Chapter 42 #2
Estella read between the lines. Alessia was too young and female to ever register as a threat.
Bruna had known exactly who to make her eyes and ears.
The browser opened on the website of a Canary Islands bank account.
Before Estella could even breathe, Alessia was back in the Word files, clicking.
A cryptocurrency site, a private equity firm, another three off-shore bank accounts and one local bank.
Estella got to her feet, and let Alessia take the office chair, and control.
The youngest Florelli entered passwords, and the authentication pinged straight to the iPhone in her hand.
“You diverted it to your phone?” Estella asked in awe of the girl’s forethought. Alessia went pale.
“No,” she said. “It’s his. I took his phone from the kitchen bench, when Nonna… distracted him.” For a moment, the girl’s hands shook, poised above the keys, her eyes filling with tears of shock. She was about to lose it. Estella put both her hands on her shoulders.
“Do it for Ava,” she said firmly. “Do it for your mother. Do it for all of you.”
At the mention of those who’d gone before her, Alessia’s hands scrunched into fists.
She entered the final passcodes and sat back, wordlessly.
Estella didn’t even risk getting the girl to stand.
Instead, she pulled out her own list of codes and leaned over Alessia to work.
Alessia was limp, sweating, but every time a passcode was required it would ping on her phone and she’d read out the numbers.
They were about halfway through when the phone in her hand started ringing. The caller ID said Nonno.
“It’s him.” Alessia started to weep. “That’s his family phone. He knows! He’s getting notifications.”
“Shit. Shit shit shit.” Estella kept entering the biller code she was halfway through.
“Don’t answer it. Quick, what’s the verification code?
Alessia!” She all but shook the trembling girl.
She didn’t have time to do it all herself, not now their hour had shrunk to bare minutes.
“You’re committed now. Do you hear me? It’s too late to go back.
I’ll get you to safety. I promise. Now what’s the code? ”
“4-7-8-9-3.” Alessia’s voice wobbled, her hands shaking so hard she had to squint at the wobbling phone.
“Set a timer,” Estella bit out. “We’re leaving in six minutes, no matter what.”
Even as she said the words, she wasn’t sure if she was sealing her own fate, and that of the young girl in front of her.
It wasn’t anywhere near enough time, but now Luciano was alerted, every second was one second closer to the end.
They worked quickly, even as the phone in front of them vibrated as Luciano called them over and over, the sweet name Nonno terrifying now, knowing the king of the underground was roaring back toward them.
The timer went, just as Estella finished the last transaction.
The sense of victory hovered in the air just above them.
“Let’s go,” she said, jerking back from the keys.
“No,” said Alessia, her voice surprisingly determined.
“You need this.” She navigated back to the photos, to another file, this one hidden even deeper amongst nondescript names of holidays.
Amongst it was a zip file that said blandly, PDFs.
“You have to find them,” she said cryptically, her voice trembling.
She typed in the email address on the top of the list of codes Estella had given her.
“We have to go now,” Estella overruled, her voice urgent. “I have to get you to safety.”
“No!” Alessia bit out. “He has to be stopped.” Estella could feel her entire body jittering with adrenaline, senses sharpened for danger, but she took thirty more devastating seconds as they watched the files slowly upload to the email.
Finally, with a little whoosh the email sent.
Alessia went to the Sent folder and deleted the evidence while Estella vibrated with agitation.
“Let’s go!” Estella grabbed her arm, making sure she dropped the phone and the two of them ran for the stairs. Just as they reached the top, Estella shoved Alessia hard against the wall, her hand over her mouth, silencing her shocked exhalation with a glare. She’d heard something.
The two of them stood frozen, just inside the doorway, and a second later, she heard it again.
A single footstep. Someone was in the house creeping down the hall toward them.
Estella raised her gun, but Alessia wrestled her head clear from Estella’s hand and gestured frantically behind them.
The two of them moved as quickly and quietly as it was possible back down the flight of stairs, Alessia running now, to a small window set high up in the wall.
Estella shoved her gun into the waistband of her jeans and moved fast. She helped boost Alessia up, the girl undoing the window catch and hauling herself out on the grass.
She could have run, could have gotten free.
Instead, the teenager lay on the grass and reached her hands down for Estella to grab, pulling back with all her might, just enough for Estella to grab the sill and with desperate gratitude for her own upper body strength she wrenched herself up and out.
Together they fled down the garden path, Estella again pinning the girl still, as she quickly swept the street.
The main gates of the house were now open, a dark black Toyota in the drive: not yet Luciano, but his closest henchman, come to hunt them on the boss’s command.
The street was quiet and the two of them ran as fast as they could down the first side alley they found.
Just as they reached the next suburban street, finally under the cover of darkness, a car roared to life where it was parked less than fifty meters away, sirens blaring, flashing lights red and blue.
“Run!” Estella shoved Alessia in one direction, praying to god she wasn’t delivering her to her fate, and ran like hell in the other.
She ducked down the side alley again, running back toward the Florelli’s home, because Alessia’s best chance was as far away as she could get from the monsters who raised her .
She could hear the slap of feet in the other direction, and voices shouting, and turned her head for barely a second as she pelted away from the screaming sirens.
Just as she hit the next street, she found herself slammed face first into the wall, her arm wrenched up behind her back.
She reared her elbow back, expecting to slam into a wall of Florelli muscle and hitting air.
Her arm was caught in a metal grip, the other wrestled back to join it, in handcuffs.
From behind her a woman’s gloat came clear as day from the darkness.
“Estella Grant, you’re under arrest,” came the distinctive voice of Detective Yolanda Markos.