Chapter 3 #2
He was tall—taller than most men, though not as towering as Dakvaar—but it wasn’t his height that made my stomach drop.
It was the way he moved, each step deliberate, each boot heel pressing into the gravel like he was grinding something beneath it.
His eyes locked onto me, dark and flat, like a shark’s.
Found you.
The thought screamed in my head, even though his lips hadn’t moved. His mouth twisted around the cigarette as he exhaled, smoke billowing between us. He had an expressive mouth, even when he was angry.
And Anthony was always angry.
My breath hitched. The café’s door was right there—five steps, maybe six—but my legs wouldn’t obey. The snow piled along the edges of the lot was dirty, slushy from yesterday’s weak sun, not the pristine white that might’ve tripped him up. No luck there. No escape.
He took another step. Then another.
I stumbled back, my heel catching on a loose stone.
My bag slipped from my shoulder, but I caught it and clutched it to my chest. All I could see was him—the way his fingers flexed at his sides, the way his coat strained over shoulders that had once seemed broad and strong but now just looked like a cage.
“Sofia.”
His voice was a blade, low and precise. Not a shout. Not yet. He didn’t need to shout. He knew I heard him.
I swallowed, my mouth dry. The scent of pine and woodsmoke was gone, replaced by the acrid tang of his cigarette, the leather of his gloves, the cologne he always wore—something expensive and cloying, like rotting flowers.
My back hit the café’s brick wall. The cold seeped through my coat, but I barely felt it. All I felt was the weight of his gaze, the way it pinned me like an insect under glass.
“Hello, wife.”
It was the word wife that jolted me from my trance of fear. I shook my head once, then again faster. “I’m not—the divorce…”
“That bitch of a judge might say you don’t belong to me, but we both know different.” His leather-gloved hand reached for my chin. “Don’t we, chica?”
I pulled away from his touch so quickly my head slammed into the brick wall behind me, and would have dazed me if I hadn’t been wearing the wool hat with the Teal Terrors’ logo.
The blow actually seemed to help focus me, and I slid to the side, the shoes I wore made for long hours on my feet, not for the gravel and snow here along the building’s edge.
I fought to keep my voice steady. “What do you want, Anthony?” As if I couldn’t guess.
His smile was cruel as he pulled the cigarette from his lips and dropped it to the ground. His focus was on that, as if his words didn’t matter. “You know what I want.”
Rosa.
I shuffled a little farther away, turning to keep him in my sights, edging toward the door. I needed to get around other people; Anthony hadn’t minded hurting me in front of his men, but he cared about his image in public.
I needed to stall him. “How did you find us?”
The toe of his expensive shoe ground the butt into the gravel, still smirking. “I know a lot of very smart people who will do many things for a lot of money.”
Blood money.
When I’d married him, I hadn’t realized Anthony was so dangerous.
I’d just been enthralled by the thought of someone so handsome and debonair wanting to be with me.
I’d been so young—too young to marry—so I hadn’t realized what his cruelty and manipulations were doing to my self-esteem until it was too late.
My back was to the parking lot now, but that was good. I’d be able to turn and run; I would bet my shoes would handle the slush and gravel better than his, even if they weren’t boots. There were people on Second Avenue; that’s where the front door to the café was, and he wouldn’t hurt me there.
I gripped that hope as desperately as I gripped my bag.
“Sofia…” Anthony dropped his voice into a coax as he took a casual step closer, then another. “Where is my daughter?”
The years away from him had made me forget how to be cautious, and I blurted, “Safe from you, Gracias a Dios!”
The blow took me by surprise.
Anthony’s long arm swung around, and he struck me in the side of the face with his open palm, snapping my head back. I stumbled and fell to the gravel as the taste of blood bloomed in my mouth.
To my surprise, a sense of irritation chased the fear through my chest. You should have anticipated that. You used to know how to act around him.
Right. But I’d taken Rosa and run the minute the divorce and custody was final, and it had been three years since we’d lived with him.
Three years was apparently enough to make me feel safe.
With my palms digging into the gravel, I shook my head, trying to clear the ringing, Anthony swimming in my vision as his lips curled. He was always smiling—I’d forgotten that about him. Always smiling at some private joke.
Dakvaar never smiled.
Why had I thought about him then?
“You know better than to anger me, wife,” Anthony said calmly, reaching into his jacket for his cigarettes. “You know what you make me do.”
