Chapter 1 #2
Great.
Sighing – he might as well get the first death threat over with – he cleared his throat and commanded that the message be played.
Within seconds of Rico’s voice filling the car’s interior, Niccolo’s blood had run to ice.
By the end of the message, he was driving faster than he’d ever driven in his life.
It had been seven hours since Georgia Thomas had fled her flat, and she was still struggling to breathe.
The terror hadn’t abated a jot. How could it when the people she was running from were the Espositos, the richest and most powerful family in Italy?
Every creak of a floorboard had her half jumping out of her skin.
When she’d woken, she’d imagined the worst that would happen that day would be the final pieces of her broken heart disintegrating into dust.
Georgia never moped, but the ache she’d woken to in the pit of her chest had been so acute that it had taken everything she had not to fall into despair over what the day would bring.
Niccolo, marrying another woman.
If she could have drunk herself into a stupor to get through it, she would have done.
Instead, she’d paced her flat watching the sun rise, wishing so badly that Callie was there, and then, as if their brains and hearts had connected by the old Twin Sense they used to joke about having, Callie had called.
It hadn’t been the same as having her unidentical twin there, but for the few minutes they’d spoken, the distance Georgia had built between them in the wake of Niccolo had disappeared.
She’d never intended to create that distance.
In all their twenty-six years, they’d shared everything, were as close and as dependent on each other as two sisters could be, but then Niccolo had come along and for the first time in Georgia’s life, she’d fallen for someone, and it had felt so precious and special that she’d wanted to keep it private, even from Callie.
When Niccolo ended them, the distance with Callie had turned into a gulf. Georgia had shut down; been completely unable to talk about it, and then when she’d discovered she was pregnant…
Maybe if Callie hadn’t always been so protective of her, often more of a mother than a sister, she’d have confided in her, but she’d been as frightened of how Callie would react as she was about how Niccolo would react. She’d been trying to protect her. Protect them both. Protect everyone.
She should have told her sister the truth instead of letting her fear turn her into a screaming Harpy.
If she’d kept calm and been honest, Callie might have listened.
Instead, she’d unwittingly flown to Italy and into very real danger.
Georgia’s panic had found her messaging Niccolo for the first time since they’d broken up with the lie that her sister had turned into a psychopath and was on her way to destroy his wedding.
In turn, he’d got his best friend Dante to kidnap Callie and hide her in his castle until the wedding was over.
She’d hated herself for the lies, but Callie’s safety was as precious to her as the safety of her unborn child.
The early morning call with Callie had meant everything to her. Over the thousands of miles separating them, the old closeness they’d forged in the womb had knitted back together.
Callie had forgiven her. Best of all, Callie was safe. A message received an hour after their call had read:
I’m with Dante. Will call you later. Keep strong. Love you.
Georgia’s efforts to keep her twin out of the whole mess might have backfired spectacularly, but the Espositos couldn’t touch her. Not now. Dante would keep Callie safe, just as he had for the past week.
In any case, it was Georgia they wanted to touch, and she closed her eyes as she recalled for the hundredth time the call she’d received a few hours after Callie’s message.
She’d seen the international Italian code and her stupid heart had stupidly leapt that it could be Niccolo, even though she’d known it was impossible. It wasn’t his number, and he was at that very moment in the process of marrying Siena.
She’d answered the call with a tentative, “Hello?”
“Georgia, I need you to listen very carefully,” a heavily accented Italian voice that didn’t belong to Niccolo had said without any preamble. “The Espositos are coming for you. If you want to save yourself and your baby, you need to do exactly as I say.”
Her terror at the mention of the Espositos and her baby in the same sentence had been instant. Just to recall those particular words had her protectively cradle her fledging bump.
“I need you to leave your flat through the back door,” the voice had said, only just cutting through her fear.
“Go to the park that backs onto your garden. When you see the first bus coming, wait until the last moment before getting on. Stay close to the driver. Do not take the underground until you’re in central London.
I’m going to text you an address and a code to enter it.
Memorise them and then get rid of your phone.
No one should follow you, but you need to imagine your every move is being watched.
The address is your safety, but it will only be safe if you make it there without being followed. ”
“Who are you?” she’d whispered.
“The only person who can save you from the Espositos. Now go.” The line had disconnected.
Terrified, she’d obeyed.
The journey to the flat she’d been holed up in for four hours was nothing but a blur. She’d switched from bus to bus and then criss-crossed London’s underground network, too busy scaring herself with her thoughts to have much consciousness of what she was doing.
Niccolo had explained all about the Espositos when he’d made his insulting offer to her. Mafia in all but name.
No one should follow you, the man had said, and it was the should that had done all the heavy lifting in Georgia’s fears.
How was she supposed to know if she’d made it to the address without being followed?
She was an interior designer, not a member of the security services!
How was she supposed to know if there were men currently looking up at the windows she’d drawn the curtains on?
The flat was in Bayswater, an affluent part of the city, on the top floor of a converted Victorian townhouse on a wide street bustling with life.
She couldn’t work out if its busyness made it safer than her own flat.
The flat she shared with her twin in the suburbs where the underground terminated was off their town’s main high street, but the town itself was so sleepy that even the pubs went to bed early.
Here, the windows did a good job of insulating the flat from outside noise, but it was still ten times noisier than what she was used to, and she paced the vast floors trying to stop her heart from palpitating at every distant shout and blare of a car horn.
Nerves had pulled her insides into such a tight ball that she wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, but she needed to eat, if only for the baby.
The kitchen pantry contained a decent array of dried and tinned goods, while a huge chest freezer was filled with portions of homemade meals.
Seeing those portioned meals brought her no closer to figuring out who owned the place.
It was fully furnished, but there was nothing personal in it.
No clothes. No photos anywhere. The only thing she could confidently say about the owner was that he or she was rich, not just because the place was five times the size of her own shared flat, but through the location – the rear windows looked out on Hyde Park – and the quality of the fittings and furnishings.
The only thing less than modern about the interior was the phone she’d discovered when she’d first arrived and made a tentative search of the rooms. She’d felt very much like a character in a horror film, so much so that she’d had to psyche herself up to pull the wardrobe doors open and check under the beds.
She’d actually screamed at the figure behind the shower screen that had turned out to be her own reflection.
The phone had been stuck, forgotten, in the back of a drawer in the kitchen.
It was one of those old-fashioned phones that had been considered cutting edge when Georgia’s parents were her age, designed for making calls and text messages and nothing else.
She’d examined it with the same tentativeness that she’d searched the rooms, but, even though it had a charger wrapped around it, had been too frightened of it being a trap to plug it in and make a call on it.
Not that there was anyone for her to call.
She didn’t know anyone’s numbers off the top of her head.
They were all stored in the contacts of the phone she’d left behind in her own flat.
She had no means of calling Niccolo and finding out if he was safe. Not that she should care if he was safe. She didn’t want to care, not after the way things had ended between them.
She’d been taken to the heights of heaven and then dropped. The landing had been the most painful thing she’d endured in her life.
What the hell had happened, she wondered despairingly. Why had the Espositos decided, today of all days, that she was suddenly a threat?
She had no way of knowing. Without her phone, she was cut off from the world.
Putting a portioned meal labelled as lasagne in the microwave, she hugged her arms for warmth and wondered again about the man who’d called her. Who was he? Why was he helping her?
Was she supposed to just wait here until he made contact again?
And why the hell was she even trusting him?
She knew the answer to that: it was because he’d mentioned her baby and the Espositos in the same breath, but as easy as the answer was, it gave no guarantees that he was one of the good guys.
It also begged the question of how the hell he even knew about the baby.