by Alyse Zaftig
I dial a number. "Mario, I need you to round up as many men as we can find. We're going to rescue Kelly."
"Yes, sir."
Mario doesn't need exact orders. He knows that he'll meet me downstairs. He knows that she's been taken.
I kicked her out because I hadn't trusted her. And now she is in the hands of someone who only wanted to use her against me. If I got the chance soon, I would apologize for placing her in this situation. It seems like I can’t help but put her in danger time and again.
I have to choose between keeping my position as the head of the Genovese family and saving her. The men I take with me today will know what happened. They will whisper it to the rest. And they'll think that I'm not strong enough to be their leader.
It's a good trap. Too bad I'll turn everything around on him. He doesn’t know what I have waiting for him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Prison Cell
Kelly
"Drink some water," a sweet voice says.
"Not thirsty," I mutter, even though my mouth feels like the Sahara.
"Come, now, it's not so bad. You have to eat or drink something." I'd woken up an hour ago with a headache and a growling stomach. There'd been a tray of food next to me, along with the lady whose name I still do not know, but I didn't want to touch it. The guys who'd drugged me and brought me here would stoop to poisoning my food.
"Not thirsty." I curl into a ball.
There's a soft thunk as she puts down the water. "I'll leave it here for you, then." She leaves. The soft thud of the lock as it slides home reminds me that she's not my caregiver. She's my captor, one of them, and I know better than to drink from her cup. I uncurl from my position and look around.
There's a small restroom next to my bedroom. No windows. No glass. There's no mirror in here, but I can already imagine myself with my hair disheveled. My clothes feel sweaty and gross, but there's nothing else for me to change into.
I splash water on my face and drink from my hands. She's right. I do need to drink something. My stomach would prefer something other than water, but tap water is the best I'm going to be able to do right now.
There are no eating utensils on the tray. It's just a bowl of couscous and a small wooden cup of water.
How on earth did I end up here? Iacopo threw me out, so I'm not valuable at all. Whatever game they're playing, they've taken the wrong hostage.
I find a plastic comb in a drawer, so I yank it through my hair, even though I knew it'll just make everything worse. It hurst, but it gives me something to do.
I go back into my room. There's a small closet that's totally bare. My bed has sheets but no comforter. The door doesn't have a handle on this side.
There are no openings at all in this room. It's clearly a prison cell, a fancy one. But the quality of my surroundings mean that they think I matter.
I don't know what I can do here. At least my hands are free. There's nowhere for me to go. The lady who came in with the water spoke to me like she wanted to be nice, but it's just an act.
I dump the water into the sink and rinse out the glass two times before I use it to drink even more water. I curl up into a ball on the bed and try to ignore my stomach.
When I wake up, the lights are still on. Right. I'm not at home. And there's still a tray of cold rice. Joy.
I lean over and sniff it. It doesn't seem poisonous or drugged, but if it were, would it matter? If they wanted to drug me while they kept me here, there's nothing that I can do to stop them. I'm hungry. I know that they're counting on me breaking and eating it.
I eat a few grains of rice from the edge. My stomach roars to life, reminding me that I haven't eaten in a while.
I’m so hungry that my stomach hurts. I feel hollow inside. Even if it’s drugged, what harm will it do to eat it? It’s not like I can get out anyway.
I eat a few more grains of rice. My stomach approves of the food. I don’t eat all of it, but I eat enough to make my stomach quieter.
I want Iacopo to save me. We still have to talk, but I need him more than ever.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Car Window
Kelly
I hear shouting. Then someone’s bursting in my door. It’s the woman from before, but she’s not pretending to be gentle this time.
“Come with me.”
She takes my wrist in her hand and drags me forward.
“Where are we going?”
She doesn’t answer me. I can hear gunshots. My heart starts to freak out.
“Where are you taking me?”
She is running now. I’m stumbling behind her. We’re in a dark tunnel. Suddenly we’re next to a car.
“Get in.”
I don’t.’
“Get in the car, or so help me, I will make you bleed.”
I don’t want to get in the car. It’s the first rule of being kidnapped. Once you’re in the car, it’s game over.
She pulls a gun out. She must have had it in a holster. I didn’t see it.
“Get in the fucking car or I’ll kill you right now.”
“You can’t kill me,” I protest.
“I can maim you for life. How do you like having two kneecaps? Would you like only one of them to be intact? It wouldn’t kill you.”
I get in the car. I hope Iacopo can track us.
She drives like a crazy woman. We’re flying like a bat out of hell as we go far away from wherever they were holding me.
I can see her sweating even though it’s not that hot. “You can leave me here,” I offer as we pass a park. “I won’t tell them anything.”
“Shut up,” she says. She’s all alone in the car with me.
