Chapter 25 Violet #2
The rocks along the edge are loose and sharp underfoot.
It takes me two minutes to find one heavy enough, a broken chunk of concrete with rebar still sticking out of it, the kind of construction debris my brain automatically categorizes.
Poured aggregate, probably mid-century, poor mix ratio based on the crumble pattern.
My architectural-restoration brain, performing site analysis on a rock I'm about to use to sink a stolen car into a quarry.
Cool. This is fine. Everything is fine.
I open the driver's door, shift into neutral, and wedge the concrete chunk against the gas pedal. The engine screams as the RPMs spike. In one smooth motion I shift into drive, step back, and close the door.
The Audi lurches forward. It crosses the gravel faster than I expected, hits the lip of the quarry, and just a moment it hangs there, front wheels over the edge, balanced on the chassis like a scale deciding which way to tip.
Then it goes.
The sound is not what I expected. Not a crash. Not a splash. More like a deep, percussive swallow. The water opening to take the weight of it, and then closing over the hood, the roof, the taillights that glow red beneath the surface for three seconds, four, five, before the dark eats them.
Bubbles rise. A long, low gurgle. Then the surface smooths over as if nothing was ever there.
I stand at the edge and whisper goodbye. Not to the car. To everything it came with.
Turning away from the edge, I start walking south along the access road, my bag on my shoulder, gravel crunching with every step.
Half a kilometer. Gabriella said half a kilometer.
. I'm so fucked if she doesn't show up. No money, no phone.
I guess I could always keep walking south until I reach Palermo.
But then what? I go to the consulate? What if they're in the Marchetti pocket as well?
Somehow, despite Elio saying I was free to leave whenever I want to, I know he wouldn't let me go if he knew I'm carrying his child.
The headlights appear before I reach the road. Two bright beams cutting through the dark from the south, moving fast, then slowing as they find me walking along the shoulder. I freeze, fighting the urge to slink back into the shadows and hide. But then the tinted window of the sedan rolls down.
Gabriella Rossi is at the wheel. No makeup. Hair pulled back. Dressed in black like she's attending a funeral or committing a felony, which, fair enough, she's kind of doing both tonight. Her eyes sweep over me once, her lip curling in an expression you'd give a stain on an expensive tablecloth.
"You look like shit."
"Thanks. Get that a lot from women who've tried to have me trafficked."
Her eyes narrow. For one second I think she's going to drive off and leave me on the shoulder of a Sicilian back road. But she reaches across and shoves the passenger door open.
"Get in. Don't touch anything."
I get in. On the back seat there's a bag. Plain, black, no labels. Clothes. Cash. Whatever documents she produced since I called. I don't look at them yet. The road is moving under us and that's enough.
Gabriella drives fast, not even glancing at me. Two women locked in a moving vehicle who would happily watch each other burn. The silence is anything but comfortable.
"As much as I want you gone, this is a mistake," she says, and her voice is flat and certain. "He'll find you. He'll bring you back. And when he does, you'll be exactly where you started. Under his roof, in his bed, spreading your legs whenever he snaps his fingers."
My nails dig into my palms. I keep my voice even. "Maybe."
"Not maybe. Certainly. I've known Elio Marchetti since we were children. He doesn't lose things. He doesn't let go." She takes a curve fast enough that I brace against the door. "But at least you'll be someone else's problem for a while. There's always a chance he'll change his mind about you."
I could tell her about the compound. About what happened in there, what her arrangement cost me, the concrete, the guards, the stale bread and the hands on my body. I could tell her that the woman sitting next to her is different now. Stronger. More determined.
I don't. Because I am learning, slowly and painfully, that the women who survive in this world are the ones who know when to keep their weapons holstered.
The coastal road winds east toward the water, the Mediterranean appearing in glimpses between the hills, black and silver under a sky that's starting to think about getting lighter but hasn't committed yet. My hand rests in my lap, fingers twitching to move higher, cover my stomach. I don't.
The port at Termini Imerese is small. Working. The kind of place that smells like diesel and fish guts, which doesn't help my nausea. Gabriella pulls up at the edge of a gravel lot, kills the headlights, and nods toward the dock.
A fishing vessel sits low in the water at the far end. Running lights on. Engine already humming.
"The captain's name is Marco. He doesn't ask questions.
He'll take you to Salerno." Gabriella stares straight ahead through the windshield, both hands on the wheel, knuckles white.
She hasn't looked at me once since I got in.
"From there, you're a ghost. My ghost. A ghost who never called me, never sat in my car, and never existed in any version of tonight that I will ever remember. "
"Understood."
"Then get out of my car."
I huff a laugh, taking the bag from the back seat and open the door. The salt air rushes in, carrying the sound of water against the hull and the low idle of the engine waiting to take me somewhere that isn't here. My feet hit the gravel, and I close the door without looking back.
The dock stretches ahead of me, weathered wood planks slick with spray, a single light at the far end throwing a yellow circle onto the water. The fishing vessel sits in it, rocking gently. Small. Functional. Nothing beautiful about it, nothing elegant, nothing that belongs to anyone I love.
My boots make hollow sounds on the wood. One step. Another.
My hand goes to my stomach.
I keep walking.
Elio and Violet's story continues in
THE HUNT
Violet Murphy thinks she's running. Elio Marchetti doesn't lose what's his. And somewhere between Sicily and the rest of the world, a woman carrying his child is about to learn that the most dangerous thing she ever did wasn't falling in love with a monster.
It was teaching him what he had to lose.