Chapter 2
SOFIA
‘Not much more longer to go.’
I glanced over to my companion on the bench seat beside me.
‘Bene, because I’m over this ride.’
Luisa shot me a smile that didn’t quite reach her olive green eyes.
‘You need to be more grateful, chica. This is a chance of a lifetime.’
The way she said it, with almost a sneer, raised my hackles.
With every mile, she seemed to get more pushy, cold, and demanding.
However, I was too tired to interrogate her shift in mood toward me.
The bus from Montreal down into Vermont was its own special brand of purgatory.
I sat jammed close to the cold glass, pressed into yellow, sticky vinyl, my lungs full of the stink of burning diesel.
Along with the nauseating reek of wet wool, and decades of sweat trapped deep in the foam cushions.
Every frost heave and pothole we slammed into sent a violent jolt straight up my spine, a dull, throbbing ache settling into the marrow of my bones.
We avoided the heavily monitored ports of entry.
Instead, Luisa routed us through the quiet, bleak checkpoint at the Lacolle Route 15 border crossing.
Perfect for blending into the dreary local commuter traffic without drawing the razor-sharp scrutiny of the larger transit hubs.
Our passports and tourist visas were clean, but every mile we traveled felt engineered to keep us moving like ghosts unseen by authorities.
If the gig was on the up and up, why was Luisa being so elusive?
We cleared the border.
As the bus rumbled south along the interstate toward Burlington, the view shifted.
To much denser forest, with a dense canopy of pines flanking us on both sides of the highway.
When the Greyhound bus hissed to a halt at a desolate transit stop, I bolted for the restroom.
I was scarcely inside the cubicle when the door rattled, the latch snapping open as Luisa barged into my personal space.
She slammed the door shut behind her, her eyes hard, glittering with malice.
‘Listen to me, woman,’ she snarled. ‘Now that we’ve crossed the border, the rules have changed, capisci? From now on, I’m your minder. You eat, sleep and pee when I tell you, and you obey every single word that comes out of my mouth. Understood?’
Before I could reply, her hand slid into her jacket.
She pulled out a sleek, black semi-automatic handgun and shoved the cold iron muzzle against my temple.
The steel bit into my skin.
I jolted. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’
‘You think this is a game?’ she hissed, her fingers tightening on the grip.
‘If you so much as look at me wrong, I’ll call Dario.
I’ll tell him you’re running, Sofia. I’ll tell him you’re a liability, and he will have you killed, regardless of whether you’re a former actress and star. Don’t test me.’
I’d been held up in the streets back home before and learned the hard way how to stay calm in a holdup.
Panic was a death sentence.
I held my cool, eyes on the graffiti-covered door and taking slow, deliberate breaths to steady my racing heart.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked her, trying to hide the quake in my voice. ‘I thought we were friends.’
‘Friends, fuck that. I’m being paid to deliver you to Dario in one piece,’ she hissed at me. ‘If that doesn’t happen, we’re both dead.’
Panic hit me.
‘I hear you, Luisa,’ I whispered, keeping my eyes locked on the cracked tile wall, forcing my voice to remain steady. ‘Put the gun away. We’re on the same team.’
‘Sì! All the way, one team. You try to escape, we’ll find you.
You tell a soul about us, we’ll cut your tongue from your mouth,’ she hissed at me.
‘We won’t care that you are Sofia Antonelli, the once-famous Italian actress in La Tempesta dell’Amore and I Segreti del Mercato.
You won’t model, dance, or ever act anymore. ’
‘Who’s we?’ I dared ask.
‘The Compagni Syndicate.’
My heart sank at the name of one of the most notorious crime families in Italy.
‘Dario is Compagni?’
The handsome Italian man who recruited me to travel to the States via an IG video in my DMs was part of the mob?
Luisa grinned and nodded.
I froze as the cold, terrifying reality of what I had become caught up in hit me.
I thought I’d run away from organized crime when the syndicate bosses took over a slew of movie studios in Naples, forcing us actors into servitude.
Worse, my management agency, Talento Italiano, cut and ran, leaving me out of pocket and owing me millions in pay.
Broke and desperate, I escaped to Milan, trying to disappear into a life of anonymity, working in factories and cleaning jobs.
Yet somehow, the underworld’s trouble had found me again.
‘Your passport?’
Heart hammering, I slid the document to her, and she tucked it into her bag, sliding it next to the weapon.
Luisa rushed me out of the ladies’ bathroom and back onto the bus, where she sat beside me with her purse on her lap.
Multiple times as we rumbled down the highway, she let the flap part.
Just enough for me to see the dull metal of the pistol barrel pointed at me.
I was in effect her prisoner.
She was twenty-five, four years younger than me, but with all the worldly know-how of a woman fifteen years older.
Hailing from Udine, she wore her bright copper hair in long waves down her back and had a wild streak that made me nervous.
She’d claimed she was a pro at modeling and music videos.
She swore the promised gigs in New York and Vegas would pay our rent for the whole year.
How naive I’d been to trust her.
We’d worked together in a factory where she befriended me over our quick lunch breaks.
Luisa spent those hours eating paninis with me, waxing lyrical about how beautiful I was.
She went on and on about how much money a face and a name like mine, as a former Italian beauty and famous actress, could make in America.
Then she made promises to get me the right paperwork to work in the US.
How could I have been so foolish to trust her?
In shock, drained and so over my life, I didn’t even fight her.
