Chapter Twenty-One
Morena
The burner phone stayed silent. The four hours the doctor had given me were long gone. Matteo’s men were somewhere behind me. Dario was somewhere ahead. And Camilla was missing. I needed better information than rumors and dead safe houses.
That was how I ended up standing across the street from a black SUV I recognized.
Vincenzo.
Once upon a time, he was Aurora’s bodyguard.
One of the ones who used to shadow her before she became Santino’s wife.
I had seen him a handful of times at After Dark in the old days, always silent, always watching, the kind of man who never needed to raise his voice.
He was in the life. Still connected. And dangerous enough that approaching him could end with me in the back of a car headed straight to Matteo.
I did it anyway. I waited until he stepped out to take a call. Then I crossed the street and stopped three feet away, hands visible.
He turned. His eyes landed on me and went flat.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “Matteo has watches all over the city looking for you.”
“I know that.”
He glanced up and down the street once, then back at me. “Talk fast.”
“Dario Rizzo has my sister,” I said. “I need a current location. Anything. I’ll take scraps.”
Vincenzo studied me for a long moment. The same cold assessment he used to give people who got too close to Aurora.
“You’re now Matteo Ventura’s wife,” he said.
“I was sold to him. There’s a difference.”
Something flickered in his expression. Not sympathy. Recognition, maybe. He had worked for women who understood the difference. “Why come to me?”
“Because you’re not fully anyone’s,” I admitted. “And because you used to watch the club. You know the old routes. You know the kind of men Dario runs with.”
He was quiet for another few seconds. Then he made a decision. “Get in the car. Two minutes. If anyone sees you talking to me I’m not covering for you.”
I got in.
The interior smelled like leather and gun oil. Vincenzo did not start the engine. He just sat there with one hand on the wheel and the other near his phone.
“She’s alive,” he said finally. “The little girl. Camilla. That much is confirmed.”
My throat closed. “Where?”
“He’s moved her three times in the last thirty-six hours,” Vincenzo said. “Paranoid prick. He’s keeping her quiet and compliant.”
The words landed like fists. I stared at the dashboard. “And Matteo?”
Vincenzo’s mouth tightened. “His teams are in the same radius you are. Closer than you think. They’re running the same leads. If you keep moving the way you have been, you’re going to walk straight into one of them.”
I knew. I had felt the weight of eyes on me more than once in the last few hours.
“I’m not going to them,” I said.
“You’re running on empty. You look like you’re about to fall over. Let them take you in. Let him finish the hunt.” He shrugged.
“No.”
Vincenzo turned his head and looked at me fully. He exhaled through his nose. “You’re going to get yourself killed trying to stay independent.”
“Then I get killed. But I don’t go back empty-handed,” I said.
He was silent for a long time. Then he reached into the center console, pulled out a folded scrap of paper, scribbled, and held it out. “Last known temporary location. Private house farther north. Light security. He won’t stay there long. If you’re going to move, you move now.”
I took the paper. The address was written in clean block letters.
“Why help me?” I asked.
“Because Aurora would have my head if I left a girl and a four-year-old to starve while I looked the other way,” he admitted. “And because you’re clearly not going to stop.”
He nodded at the door. “Get out. And lose the memory of my face. I was never here.”
I stepped out of the car. The door shut hard behind me. The SUV pulled away without another word. I stood on the sidewalk with the address burning in my hand.
Camilla was alive. Matteo’s men were closing in. And I was alone.
I started walking. The temptation to stop and let them find me sat on my shoulders. I was so tired. My feet were raw. My body ached in places that had nothing to do with walking.
Part of me wanted to sink to the ground and wait for the soft watches to become hard ones. Part of me wanted the man who had lied to me to just appear and take the weight.
Part of me wished I’d told him the truth. That I was pregnant…
The address Vincenzo had given me led me deeper into the quieter northern edges of the city.
Private road. Trees. Houses that sat back from the street like they had something to hide.
I slowed down the closer I got. Every shadow felt like it might contain one of Matteo’s men.
Every car that passed made my pulse spike.
I cut through the trees instead of using the road.
The house sat at the end of a short drive. Lights on low in the back rooms. One car parked close to the side entrance. No obvious guards outside, but that meant nothing. Dario was paranoid enough to kidnap a four-year-old. He would not leave the place completely open.
I crouched in the tree line and watched. Movement behind one of the curtains. Small. Too small to be a man.
Camilla.
My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I had to press my hand over my mouth to keep the sound in.
She was in there. Waiting. And I was close enough to see the light shift when she moved.
I stayed low and counted the windows. The doors.
The angles. Behind me, somewhere in the dark, Matteo’s teams were moving in the same direction.
I could feel it the way you feel a storm coming.
The soft watches had become something sharper.
They would find the jacket soon. They would read the message. They would come.
I had a choice again. Step out of the trees and wait for them. Or keep going alone and try to reach her first. I looked at the house. At the low light. At the small movement behind the curtain.
I chose.
I started crawling forward through the underbrush, heart in my throat, the address and the hunger and the man I missed all tangled together in my chest.
I was close. So close. And this time the trail was not dead. I crawled forward through the underbrush until the trees thinned and the side of the house rose in front of me.
The siding was cold under my palms when I finally reached it. I stayed low, breathing through my mouth, listening. Inside I could hear the low murmur of a man’s voice.
Dario.
Then a softer sound. Small. Tired. A child shifting on a thin mattress. Camilla.
I edged along the wall until I found a window set lower than the others. The glass was dirty. The curtain inside was only half drawn. I rose just enough to look. She was there.
My sister sat on a bare mattress in the corner of a small room, knees drawn up, wearing an oversized t-shirt that hung off one shoulder.
