Chapter 33
BEA
The clock on the wall says two in the morning.
He left at ten.
He’s going to come back.
He promised.
I close my eyes.
A sound.
I open them.
Not a sound from inside. Outside. Below the window. A voice—not raised, just clear, the way a man’s voice carries on cold air.
Then another voice. Closer.
A gunshot.
Then a second.
Then a burst of three.
I’m out of the bed before my mind catches up.
What the hell is going on?
I cross to the window and crouch, pulling the corner of the curtain back. Below the window, I see the shadows of men. They’re moving across the lawn with tactical precision.
My stomach drops.
Two separate shadows stand by the garage. I see the burning dot of light from a cigarette as the one on the left takes one last pull, seemingly unaware of the approaching threat.
Did they not hear the gunshots?
I’m about to cry out a warning when the smoker throws the cigarette aside and pulls something out of his waistband. He points the object at his partner’s head. A crack follows, and the partner’s silhouette collapses to the ground.
Then he turns and joins the approaching horde.
Fear fills every inch of me. My body seems to understand before my mind can make any sense of it.
We’re under attack.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I curse under my breath, pushing myself away from the window. Hands shaking, I cross the bedroom barefoot and grab my phone off the side table, shoving it into the front pocket of my sweatshirt.
I need to get out of here.
My eyes land on the bedroom door. If I go through it, I’m in the hallway.
If I’m in the hallway, I’m between two staircases—the main one, which goes down to the front hall and the front door, and the smaller one at the back of the house that goes down past the laundry to the side garden.
I’ve walked the back stairs once. Yesterday.
The back stairs.
Now.
I take three steps toward the door, and the handle starts moving under its own power.
I freeze.
The handle turns.
The door opens.
Three men barge in in.
Not Raffaele. Not Lorenzo. Not anyone whose name I’ve ever been told. The one in front is older. He’s holding a gun.
He sees me and smiles. Not unkindly. Not benevolently either. The way you smile when the task’s going well.
“There she is.”
I back up.
There’s nowhere to go. I scramble, scanning the room for anything I can use to defend myself. There’s a lamp on the bedside table. Maybe I can—
“Don’t bother, Miss Mendez.”
He’s stepped into the room. The two behind him have spread out—one to the doorway, one toward the bathroom.
“If, by some miracle, you were to bludgeon us three to death, you still wouldn’t escape.
The men outside who were supposed to be looking after you?
About half of them aren’t with us anymore.
Unfortunately.” He tilts his head, mock-sad.
“The other half are with us, however. And they want you to come quietly.”
My eyes sting. Blood rushes into my ears. But I can only think of one thing.
“Where’s Raffaele?”
His smile twists into an evil grin.
“Word is Mr. D’Amico’s having a brotherly little reunion tonight, Miss Mendez. Mr. Moreno arranged the whole wholesome occasion himself, bless him. He sends his regards.”
Victor.
Of course, Victor. Of course, the meeting was bait. Of course, we aren’t the side of the chess board being protected tonight. And now Raffaele is sitting in a warehouse somewhere figuring out the trap isn’t the trap he thought it was. I am the trap.
I’m the trap.
“Is he dead?”
“That’s above my pay grade, ma’am. My job’s you.”
I run.
I don’t think. I don’t plan. My feet are moving before the men have closed the distance, and I’m going for the bedroom door because the doorway behind them goes to the hallway and the hallway goes to the back stair and the back stair goes to the garden and the garden goes to the dunes and the dunes go to the ocean and beyond that there’s dark and there’s out and out is what I want.
I get past the first one. I think it surprises him.
I don’t get past the second one.
He catches me at the doorway. He must be twice my size, and he wraps an arm around my waist, easily lifting me off the floor. I scream. The scream goes into a hand that’s suddenly over my mouth. The hand tastes like cigarettes and metal and the iron of someone else’s blood. I bite.
I bite hard.
He yells. I do too, into his palm, with the part of my mouth still free. He yanks the hand back.
The slap is open-handed and across my jaw. The room tips.
“Stupid bitch.”
I hear the older one sigh.
“Don’t damage her face.”
The last thing I’m aware of is the weight of something coming down on the back of my skull.
Then the floor.
Then nothing.