“And don’t get any bright ideas,” she warns. “I may not have taken the time to secure you, but I’m not useless. Tie your wrists together. There are zip ties in the glove compartment. Do it.”
I don’t want to tie my wrists together.
“Now.”
I open the glove compartment. There are zip ties in there. I put them around my wrists and pull them closed.
“Good.”
She’s driving more slowly now. I think that she has a destination in mind. I shut up and try to remember as much as I can about the surrounding area. Maybe I’ll be able to describe it later.
We’re at the edge of a desert now. She drives forward. She’s visibly relaxed now, but I’m getting scared. We’re not in the city anymore.
Finally, we pull up outside of a motel.
“Keep your mouth shut while I get a room. I’m locking the car. If you try to get out, it’ll trigger the anti-theft device. If you scream or shout, you will wish for death when I’m done with you.”
I watch helplessly as she locks me in the car. I can see people outside, but nobody is looking at me. I only have minutes to act.
I write Iacopo’s phone number on the window of the car with my fingers. I’m hoping that the finger oil will still be there when the car is covered in dew in the morning and people will realize that something’s wrong. It’s the best I can do right now. If only someone were looking inside of the car…
Chapter Twenty-Five
Failure
Iacopo
When my men have secured the house where we tracked Kelly, nobody besides the security team is inside. One of my men who used to be a combat medic is making sure that the scumbags don’t bleed out. We’ll take them in for questioning.
I can see a strand of Kelly’s hair on the white sheets of a bed in a small room. There’s no handle on the inside of the door. But she’s not there.
“Smell this, sir.”
One of my men brings me a tray. It has a bowl of rice on it. It smells strangely sweet.
“It’s drugged,” I say. My muscles clench when I think about them drugging her. Another man interrupts my thoughts.
“We think that they took her out the tunnel.”
“Show me.”
Then we’re running down a tunnel which leads to a garage. There a
ren’t any cars here, although there are a few drops of oil on the ground. They haven’t been gone that long.
“Find her,” I tell my men. “Find my fiancé.”
“We’ll do it, sir.”
I don’t pay attention as my men strategize on how to track her and get her back. I think of her being drugged and helpless in Mateo’s power. It makes me want to put my fist through a wall.
But anger cannot save her now.
“Sir…I think we’ve found which vehicle they took.”
In a frame, one of my men is holding a shot of two people standing in front of the garage. There’s a single car in it, a green SUV. Part of the license plate is visible.
“Find out where the car went,” I bark.
“Already on it, sir.”
I can see that they’re relaying the pertinent information through their phones. Wherever they’ve taken her, I’m going to find them. And I will make them pay for stealing someone on whom they never should’ve laid a finger.
Two hours later, I’m pacing like a caged tiger. Not knowing where she is, knowing that she’s drugged and in danger, is making me insane.
“Sir, we think we know where she went.”
“Where?”
“There’s a small town in the desert where there’s a motel.”
“There are a lot of small towns. Lot of motels.”
“Yes, but we took a picture of Kelly entering a room.”
I look at the grainy surveillance photo. “Her hands are tied.”
“Yes, they are.”
“How did you find her?”
“Stroke of luck. The car was parked illegally, so a parking violation ticket was issued.”
“Could they really be that stupid? Or is it a trap?”
“Only one way to find out, sir.”
We’re getting into a car. I don’t trust myself to drive right now. My men are driving me towards that small desert town as fast as we can go.
Hold on. I’m coming for you.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Motel Room
Kelly
The smell of the motel room is horrible. It smells like decaying trash. Rotting food has a sort of sweet smell. The motel room smells like it’s rotting, but without the sweetness.
“Eat,” she barks at me. There’s an open bag of potato chips in front of me. I don’t touch it. I don’t even know her name. She just yanked me into the motel room closest to the car and closed the curtains. After cutting off my zip tie, she cuffed one of my hands to the headboard.
“I’m not hungry.” I can’t eat in this place. It’s filthy. I feel like vomiting. I’m totally miserable and my stomach feels like it’s digesting itself.
“You have to eat.” I can hear the desperation in her voice.
“Why do you even care?”
“I don’t.” But there’s a little tremble in her voice. She’s scared of something. I just don’t know what.
“What’s at stake here? If I starve myself to death, nothing will happen to you.”
“I’m not holding you for myself,” she snarls at me. She takes a step towards me that makes me think she’s going to claw at my face.
“Why am I here? Is it Ariana?”
She just shakes her head. “The less you know, the better.”
“Your boss isn’t Ariana, is it? It has to be someone else.”
“Shut up.” She runs her hands through her hair so that it sticks up a little bit. She paces around the room. She keeps looking at the phone, as if she really wants to make a call but knows that she shouldn’t.
“Why don’t you call whoever it is you’re worried about?”
“Not secured.”
She sits down on the bed. She’s staring out the window, drumming her fingers on the mattress.
