34. Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Four
Donna
The shadow crosses the window again, slower this time.
They are definitely not friends.
If Mario's people were here and had taken control of the situation, they would call out.
Lorenzo must reach the same conclusion because he shifts closer to the end of the counter, positioning himself where he has a narrow line toward the entrance without exposing more of his body than necessary.
I stay beside him with Mocha pressed close to my leg, one hand on my gun and the other resting briefly against his shoulder.
“Mocha, quiet,” I whisper.
The growl stops.
His body remains rigid, every ounce of his attention fixed toward the front of the store.
Another figure passes in front of the windows.
Then a third.
I lean closer to Lorenzo. “There could be more around back.”
He only nods.
For several seconds, nobody outside makes a move.
I can feel my heartbeat in my throat as I stare toward the front windows, trying to make sense of the shifting darkness beyond them. The weak streetlights reflect against the wet glass, distorting every movement, and I hate how little I can see.
Then someone tries the door.
The shelf Lorenzo shoved in front of it shakes but holds.
A man’s voice comes through the glass.
“Conti.”
Lorenzo’s expression hardens beside me. “Greco.”
Well.
That settles the friends question.
For several seconds, nobody moves.
Greco remains on the other side of the glass, close enough now that I can make out the outline of him through the rain-streaked window.
He does not seem concerned about the fact that Lorenzo and I are armed, which tells me more than I would like about how many people he has surrounding this building.
Lorenzo stays beside me behind the counter, his gun angled toward the entrance while he watches Greco through the narrow opening between the shelves.
“He came himself,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
Which is very telling.
Marcello could have sent men to drag us out, could have stayed somewhere else while they did the work for him, but he is standing outside in the rain because his first plan to put Alessio in prison failed. And his second plan to snap us up quickly failed.
Now there's only one plan left, and he's not letting it get away from him.
The realization stirs nausea up in my stomach.
Then, because apparently, that's not enough, the other realization I had in the car comes back as well.
The crackers, the pasta, the weepiness.
And my period.
My period, which has been the most consistent thing in my life. Through all the grief and the stress and moving from house to house, and training at Quantico, and leaving the FBI, I have never been late, not once.
Until now.
My hand tightens around my gun.
This is definitely not the time for this.
And it is definitely not the time to tell Lorenzo.
But what if it's the only time I have to tell him?
It would change things.
It changes the way I look at the front door. It changes the way I think about running into gunfire or taking a chance I might normally take without hesitation. It adds another variable when I already have far too many.
And it might change them for him too.
Shouldn't he know before he makes those decisions?
Lorenzo glances at me, and his eyes narrow slightly.
“You all right?”
My eyes meet his, but I don't get the chance to say anything because the shelf rattles again as Greco puts pressure against the door.
His voice carries through the glass. “You can keep hiding in there if you like, Lorenzo.”
Lorenzo’s jaw clenches.
“It's not going to help,” Marcello continues.
I glance toward the back of the store.
We could still try to find another exit, but at this point I doubt Greco left one uncovered. He knows where we are. His men watched us enter. If he has any competence at all, the building is surrounded.
Running blind into an unknown number of armed men would be worse than staying where we at least have cover.
Lorenzo reaches the same conclusion.
Or I thought he did anyway.
Lorenzo looks toward the front door again, judging the shelf, the damaged lock, and the men moving beyond the glass.
“We wait as long as we can,” he says quietly. “The longer we keep them out there, the more time Mario has to get here.”
I nod. “Agreed.”
“And when that door gives, I walk out.”
I turn to him. “No.”
His eyes meet mine. “Donna.”
“No. Absolutely not,” I say firmly. “You're not surrendering yourself to Greco to buy me time.”
“It is the only option we have if they breach the store.” His voice stays low. “There is no way out; we are outnumbered, and we cannot shoot our way through that many people without one of us getting hit.”
“Then we find another option.”
“If there were one, I would take it.” His gaze flicks toward the front again as the shelf shifts another inch. “I will not gamble with your life.”
I tighten my grip on my gun. “And I’m supposed to let you gamble with yours?”
“Yes,” he says. “If it buys you enough time for Mario to get here.”
I shake my head, rejecting even the idea of it. “There has to be another way.”
“There's no way out of here,” he says. “And they're going to breach this store any minute.”
The shelf shifts again, as if to prove his point.
I look toward the door that leads to the back room. There's no way Greco wouldn't have an army waiting at the back door for us.
