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I don’t know how much I am worth. Salvatore never told me my father’s price, and whatever Noctus is paid, it isn’t in cash. With a pistol to my skull, he drags me out of the backseat. We move under the scrutiny of seven different guns. Fear crushes my lungs. The exchange is tense as I am handed over. He has no leverage once I am out of his hands, but to my surprise, he leaves with a handshake and a passport in hand.
I am calmly ransomed off. A tidy business deal.
When Noctus pulls away, my feet fly after him. I rush after the car as if I can hitchhike my way back to Salvatore. One of my father’s men catches me around the waist. He hauls me, kicking and screaming, back toward the car, while I choke on my own tears.
“Tessa!”
The voice snaps me out of my fit. My gaze lifts, vision swimming behind a blurry haze.
“Tessa, it’s okay—it’s us.” I am pulled into familiar arms. The smell of his aftershave triggers some deep-seated memory. “We’ve got you.”
Uncle Emil.
I am too overwhelmed to react at first, not even knowing how to greet him. I simply lean into his arms and cry—I cry about everything all at once, feeling so bitter and betrayed and powerless. Again.
“We need to move,” someone says, impatiently. Eyes and guns are still trained on the spot where Noctus left. I don’t want to go.
“Come on,” my uncle urges me, “it’s over now, Tessa. You’re going home to your dad.”
He steers me toward the car. In the backseat, I am wedged in the middle between him and his son. The men pile into the car, every seat filled. I feel the stares on me—familiar faces full of pity.
My uncle tries to comfort me as we drive. He reassures me that everything is fine now. He strokes my hair as he lies to me and tells me that I’m free.
I’m not listening to him. I stare past him, out the window. My crying and hyperventilating have stopped, my cheeks stiff with dried tears. Bobby Helms is singing in my head. In my mind’s eye, I am alone in the back of a Range Rover, and my hands and feet are tied. I am sprawled on the lap of a mob boss, smoking his cigarettes and telling him about my past.
I have been here twice before.
…I cannot be kidnapped three times in a row and learn nothing.
I close my eyes.
I sit in the back seat, and I make a plan.
22
Contessa
My father has gotten thin. His suit doesn’t fit quite right, and his hairline has retreated toward his ears. Maybe he pulled it all out, trying to figure out what to do to get me back. His hug still feels the same. We stand in the threshold of his penthouse, wrapped up in each other’s arms. He does not let me go for several long minutes.
Caught in his literal and figurative clutches, I don’t know what I am supposed to feel.
Relief? Anger? Despair?
It doesn’t matter, really. I wrap my arms around him, clinging to him as tightly as he clings to me.
“My girl,” he says, over and over, pressing kisses to my temple. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you, even when you had given up. Not me. Not for anything.”
For anything.
Dario’s bloody face flickers behind my eyelids. Remy’s slumped, motionless body. The taste of Vinny’s blood fills my mouth again. I swallow all my bitter objections and force myself to smile, no matter how tight and brittle it feels. “I knew you wouldn’t,” I tell him, cupping his weathered face.
He takes my hands in his, kisses the back of them, then pulls me into his arms again.
I could almost believe he really does love me, in his own ugly way. It makes it all worse.
Our reunion eases its way into the living room. Uncle Emil wraps a heavy blanket around my shoulders as if I am a trauma victim, but I’m grateful to cover myself up. My father barks orders at his assistant, telling her to get me a cup of hot tea. The glitzy penthouse is unusually active for this time of night, the minimal and exhausted staff scrambling to wait on me hand and foot.
I feel so incredibly out of place. The sudden change of scenery doesn’t feel real, but this is no dream.