“You left behind all your stuff when we ran, didn’t you?” I smile for the first time in a long time.
Good news. We’re in the middle of nowhere and she has no backup.
“Stop smiling. I still have a gun, so don’t even think about running.”
Good to know, but I’m less afraid of guns than the average person. I’m afraid of death, sure, but with a dad and former uncle who taught me to shoot when I was a kid, I know that death comes for everyone.
Then I realize that just because she can’t use the phone doesn’t mean that I can’t. If I call Iacopo, he’ll be able to rescue me in a heartbeat. I look at the phone, my heart rising as I realize that I have hope.
But she notices me. “Don’t fucking think about it,” she says before yanking the phone’s cord out of the wall. She opens the motel door and throws it as far as she can. There goes that idea.
I pull a pillow into my arms so I can hug it. I’m in a better position than I was earlier today, but I’m not out of the woods yet. I have to figure out how to get in contact with someone without getting shot in the process.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rescue Mission
Iacopo
“There’s the green SUV, sir.”
I can see the green SUV with the plate that we looked up. They were incredibly sloppy. I can see the ticket under the windshield wiper.
Gotcha.
I’m so close to getting Kelly that I can almost taste it.
“Careful. Let’s assume that they’re armed.”
My men have their guns out. We’re not going to hold our fire. They know that if they shoot Kelly, though, they’ll have to deal with me. I’m not worried. If they weren’t expert marksmen, they wouldn’t be working for me. My men don’t make mistakes.
We know which motel room was rented by a woman who paid in cash. I’m going to assume that there’s a team guarding Kelly in this shit-hole motel room, so we have to be careful. We’re going to distract them and then move in.
“Set it on fire.”
On my command, one of my men sets a fire on the windshield and immediately ducks out of sight.
It doesn’t take long for a woman to come running out of the motel room, shouting. She doesn’t even notice us running into the motel room, guns out. There’s nobody in there but Kelly. Kelly’s handcuffed to the bed.
It drives me crazy that my team is seeing her like this, but she’s fully clothed.
“Iacopo,” she says.
“Hold still, baby. I’m going to unlock your cuffs.”
I have a key that unlocks handcuffs in the kit that my team always carries. I take it out and unlock the cuffs.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” she says. “Please get me out of here.”
“Right now.”
There’s a fire truck pulling outside of the motel room.
“We’re going to have to go out the window.” We have Kelly, but we aren’t clear yet.
We open up the bathroom window, which is large enough for one of us to go through at a time. The men step on top of the toilet seat. Kelly is so small that my men have to help her through. I’m the last man out, ready to cover our backs.
Then we’re running to the corner to meet our cars, still trying to stay out of sight. They’re ready to go, doors open as we run into them. The running has to have attracted some attention, but we’re already on our way.
Then we’re driving under the speed limit through the desert, far away from this town so small it barely has a name.
I’m in the back seat of the car with Kelly. Her stomach growls.
“Did they feed you?”
“I was worried about drugs in my food,” she says.
“They definitely drugged your food,” I say. “But you seem alert.”
“I didn’t eat much of it.”
“That’s going to be our first priority then.” I turn to our driver.
“Pull into the first fast food place you see.”
“Got it, boss.”
It’s not smart to delay getting as far away as possible, but if she’s hungry, we’re going to take the risk. I text the other car to keep going. No need to risk their safety when all I need is to pu
t a burger in her hands.
We pull into a McDonald’s drive-through.
“Ten burgers, please. And five chocolate milkshakes.” Probably enough food to keep us going until we get home. I text my chef to prepare a meal so that she has something more than fast food in her stomach soon.
Within five minutes, we have a few bags of food. The man in the passenger seat digs into his burger and passes back two bags for us. He passes back most of the milkshakes, too.
“Smells really good,” Kelly says.
“Eat,” I order.
She moans when she takes the first bite. “I forgot how good McDonald’s burgers are.”
“Hunger is the best spice.” I’m trying to make sure she doesn’t faint or something from the lack of food. “Drink some of your milkshake.”
Then we’re quiet as we all eat something that’ll keep us going.
Finally, we’re pulling into my driveway. The danger has passed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Home Again
Kelly
I feel the knot in my stomach dissolve as we pull into the driveway of Iacopo’s house. I look at the ring on my finger. His nonna’s ring has stayed with me this whole time.
“Let’s eat.”
He pulls me out of the car and into the dining room. There are two places set right next to each other. There are small glasses of ginger beer next to plates almost overflowing with food. I attack my gigantic steak, because the hamburger was enough an hour ago, but it definitely isn’t enough now.
“What happened to the FBI investigators?”
“I fed them information that made them want to convict Ariana instead. I made it look like she had been in charge the whole time. She’s going to have to disappear for a while.”