Chapter 22
Allie
Being trapped in the dark with only guilt and a dead body changes your perspective. After the initial panic, I panicked some more. Then I planned, second-guessed my plans, panicked again, and finally calmed down enough to think.
While I was thinking I had plenty of time to sift through my mistakes. Like thinking I could somehow lead a normal life. Or pretending that I gave two shits about what the local PTA thought about a mobster’s granddaughter veterinarian. I’d been living lies.
No wonder my parents chucked it all and fled the city.
And no wonder Ellie developed a thick hide and a bitingly-sharp tongue to wage war against society.
Normal people never got trapped in a mobster’s cave hiding from ghosts. At least not ones they’d created themselves. But that was the whole crux of this. I’d been fighting ghosts my entire life, but never truly living. I’d squirreled away the money I’d inherited instead of spending it.
Why? What was the point?
So I could be judged?
At some point, I began to talk to myself as I imagined going home.
I was deep in conversation with my mother when I heard the quiet squeak of bats.
“As if the darkness wasn’t bad enough?” I asked the blackness.
My voice triggered a flurry of commotion as the tiny animals took flight and swooped past my face.
At first, I thought they’d traveled up the path toward wherever the path emptied near Don Conti’s lair.
Then I realized they’d turned sharply once brushing past me and angled downward. Their distant whistles quieted, leaving the same emptiness of sound that had been slowly driving me crazy.
I held a hand up and felt along the wall, raising it as I dared to wobble to my feet. I hit my head on the ceiling as I did and quickly sat back down.
The ledge I was on crumbled slightly.
I scooted farther up the slope to find solid ground.
Once my legs could stretch out without hanging over the edge, I leaned against the wall to catch my breath.
“I came in through a small opening.” It had been barely three feet high.
I remembered stepping down as I crawled out of it, and also the way the wall tugged at my shirt as I squeezed through.
Leandro had to force his body through because the opening wasn’t wide enough for his bulk.
That had given me time to turn uphill and wind around a pillar of rock and halt in place as the enormity of the chamber hit me.
I pictured the scene in my mind, thinking of how it looked and how wide the path was.
“I had to curve around the opening and turn left.” And stepped down. Meaning that I’d passed the opening as I felt along the path in the dark because it was higher than I’d been touching.
Working slowly so I wouldn’t miss it again, I swept my right hand across the path, testing the width before kneeling. The ceiling was too low yet. Leandro wouldn’t have been able to squeeze through the opening if it was this short.
I moved about a foot before repeating my actions. Each time, I tested the height and then felt along the wall with my left hand as high as I dared to touch, feeling for a change in the wall.
Very quickly, I found the stairs. I slid down two before catching myself and sitting my ass down on the sloped edges.
“Ain’t no way I’m walking down this.”
So much for keeping Ellie’s clothes decent. I was covered in mud and sand by the time the grotto opened up.
The boat still floated in the pool of water, but the tide had receded, leaving a long swath of disturbingly gray silt that spanned to the pool.
The FBI wasn’t the only thing that had traumatized me as a child. “This is not the swamp of sadness.”
I struggled to delude myself enough to wipe that image from my brain. Yet with the first sucking step, I chickened out and decided not to try for the boat.
“Besides, Ringo has the keys. It would be useless and I’d be a sitting duck.”
Remembering how quickly Leandro had snuck up on me, I worked along the edge of the grotto until I reached a point where the cave ceiling met the waterline and the sandy floor sloped too steeply to create a beach.
I braced myself for the bone-numbing chill of mid-February water, and was shocked to find it much milder than Lake Michigan’s polar chill.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I swam through the opening and kicked toward the light.
The water was less choppy than it had been earlier, so I wasted no time paddling to the nearest point of the rocky shoreline.
Looming above me and slightly south was a squat tower.
It reminded me of a casemate, armed to the teeth and ready to annihilate anyone storming the hill.
I had no plans for that. Moving quickly, I found a secluded flat rock that tucked behind a stand of scrubby trees where the wind was non-existent and the tower was completely hidden.
There, I stripped off the outer layer of wet clothing and wrung the excess water out.
Ellie’s boots were next. I pulled the wool socks off and stuffed them over a pair of branches so they’d dry quicker.
They were technically mine. And as soon as they were remotely dry, I’d put them back on.
The sun was warm and the sky clear. If Ellie were here, she’d likely suggest sun-bathing. As crazy as it sounded, it wasn’t a bad thought. Wet and cold would kill you faster than dry and cold. And for someone used to Chicago winters, this little sun beach was downright balmy.
Through all of this, I kept an eye on the shore and the ocean. I had a fairly good view of the southern curve, but the northern slope was too steep and blocked the shoreline.
I decided it was a good thing. Even here, the bluffs were sharp and the terracing that normally accompanied civilized coastline was abandoned. It was like perching on the edge of the world during some forgotten time.
With a castle tower, armed mobsters, and one very MIA assassin.
A voice drifted from the beach below. I barely heard it over the surf, but then an equally male voice answered it.
I knew those gravely tones and stretched my neck to spy Mario and Ringo moving over the rocks by the cave entrance.
