I threw the towel over her body and grabbed her clothes and my guns on the way before I dashed down the stairs, yelling for my men and Arancia.
A roar of a motor came crashing from outside. I looked through the curtains and saw a speedboat darting to my shore. Merda. That couldn’t be Leo, but he’d sent some of his crew to delay us.
My men rushed in to protect me. I told two of them to take Angel and Arancia, who had just rushed in, too, to the plane. I gave Arancia Angel’s clothes and told her to get her dressed once they boarded.
“What about you?” Arancia panted as Angel squirmed and yelled when the men took hold of her.
“Don’t worry about me.” I looked at one of my men. “If I don’t get back in ten minutes, you fly that plane and get them out of here, understood?”
“Si, Don Bellomo.”
“No!” Angel suddenly shouted, and her eyes reached out to mine. “We can’t leave without you.”
Didn’t she want to stay for Leo to save her from me? Now she couldn’t leave without me? “Just go, Angel.” I unlocked my gun and nodded for the men to go.
Chapter 54
Lina
We ran through the lush side of the island away from the beach, bullets echoing, my brain jumbled.
I’d totally surrendered to Tino as I realized I had deep feelings for him that would never go away, but then a chance to get out of his prison erupted, and I had to take it. After all, he kidnapped me and was planning on keeping me hidden forever. He couldn’t blame me for fighting for my freedom.
But he told me his son’s darkest secret, and everything changed. If what Tino said was true, it only meant one thing. Tino, in his twisted ways, had been trying to protect me from Leo all this time, not just trying to own me and take me away from him.
Tino killed my father to save me. He interfered before Leo and I hooked up to save me. He punched his son when he proposed to me to save me. He kidnapped me before I married Leo to save me.
But if Tino was lying, I would have every right to try to escape. Our relationship was toxic, to say the least. Even if I loved him, I was better off without him, far away from all the Bellomos.
I knew I should run for my life without looking back. I should be grateful that I was leaving here without him where there might be a bigger chance to escape everything and never having to be a prisoner, a slave at his mercy again.
The idea of Tino in danger, though, tore at me, and—I hated myself for this—toxic or not, leaving here alone without him terrified me more than anything.
What the fuck is happening to me?
The plane appeared in a walking distance, a couple of minutes away from the trail we followed. It wasn’t easy to advance among the thick trees with only a towel wrapped around your body, and the sun diving west. A chill ran through me at the approaching night cold and the bellowing gunfight that wouldn’t cease.
Another bellowing sound cracked in, this time coming from above. I looked up and I saw it.
A plane.
Leo’s plane.
The bodyguards started to swear and urge us to speed.
“No! We can’t leave now!” I screamed, my heart racing. “What if they hurt each other?”
The two men and Arancia cursed again and practically dragged me to the plane and shoved me inside.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? He’s your brother. He’s your boss.”
“We have to follow his orders, signora,” one of his bodyguards said as Arancia guided me to the bathroom so I could put on my clothes.
The bullets rained in the background as I finally got dressed. My heart squeezed with every shot. I heard the man talking outside. It was all Italian, but I could gather they were getting ready to fly as there were only two minutes left to Tino’s deadline.
I listened for the gunshots. They weren’t getting closer. If anything, they were getting farther. Tino wasn’t coming to the plane. There was no way he could make it in time.
A knock on the bathroom door interrupted my thoughts. “Signora, are you okay?”
