise. A long, low gurgle. Then the surface smooths over as if nothing was ever there.
I stand at the edge and whisper goodbye. Not to the car. To everything it came with.
Turning away from the edge, I start walking south along the access road, my bag on my shoulder, gravel crunching with every step. Half a kilometer. Gabriella said half a kilometer.. I'm so fucked if she doesn't show up. No money, no phone. I guess I could always keep walking south until I reach Palermo. But then what? I go to the consulate? What if they're in the Marchettipocket as well? Somehow, despite Elio saying I was free to leave whenever I want to, I know he wouldn't let me go if he knew I'm carrying his child.
The headlights appear before I reach the road. Two bright beams cutting through the dark from the south, moving fast, then slowing as they find me walking along the shoulder. I freeze, fighting the urge to slink back into the shadows and hide. But then the tinted window of the sedan rolls down.
Gabriella Rossi is at the wheel. No makeup. Hair pulled back. Dressed in black like she's attending a funeral or committing a felony, which, fair enough, she's kind of doing both tonight. Her eyes sweep over me once, her lip curling in an expression you'd give a stain on an expensive tablecloth.
"You look like shit."
"Thanks. Get that a lot from women who've tried to have me trafficked."
Her eyes narrow. For one second I think she's going to drive off and leave me on the shoulder of a Sicilian back road. But she reaches across and shoves the passenger door open.
"Get in. Don't touch anything."
I get in. On the back seat there's a bag. Plain, black, no labels. Clothes. Cash. Whatever documents she produced since I called. I don't look at them yet. The road is moving under us and that's enough.
Gabriella drives fast, not even glancing at me. Two women locked in a moving vehicle who would happily watch each other burn. The silence is anything but comfortable.
"As much as I want you gone, this is a mistake," she says, and her voice is flat and certain. "He'll find you. He'll bring you back. And when he does, you'll be exactly where you started. Under his roof, in his bed, spreading your legs whenever he snaps his fingers."
My nails dig into my palms. I keep my voice even. "Maybe."