“Why did you think she’d be safe here?” Mario pointed at the tower that had frightened me so. “They would see her.”
“Relax. She’s in the cave.”
No, she wasn’t. I almost gave myself away, but waited to see what Ringo would do next.
Instead of diving into the water, he crawled between some rocks and disappeared from sight. Mario reluctantly followed him.
I gathered my things and put on what I could without courting hypothermia, and scooted down the slope to where they’d disappeared.
Between the rocks was a narrow stairwell formed naturally by the jumbled stones, but obviously assisted by human means. The larger boulders formed walls and I followed the sound of their voices as I climbed down the uneven riser intervals.
“She was here; I swear it!”
I emerged from a final twist farther into the cave than I’d anticipated.
Mario held a gun on Ringo. “You…” he struggled for words. “I trusted you, I begged you to keep her safe. You swore to me on the code you would protect her.” He spoke rapidly in Italian, or the Galluric dialect that his grandfather preferred.
“Mario, please…listen to me.”
I cleared my throat before this got any worse. “Ahem, boys? Can we leave now? I’m cold.”
Mario whipped around, gun still half-raised. But as soon as he saw me, he dropped it into the sand. “Cara mia.”
I don’t know if I ran to him, or he ran to me, but we closed the gap between us faster than I could blink.
I wrapped around his warmth, soaking it in and likely chilling him but neither of us cared much for the logistics.
Instead, he kissed me frantically and held me with a ferocity that would have frightened me if I weren’t so damn grateful he was alive. I even mused aloud. “You’re alive.”
His lips stalled on mine. “I am, and you? Are you hurt?”
“I’m cold but whole.”
“How did you get wet?” He tried to make some distance between our bodies to study me, but I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t ever going to let him go again, and more importantly, he was warm. And I’d finally begun to shiver from the chill.
“Long story short, I—” Did I dare tell him about Leandro? He’d lose it and probably kill his best friend if I let that slip right away.
“I didn’t know about this entrance, so I swam out.”
“You could have died.” Mario stripped off his suit jacket and wrapped it around me. I protested since I was wet, but it quickly got shot down as he hurried me out of the cave and into the sunlight.
Mario flagged down a party in the distance. Loppa and a couple of Don Manca’s guards joined us as we climbed the hill toward a cluster of cars, a bunch of armed guards, and my sister who stood beside Don Manca.
“You were supposed to stay inside.” Ringo muttered as we neared the cluster of men. Some of them were not Don Manca’s men and I recognized at least one of the guards from that ill-fated dinner party in Milan. Eight of them were on their knees and being watched closely by Don Manca’s men.
“It got complicated. I’ll tell you once we’re far away from this place.” And I’m warm. Although my chattering teeth wanted to claim I’d never be warm again.
A thin, older man with glasses approached Mario. “A moment, please?”
Mario’s frown should have scared him off, but I guess lawyers were immune. “Speak quickly.”
“I wish to contact the authorities about Dianora’s crimes and her father’s shooting. With your permission of course. Don Manca believes it best we work with them to locate her and her cousin.”
Dianora was missing? And her father was dead? What had Mario done?
“And the others?” Mario pointed at the estate.
“I will tell them it was Dianora. A rebellion. Strictly an internal affair I was unfortunate enough to witness. Don Conti is still alive, which adds weight to my words. He wants her found.”
Mario searched the cars to make eye contact with his grandfather. Don Manca dipped his head once to convey his agreement.
“Make certain you remove any mention of my wife or her sister. Understood?”
“I understand completely, Don Valentini.”
He shuffled away, directing the men left behind to help him with the arrangements.
Meanwhile, a procession of cars whisked us away. They wound through the countryside and farther inland to a medium-sized regional airport. We boarded a small plane that flew southward and then away from the coast.
It touched down at the Alghero–Fertilia airport in Sardinia. From there, the procession progressed until we were safely ensconced in Don Manca’s territory.
The warm bath felt good, but the fireplace and a warm Ponce Livornese heated me both inside and out.
Ellie joined me. She had one of the tiny cups of espresso-tinged alcohol in her hands and inhaled the spiced aroma several times between sips.
“Is that your first or…?” I’d had two and was feeling the effects.
“Second. The first one went down too quick. I’m savoring this one.”
I wish I’d done that. A third would knock me right out despite the caffeine, and two didn’t feel like enough. “What a day.”
Ellie made a noise that sounded like agreement, but was closer to a grunt. “I don’t want to think about it.”
I leaned to prop my head on her shoulder. “I know.”
She jostled me a little when she finished her sip. “At least you didn’t faint.”
“I’m sorry you got kidnapped.”
She hummed briefly, considering her words. “I guess I’m sorry you went swimming. It was cold, wasn’t it?”
I gave her question the thought it seemed to deserve. Maybe that was the rum? “Remember the lake we went to in Wisconsin that one summer? How cold it was?”
Ellie shivered. “Spring fed and eighty feet deep. Fuck that.”
“Just a smidge colder.”
Her shudder dislodged me, and I wrapped a quilt around us both. Then, pulled her close so our positions were reversed.
Someday, I’d tell her the whole truth. But not until I had a chance to apologize to Mario for being a judgmental idiot.