I wanted to call for help, reach out to my cousin Anya in Calabria, but my phone’s battery was at 12%, and Luisa was monitoring me.
Why had I ever listened to her?
I wished I had never gotten caught up in the fantasy she described and succumbed to the temptation of the better life she painted for me.
We got off the bus on the outskirts of a town.
She checked her phone several times for directions, and soon enough, we walked down a gravel access track that led to a battered van with its headlights cut off.
We spent an hour in the cramped cabin with five others, as we traversed the highways through a series of pine-heavy mountain corridors.
The ride seemed to take forever until we veered toward a sign that read ‘Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport’.
A message popped up on my phone.
Dario: You’ll soon be in New York, with the big city lights and well-paying gigs. The model photographers and I can’t wait to meet you.
Luisa peered at my screen over my shoulder.
‘He really can’t wait to get his hands on you.’
Her smirk was laced with a diabolical edge, and I shivered.
What plans did they have for me?
With the glowing terminal signs of Burlington Airport in view, we got dropped off behind an isolated gas station off Williston Road at 5 a.m.
Luisa pulled me into a shadowed corner behind the 7/11 where we met a twitchy man called Marcos behind a dumpster.
He was a skinny hombre in a stained denim ensemble, shiny crocodile-leather shoes, and a squint in one eye above his huge mustache.
With a snarl, he threw two fake driver’s licenses and a gold credit card into Luisa’s lap.
‘Use it to pay for your flights at the desk.’
He brandished a silver, gleaming gun in my face and then drew it across his throat. ‘You better play along, bella, or else you bleed.’
I jolted as he laughed maniacally.
‘She won’t cause us any problem, she’ll do as I say because she’s all sweetness and light,’ Luisa grinned as she grabbed the card.
Marcos took off into the fog with a swagger and a scowl.
Luisa pushed me towards the bus stop, and we got on a local shuttle bus.
We were all alone except for the driver and a homeless woman with a trolley full of plastic cans, who gave off a rank stench.
Alighting at the terminal entrance, we walked through the sliding glass doors into a bustling hall.
The floors were polished white tile.
Everything seemed so organized under the warm wooden beams of the Vermont architecture, which only added to my worry that we’d soon be found out.
I tried to make sense of the airport signs, but Luisa seemed to know where to go.
Still, fear swept over me in waves.
As I walked alongside her, I slid my hand to my nape to the thin silver chain resting on my collarbone and rubbed the small, weathered eagle-shaped amulet.
It was smooth from years of my anxious stroking it for comfort.
Now I also hoped it would be my shield.
I needed all the protection I could get.
Travelers wrapped in heavy designer winter coats and wheeling huge suitcases walked past us without acknowledging us as we edged toward the airline counters.
With no warning, Luisa stopped, clutching my arm to halt my progress.
Her eyes were fixed on a man in a brown uniform standing near the TSA checkpoint a few feet away.
Her face turned pale.
‘Who’s he?’ I whispered.
‘Someone who knows my face all too well.’
‘How?’ I asked, for he appeared to be a cop of some sort.
‘None of your freaky business, chica,’ she hissed.
She whipped her head around, her eyes searching the concourse.
‘Go to the service desk,’ Luisa whispered, dropping my arm and shoving the gold card into my hand. ‘Buy the tickets. I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll meet you at the gate. Try to run, and I’ll come after you. Remember I’m armed!’
She vanished into the airport crowd in seconds.
I stood alone in the middle of the terminal, my feet frozen.
My heart was racing as I stared down at the card, hesitating.
My phone buzzed three times in a row in my pocket.
It was Dario, and the messages were now vastly different in tone from his former Instagram pitches.
Dario: Get to the counter this second. Luisa needs the ticket too, but her face is known to the authorities. Move your ass, or I’ll have my friends in Italy visit your cousin Anya in Calabria!
How did he know where I was?
I glanced up, and in the distance, half-hidden from me, I spied Luisa peering around the corner of the ladies’ bathroom.
She held her mobile device in her hand and raised it as a warning.
She had Dario on the phone with her while she tracked my movements?
I stared back at my screen, my heart thumping hard.
Dario’s message sounded angry and desperate, threatening not only me but also Anya.
I closed my eyes for a second and sent a prayer to the heavens.
I’m no saint, and I’ve made a complete mess of my life, but please don’t leave me abandoned in this place.
I made it to the Delta counter and took my place behind three others.
The line moved up, and the woman behind the desk gazed at me.
She was blonde, her straw-colored hair pinned into a severe bun that pulled at the corners of her eyes.
Her Delta navy blazer pulled across her shoulders, accented by a gold scarf knotted at her throat.
Thick matte foundation caked her face, ending in a line at her jaw and leaving her neck pale.
Dark pencil formed her arched eyebrows, while coral gloss coated her lips.
Her nostrils flared as her gaze scanned my scuffed boots and faded denim, giving my clothes the stink eye before she glanced at the card in my hand.
‘Can I help you?’
I sliced my eyes to where Luisa last stood and found no one in sight.
Damn, I was alone.
‘Girlie, you booking a flight?’
I canted my gaze back to the woman at the counter.
Her name tag said Denise.
I extended the credit card, my hand shaking so hard I almost dropped it onto the counter.
I cleared my throat, hoping the English I had practiced for years now held up.
‘Yes, Denise. Two economy class tickets to New York, please.’