It had taken years to learn that his blows weren’t my fault, no matter what he’d told teenage me. I needed to hold onto that knowledge…preferably without pissing him off more.
“I’m—” I bit down on the words, unwilling to apologize. Instead, my fingers curled in the gravel, trying to find the strength to stand. “What do you want, Anthony?”
“I told you—I want my daughter.” Calmly, he lit the cigarette, all his focus on the task. “I have plans for her.”
“Plans?” I croaked, terror suddenly making my blood cold and giving me strength. I pushed myself up to my knees. “You can’t have her.”
“Sofia, you know better than that.”
Then, with his attention still on his cigarette, Anthony shifted his weight and lashed out with a kick.
Surprised, I had only enough time to drag my arm and bag in front of the blow, and when the tip of his fancy shoe connected with my wrist, I felt something bend inside, and fell back with a hoarse cry of pain.
There was blood on my tongue, my cheek felt swollen and raw, and my arm was aching. Still, I squeezed my eyes shut for only a moment, trying to swallow down the pain, before scrambling away from him.
He stalked after me.
“I don’t want her for me, dear wife. Degas wants her. He’s made it clear that once he marries her, we’ll be true partners and our empire will be linked.”
Dios!
The breakfast I’d eaten only a half-hour ago turned in my stomach as I staggered to my feet and whirled toward him. “She’s a child,” I blurted incredulously.
Anthony merely shrugged, taking a long drag. “He’s not a hasty man. If I train her, he’s willing to wait ten years before he takes her.”
Oh, Dios!
In ten years, Rosa wouldn’t even be sixteen!
I turned to the side and heaved, throwing up my breakfast as I backed away from him as desperately as I could.
The world tilted, my vision swimming as bile burned the back of my throat.
My wrist throbbed in time with my pulse, the pain sharp enough to cut through the fog of terror—but not enough.
Not nearly enough to make me stop.
Rosa.
Her name was a prayer in my skull, a mantra, a scream I couldn’t let out. If I screamed, he’d know. If I ran, he’d follow. If I fought, he’d hurt me worse—and then he’d find her.
And he would find her. Anthony always found what he wanted.
Right now, he didn’t know where she was, and I had that advantage.
His boot scuffed against the gravel, the sound too loud, too close. I flinched and stumbled back again. My breath came in shallow gasps, each inhale burning like shards of glass in my lungs. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth, my split lip swelling against my teeth.
I wasn’t fast enough.
He hit me again, on the same side, this time catching my temple and eye, snapping my head back. I didn’t fall, but used the blow to stumble backward further. Away from him.
Anthony exhaled smoke, slow and deliberate, watching it curling between us like a living thing. “You always were dramatic,” he murmured, his voice a velvet blade. “But you know how this ends.”
I knew.
I knew.
And that was why I couldn’t let it.
My head swam with a sticky confusion, blood pounding in my temple and mouth and making everything mushy…but I ignored it. Pain was nothing. Rosa was everything.
I had to get to her.
Had to get to Mrs. Jourdan. Had to grab Rosa and run. The bus station was two blocks from our apartment. I could be on a Greyhound before he even realized I was gone. Denver. Albuquerque. Anywhere but here.
No matter how much I loved Bramblewood, it wasn’t safe anymore.
He’ll follow you. Not just to Denver; you’ll never make it to the bus station. Once he follows you to Rosa, he’ll just take her.
A hole opened in my stomach. I didn’t know what to do, and I couldn’t think. Couldn’t concentrate. I’d beaten him once, and if I could just get some time, I could figure out how to beat him again. But everything hurt so much…
If I stayed, he’d hurt me again. If I ran to my daughter, he’d hurt her.
Dios.
My stomach heaved again, and Anthony’s sharklike smile was haloed by smoke.
I couldn’t let him take Rosa. Couldn’t let Degas do to her what Anthony had done to me.
I took a step away from him, then another, watching him warily. He merely stood there in the slush and grinned, watching me.
Waiting.
He wants you to run. Wants you to lead him to Rosa.
But I had to get away.
Another step, and when he didn’t follow, I whirled around, clutching my bag and my injured wrist against my chest. As I broke into a shambling sort of run, I heard him begin to laugh.
“That’s it, Sofia!” he called from behind me. “Run! Run to my daughter, so I know where she is hiding!”