Her dark hair was longer and a little messy.
She held an empty plastic water bottle in both hands and was quietly counting the ridges on the plastic with her thumb, the same way she used to count the flowers on my old sundress.
She looked smaller. Quieter.
I pressed my forehead against the siding and squeezed my eyes shut for one second. The sound that tried to come out of my throat never made it past my teeth.
When I looked again Camilla had not moved.
I tested the window. Locked. The frame was old.
I could force it if I was willing to make noise.
I was still weighing the risk when a floorboard creaked inside the house, closer this time.
Dario’s voice, low and irritated, drifted through the wall. He was moving.
I had no more time to wait for perfect conditions. I braced my shoulder, shoved hard, and felt the old latch give with a crack that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet. The window shoved upward. I hauled myself through the opening and landed hard on the floor inside the room.
Camilla’s head snapped up. For a moment she only stared. Then her face crumpled. “Rena?”
I was across the room and on my knees in front of her before the rest of my name could leave her mouth. I pulled her against me so hard. Her arms went around my neck and clung with a desperation that almost undid me.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered into her hair. “I’ve got you. I’m here.”
Outside, car doors opened. Low voices. The soft click of weapons being checked.
Inside the house, Dario’s footsteps were coming closer. I scooped Camilla up. She locked her legs around my waist and buried her face in my neck. I turned toward the window I had just come through, calculating whether I could get us both back out before the hallway door opened.
It opened first. Dario stood in the doorway.
He looked worse than the last time I had seen him. Thinner. Meaner. His eyes dropped to Camilla in my arms and then to the open window behind me.
“You little bitch,” he said, almost conversational. “I should have killed you sooner.”
I backed toward the window with Camilla held tight. Behind him I heard the front door of the house take a heavy hit. Matteo’s men were coming in.
Dario heard it too. His face changed. He reached behind him. I did not wait to see the gun. I turned and threw us both at the open window. We hit the ground hard.
The impact drove the air from my lungs. Camilla made a small sound against my neck. I rolled so most of my weight took the fall, then shoved us both up onto our feet while my vision was swimming. My ankle twisted under me. I ignored it.
Behind us the window frame scraped. Dario was coming through. I ran.
Camilla’s hands were locked in the fabric of the sweater at my shoulders. The tree line was only twenty yards away but it looked like a mile.
“Rena,” she whispered, voice cracked and tiny. “He’s coming.”
“Hold on to me.” I heard him land behind us. Heavy boots. A curse. Then the unmistakable rack of a round being chambered.
“Stop or I put one in your spine,” Dario shouted. I did not stop.
The first shot cracked the air and hit a tree three feet to my left. Bark exploded. Camilla screamed into my neck. I cut hard to the right, almost lost my footing, and kept going. The second shot was closer. Dirt kicked up near my heels.
I reached the first of the trees and plunged into them. Branches tore at my face and arms. My bandaged feet slipped on wet leaves. Camilla clung tighter, her thin legs locked around my waist.
Dario crashed into the underbrush after us. He was faster. He had always been faster when he was angry.
I made it another fifteen yards before his hand closed in my hair and yanked me backward. I staggered. Camilla slipped in my arms. I barely kept hold of her.
He spun me around and slammed me back against a tree trunk. The gun came up under my chin, cold and final. His other hand was twisted in my hair, forcing my head back.
“Drop her,” he panted, eyes wild. “Drop the little girl, or I end both of you right here.”
Camilla was crying in high, silent gasps, face pressed against my neck. I tightened my grip instead of letting go.
“She’s four,” I said, voice raw. “You’re threatening a four-year-old.”
“She’s leverage.” He shoved the gun harder under my jaw. “And you’re the reason I had to keep running. You and that psycho you sold yourself to.”
I laughed once. It came out broken. “I didn’t sell myself. You did.”
His face twisted. He pulled the gun back just far enough to swing it. The barrel cracked across my cheekbone. White light exploded behind my eyes. I staggered but did not go down.
In the distance I heard shouting. Car doors. The heavy, coordinated movement of men who knew exactly what they were doing. Matteo’s teams had cleared the house.
Dario heard them too. His eyes flicked past my shoulder, calculating. Then he grabbed me, pulling me deeper into the trees, the gun now pressed to Camilla’s side instead of my head.
“Walk,” he ordered. “Or I start with her.”
I walked and held my palm over my sister’s eyes.
Every step was a negotiation with the pain in my face and the weight of my sister in my arms. Camilla had gone almost silent, the way she used to when Dario got loud in the old apartment. That scared me more than the gun.
We moved through the dark trees for what felt like forever but was probably less than a minute. Behind us the shouting got closer. I heard my name once, sharp and controlled and unmistakable.
Matteo.
The sound of his voice hit me harder than the gun had.
Dario heard it too. He cursed and moved faster, hauling me toward a second vehicle I could now see half-hidden under low branches. An older sedan. Dark color. The kind of car that disappeared in any city. He shoved me toward the passenger side, gun tight against Camilla.
“Get in. Both of you. Or I paint the trees with you.”
I looked at him over my sister’s head. My vision was swimming from the hit. Blood was running warm down my cheek. I had no clean options left.
I slid into the car with Camilla locked around me.
Dario slammed the door, ran around to the driver’s side, and threw himself behind the wheel.
The engine turned over hard. Headlights stayed off.
He reversed too fast, branches scraping the sides of the car, then swung out onto a narrow access road that cut through the trees.
In the side mirror I saw the first of the black SUVs break from the main house drive and start after us. Dario saw it too. He laughed, short and ugly.
“Your husband is a very motivated man,” he said. “Wonder if he’ll still want you when I send you back in pieces.”