33. Chapter Thirty-Three
ANNA
Anna had a gift for remaining calm in the face of crisis. It was this gift that had allowed her and her brother to escape the torture and certain death they faced when DiGiorgio goons entered their family’s house in the middle of the night.
Luca had heard them first. He came to Anna’s room, pressed a hand over her mouth, and coaxed her quietly from her bed. Her first inclination was for them to go to the safe room located outside of their parents’ bedroom, but Luca led her away to one of the guest rooms instead. Getting to his knees, he pressed on a panel and revealed a small space behind the wall, barely wide enough for her. Her brother, whose shoulders were much broader than hers, was forced to walk sideways.
She had so many questions, but she dared not ask any of them, not until they were someplace safe. She trusted her brother implicitly.
They made their way slowly and without a sound, until they reached one of the massive stone chimneys on the south side of the house. Through the thick walls, the sounds of the horror reached them. Guns firing. People screaming. Feet running. Bodies thumping.
Anna’s heart pounded so hard that she was sure they would hear it. Luca’s hand on her shoulder was what kept her grounded.
It seemed to last forever. And then … no more screams. No more gunshots. Just heavy footfalls and barked commands.
“You get the girl?” a deep, growly voice said.
“She wasn’t in the safe room. Neither was the heir.”
“Fuck. Find them. The don wants them taken alive.”
Anna met her brother’s eyes. They both knew, in that moment, that as long as they were alive, they would be hunted. They only had one option. To die.
Or to make it look like they had.
They waited until DiGiorgio’s men left. Anna had watched enough true crime documentaries to know how to stage a fake death. A well-placed bullet or two. Enough blood to leave tracks and smudges and handprints in important places. The mayor, who had run on an anti-organized crime campaign, would want things hushed up as quickly and quietly as possible, so the investigators wouldn’t look too closely.
Amazingly, they pulled it off. Escaped into the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs, but they survived. She’d walked away. Started a new life. So had her brother, although, based on the latest campaign photos of Paul DiGiorgio, he hadn’t gone far. She’d always known he would return someday, just as she’d known she never would.
The one thing Anna hadn’t counted on was running into a former beat cop from Chicago in a sleepy mountain town.
She’d beaten the odds before. She would do so again.
Cuffed and wrapped as she was, her options were limited.
What would Houdini do?
She closed her eyes and tried to remember the documentary she’d watched on the famous escape artist. She didn’t have the ability to dislocate her shoulders like he had, but she could employ some other tricks.
Anna shifted her shoulders and torso back and forth, left and right, until she created enough slack to be able to flip onto her side.
No hidden key to barf up, but picking locks was a skill she and Luca had learned early on. If she could slip her hand under the cushions, she might be able to locate a loose wire or spring and … yes!
It took far too much time, but eventually, she was able to unlock the cuffs around her wrists. The first thing she did was remove the gag and the tablets that were glued to the inside of her mouth.
A click made her freeze. The bedroom door creaked as it opened. Anna stuffed the pills into the sofa crack and shoved the gag back into her mouth and rotated onto her back just as Manny’s bare feet slapped softly over the painted wood floor.
A minute passed, maybe two, before he made a soft hrmmf sound and walked into the bathroom. He didn’t bother to close the door, and Anna was treated to the sound of an exceptionally long piss. The gross fucker didn’t even wash his hands.
He checked on her again, then went back into his bedroom.
Anna waited an eternity but heard nothing. She didn’t know what time it was, but she feared dawn wasn’t far off. She was running out of time. With her hands now free, she was able to get the cuffs off around her ankles much faster.
With only a whisper of sound, she slid off the couch onto her hands and knees and crawled quietly toward the door and assessed the locking mechanisms. Not complicated. The house was old, the locks purely mechanical. One knob lock. One single cylinder dead bolt. Both could be disengaged with some thumb-index-finger-twisting action.
Holding her breath, she did one, then the other. Slowly. Quietly.
Anna took one last look back. The bedroom door was still closed.
She opened the door, wincing when it stuck on the jamb and required a quick tug. The rub of wood on wood rang out like a gunshot in the silence. Then, she was passing through the door, onto a narrow, covered second-floor porch.
Carefully closing the door behind her, she turned to the wooden steps and …
“Leaving so soon, princess?”