saved my life. Then Tino himself paid me a visit. He promised to give me any money I’d have ever
needed as long as I remained dead.
I liked it. It was a generous offer. He could have just let me die or killed me himself. But he didn’t.
Tino Bellomo might have been a ruthless killer who had murdered my father, but he obviously liked to
save little girls like me. I owed him my life and my freedom. His offer was my free pass. A new life
away from blood, from the Romanovs, from Leo.
“We don’t need help from Bellomo or anybody else, Sia. I’m your man. I’ll take care of you,”
Jesse said.
“Only an arrogant man would refuse help when he clearly needed it.” I twined my fingers with his.
“This is a Mob affair, Savage. What do you know about that?”
“More than you do, little girl. Let’s go.”
“Jesse…please. Just promise me that if it comes to it, you will ask Bellomo for help.”
He blinked and sighed. “It’s not fair when you say my name like that.”
I smiled. “So you’ll do it?”
“Only if it comes to it, but it won’t.”
That meant he wouldn’t ask for help, which left me no choice but to rely on option two. I couldn’t
let Jesse get hurt because of me.
“Jesse, there’s something you need to know. When I reached Cincinnati as I was supposed to, I
was going to arrange for a meet with one of Tino Bellomo’s men.”
“What? Why? How and when did you fucking contact him?”
“There’s a number that I text when I need money and another to call in case I’m not safe. I have
called when I heard about Leo. He told me he’d take care of it, and he didn’t think Leo was after me
at all, but it’d be better if I was on the move. That was why I was hopping from town to town all
week. Also, as you know, the last fake identity I got myself wasn’t great, so he told me to text when I was in Cincinnati where one of his men would get me a good one and leave me some cash so I can get
out of the country. If we stop in Ohio first, we can still get it.”
He looked at me as if I’d stabbed him with a blunt knife. “So you can leave the country?”
A lump clogged my throat. Leaving was all I’d ever wanted for the past week of ultimate terror,
but now it was the last thing I wanted to happen. Still, the idea of putting Jesse in danger wasn’t
something I accepted, and going to Chicago was surely risky, especially when he thought he could
handle the Mob on his own. “Maybe it’s better if I did.” Tears cracked my voice. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Maybe when things settle down, you can visit?”
