Chapter 36 #2
I still.
Footsteps echo below. Quick and brisk. Someone walking to the copy room or getting a cup of coffee. The steps fade away, and Antonio motions for me to continue.
My knees ache. My palms sting. My hair sticks to the back of my neck. Fear makes everything sharp and too bright even in the darkness.
“Almost.” Just that one word tells me that he can tell how I’m feeling because his voice is soft and reassuring.
We reach the end of the run, where the ceiling opens into a maintenance alcove above a side hallway.
Antonio slides past me, somehow managing to move his big body precisely. He reaches down and shifts a tile.
A rectangle of light appears.
He looks down, listens, then drops silently into the hallway below.
He turns immediately and reaches up for me. “Come.”
I lower myself, hands shaking, and he catches me—firm hands at my waist, guiding me down without letting me fall.
The hallway is empty.
Antonio grabs my wrist and moves us fast, keeping us close to the wall.
Not toward the main elevators.
Not toward the lobby.
We take a side corridor I’ve never used, past a locked utility door, past a stairwell that smells faintly of bleach.
He pushes the stairwell door open just enough to look, then pulls it closed again.
“Clear,” he murmurs, and drags me the other way.
My breath is coming too fast. “Are you sure the others—”
“They’re covered,” he says again, and his tone leaves no space for argument. “Move.”
We reach a door marked for service access. Antonio doesn’t slow. He punches the bar, swings it open, and ushers me through.
We’re suddenly in a section of the building that’s utilitarian—the kind of place no one but maintenance goes.
Almost out. My pulse is loud. My mouth is dry. My whole body feels like it’s vibrating.
Antonio’s grip on my arm suddenly tightens, almost painfully, and in one quick move, pulls open a door, fits us both into what looks like a storage closet, and shuts the door quietly.
Before I can think to ask what the hell we’re doing, his palm is over my mouth. He has me pressed back against him, and I realize that he’s holding a gun in his other hand.
“Shh.” It’s a soft breath against my ear.
My pulse is so loud I’m sure it’s giving us away.
Footsteps pass outside the door. Two male voices speak in hushed tones.
“You really think they’ll come this way?” one asks.
“No,” the other says, snorting. “This way is too obvious. No way they’d be that dumb. But, hey, boss tells me to sit on it, I sit on it.” It’s said with a condescending sneer, as if he knows better.
I hear one of them say, “Bellandi’s gonna be pissed if she slips away in the hands of those Cuntis.”
I narrow my eyes at the bastard. Antonio’s grip on my waist tightens, a warning squeeze.
“Hell, he’s already pissed. He tapped into that asshole CEO’s computer and, apparently, they’re passing on Bellandi for the acquisition. Officially. So now we gotta clean this mess up.”
So that’s what the urgent meeting was going to be about. They had taken my recommendation and passed on Bellandi.
“All this for one woman?”
“Not one woman. The decision-maker, shake her, break her, whatever it takes. If she signs, we win. If she doesn’t—” I imagine him shrugging, like that’s all my life is worth. “Then we don’t need her anymore, do we?”
My blood turns to ice, and I begin to tremble.
Antonio’s mouth brushes my ear, barely there. His arm tightens around me.
Outside, the men keep walking. Their voices fade, then spike again for a second as one of them laughs under his breath—like my life is a punchline—and then even that disappears down the corridor.
But Antonio doesn’t move. Not yet. Not for a while.
We stay exactly as we are, perfectly still. Well, Antonio does. I try.
It’s not for a while that his hand finally leaves my mouth slowly, not all at once, like he’s testing whether I’ll panic out loud.
I swallow hard, taste fear, and force it back. Antonio is here right now, protecting me. He doesn’t have to be here, but he is. I’m going to be all right. I trust him.
He shifts the gun slightly, angling his body between me and the door, and leans in to murmur against my ear, “When I open this, you stay behind me. You don’t run. You don’t look around. You hold onto my jacket, and you do exactly what I tell you.”
My fingers curl into his sleeve on instinct.
He pauses, listening—head tilted, every muscle tuned to the hallway. Then, softly, he says, “A hundred yards. No more than that. Then we’re out of here.”
I nod and watch as he eases the door open—just enough to look out with one eye—then goes still again.
For a heartbeat, all I can hear is my own blood.
Then his gaze flicks left, right, and he pulls back, easing the door shut without a sound.
“Hold,” he breathes.
Footsteps—different ones this time—tap past the closet. Faster. One set. The cadence of someone moving with purpose.
The steps fade.
He waits two more beats anyway. One. Two.
Then he cracks the door again, wider.
His eyes land on mine for a split second, reassurance.
“Now,” he murmurs.
He slips out first, body angled to shield me, and I move exactly the way he told me to—close, tucked behind him, fingers clamped on the back of his jacket.
Antonio moves fast but quietly, and I stay glued to him, just as he told me to, my hand fisted in the fabric at his back. Don’t look around. Don’t look around. I stare at the seam between his shoulder blades and let him be my entire world.
We pass another stairwell, this one smelling much worse than bleach. At the next intersection, he slows for half a second, head tilting, listening. He shifts his weight like a cat ready to spring, then angles us left.
A muffled voice echoes somewhere ahead, distant, but my stomach drops anyway.
Antonio steers me tighter to the wall, keeping our bodies in the shadow line where the overhead fluorescents don’t hit as hard.
We clear the corner.
The service exit sign glows at the end of the back-of-house corridor.
My lungs burn. My legs feel too light, like I’m not quite connected to the floor.
Antonio doesn’t speed up. That’s the terrifying part. He keeps the same controlled pace when all I want to do is break out into a run.
Ten yards.
Five.
He stops just short of the door and goes still, listening again.
Then he shifts in front of me completely—blocking my line of sight—and reaches for the bar with his free hand.
“Stay on me,” he whispers, so low it’s more vibration than sound.
My fingers clamp harder on his jacket.
He presses the bar. The latch gives with a soft click.
The door cracks open. A thin slice of daylight cuts into the corridor.
Antonio leans his head out just enough to scan, then he pulls me through.
We step outside into an alley-like side access lane where delivery vehicles sometimes idle.
I don’t know what the plan is now, but we’ve moved away from the view of the door and are now walking along the side of the building.
Just then, a black SUV comes around the corner, heading right for us. I shrink back into Antonio and screech his name.
But the SUV just comes to a halt in front of us.
The back door opens before we even reach it.
Antonio doesn’t hesitate. He pulls me around and practically shoves me inside—not rough, just urgent.
I scramble across the leather seat, heart hammering.
Antonio climbs in after me, slamming the door.
Two men are in the front.
“Drive,” Antonio barks out.
The SUV pulls out fast, and I twist to look out the rear window, my breath coming in tight bursts.
The side door we came out of bursts open, and the two men spill out of the doorway. One of them pulls out a gun and aims.
“Antonio,” I gasp.
“We’re safe in here,” he says.
The first bullet hits the car, and terror coats my throat like gasoline. Antonio holds me close as two more bullets bounce off the car before we turn out of the alley, and I see Northstar shrink behind us.
The passenger turns his head and says, “You good, tio?”
He looks young, but there’s no softness in him. Fit, sharp-eyed, jaw set like he was carved out of stone. His gaze flicks over me—quick assessment—then to Antonio.
Antonio’s arm is still around me, holding me firmly to his side. He nods briefly.
Wait… tio?
This is one of his nephews.
But neither of them seems very concerned about introducing me right at that moment.
“Breathe,” he murmurs in my ear, low enough that only I can hear.
I try.
I don’t know what comes next.
I only know we’re moving, and he got me out.