My mind takes me back, all the way back to high school, when I worked at a strip mall just like this. I'd gotten the job hoping to save up some money to get my own place the second I turned eighteen, but I hated every second of it.
It was a nice place like this one too, but the customers were very stuck-up.
Which is why every chance I got, I snuck into the service corridor behind the stores. There was a really hot guy who worked a few stores down from me, and we would take our breaks at the same time and make out.
My gaze snaps back to the rear of the shop.
“Maybe there is,” I breathe.
“Whatever it is, Donna, I'm not risking you,” Lorenzo says.
“You don't have to,” I say.
He manages to give me a sidelong curious glance before snapping his attention back to the door.
“When I was in high school, I worked in a strip mall built almost exactly like this. There was a service corridor behind the units for deliveries and maintenance. You could move from one end of the building to the other without ever stepping outside.”
Lorenzo glances toward the backroom door.
“If this place has one…”
“We slip out from under Greco long enough for Mario to get here with reinforcements,” he finishes.
“Exactly,” I say, shifting on the balls of my feet.
The shelf jerks again, harder this time.
“Conti,” comes Greco’s mocking voice.
When Lorenzo doesn't respond, Gracco's voice turns vicious. “Conti!” he barks. “Answer me, you coward! You're going to pay for what you did.”
Lorenzo does not give him the satisfaction.
Greco laughs once, harsh and a bit crazed. “You took everything from me, and I'm going to make sure you know what that feels like. That's what was supposed to happen.”
The glass rattles. He's clearly losing it. “And then your bitch ruined it,” he snarls. “Now I have to make you pay in a different way.”
I suppress a shudder at the clear insanity in his voice. He's obviously cracked.
“I was only going to take your boy from you, but now I'm going to take them both, and then I'm going to take her. And when you have nothing left, only then will I put you out of your misery. Or maybe I won't.”
“We have to get out of here now,” I whisper. “He has lost his damn mind.”
The door slams hard enough to make the shelf scrape several inches across the floor.
“Go first,” Lorenzo tells me.
I nod and turn toward the backroom door, keeping Mocha close as Lorenzo falls in beside me.
The back area is small enough that I can take most of it in at a glance. A cramped break area sits to the left with a table, two chairs, and a narrow counter, while the storage space takes up most of the room ahead of us. An office door stands open on the opposite wall.
I sweep my gaze past all of it, looking for something that does not belong to the store itself.
“Service access should be back here somewhere,” I murmur.
Lorenzo checks the office while I move past stacked boxes and shelving, Mocha staying tight beside me.
Then I spot a plain metal door tucked behind the far end of the storage racks.
“There.” I hurry toward it and grab the handle.
Locked. Of course.
Behind us, another impact from the front of the store carries through the walls, followed by the scrape of the shelf shifting again.
Lorenzo reaches me. “Can you get it open?”
“Probably.”
I crouch long enough to inspect the lock, then glance around the storage area for something useful. There is no time for finesse, and I do not have my tools anyway.
A narrow metal shelving unit stands beside the door.
I grab one of the loose support bars from the bottom and wedge it between the frame and the latch.
Lorenzo immediately understands what I am doing and takes the other end.
“On three,” I whisper.
We force it together.
The frame creaks.
Another crash comes from the front.
“One more.”
We shove again, harder this time.
The latch tears free with a sharp crack, and the door jerks inward.
Cold air washes over us.
Beyond it is a narrow concrete corridor running behind the row of stores, dimly lit by widely spaced utility lights.
Relief hits me hard enough that I laugh. “There really is one.”
Lorenzo looks down the corridor, then back toward the store. “Which way?”
I step through and look both directions. “Whichever gets us farther from Greco.”
A loud crash echoes from the sales floor.
This one sounds different than the others.
It’s the front door giving way.
“In.” Lorenzo reaches for my arm and pushes me in.
Mocha follows, but Lorenzo doesn't.
“What are you doing?” I hiss and poke my head back into the store.
He is dragging a shelving unit toward the door.
I realize what he is doing immediately.
“You want to cover the door.”
“If they do not know it is here, they lose more time looking for us.”
I step back into the room and grab the other end.
Together, we force the shelving unit across the floor and angle it in front of the broken doorway.
Once we're both behind the door, we do our best to pull it as we force the door shut. We can't step back and admire our handiwork, so we don't know if it worked or not, but hopefully, the doorway disappears behind the boxes and metal shelves.
“That might buy us a few minutes,” I say.
Lorenzo looks toward the corridor. “Then we use them.”