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“There’s a bathroom through there,” he said, pointing, thinking that might be my objection.
“No, you don’t… I can’t sleep down here. There’s… there’s a giant bug.”
“What? A bug?” he asked, a mix of confused and disbelieving.
“No, not just like any bug. This is a massive bug. Like he could pass for a small dog, I swear. I can’t… you can’t make me sleep down here with that,” I added, recoiling, piling on the growing hysteria about the made-up bug. “What if it crawls on me?” I added, doing a whole-body shiver.
“What kind of bug? A spider?”
“No. No, it was worse. And bigger. It was like a grasshopper, but on steroids,” I told him, recalling one I’d seen once in a different basement at a different time in my life.
“A cave cricket? Really? I’ve never seen one here,” he said, coming down a step. “Then again, I don’t spend a lot of time down here. I can try to find it. Where did you see it last?” he asked.
And that was when the plan came full circle.
“I think it went behind the sink,” I told him, motioning toward it.
“Okay,” he said, sighing a little as he came across the floor, then lowered himself down onto the ground to look under the utility sink.
The utility sink that was right next to the dryer.
“Crap, ow,” I said, knocking my knee into the dryer to cover the sound of me opening the door.
Checking to make sure he wasn’t looking, I reached inside, feeling my hands close around the cool, hard top to the toilet tank and holding it at one end with both hands.
My stomach was tied in knots as I came to terms with what I was about to do.
But, I reminded myself, this was what I had to do, whether I liked it or not.
It was the only way I was going to get free.
“Are you sure it was—“ he started, sliding out from under the sink.
It wasn’t until he started to turn his head that I remembered to pull back.
And I guess he caught the motion because his eyes went wide and his lips parted.
But it was too late.
I was swinging.
Then the tank top was ramming against his head.
I watched in horrified shock as his whole body just collapsed forward, face cracking against the floor on the way down.
The sound made my stomach twist, made a bit of bile rise up in my throat.
But there was no time to feel bad or get sick.
I had to go.
Taking a deep breath, I turned and ran. Toilet tank in hand and all.
I barreled up the stairs as my heartbeat sped into overdrive, making me feel my pulse in not just my chest, but my throat, my temples, and my wrists as I flew through the door.
I put the lid down on the armoire that was beside the door, then slammed and locked the door.
And then I was running.
I couldn’t even tell you what the inside of his house looked like, or how I inherently knew how to find the front door. All I knew was that I did. And I ran down his front path, then the sidewalk, and eventually right onto the pavement when the sidewalk ended, my bare feet getting beaten up by the rough terrain as I tore down the street, knowing he wouldn’t be passed out long, and that the door would be no real obstacle for him.
He would be coming for me sooner rather than later.
And I planned to be safely inside the police building when he did so.
Luckily enough for me, and weirdly enough for a man who was clearly part of the New Jersey mafia, Matteo Grassi lived only about two blocks from the police station.
I didn’t stop to think about how crazy I looked, running in there with wild eyes and bare feet.
I just knew I had to get some help.
And they were the only ones who could stand up to the mafia.
Or, you know, so I thought.
CHAPTER FOUR
Matteo
It was Massimo, of all people, who showed up to help me deal with the body and clean up the crime scene.
I guess, objectively, he made sense since he made his living taking lives. Granted, he preferred to do it from a distance with a gun, but I was sure there were times he had to get up close and personal, and therefore needed to clean up after himself. Which meant he probably knew more about making a crime scene disappear than any of us individually, or even all of us collectively.
He was also, by nature, somewhat nocturnal, so he would have been up and ready to hop to when I gave Luca the call to tell him about the situation. Minus the woman in my basement.
Massimo was somewhere around six-three with a lean, but fit build that he almost exclusively—like most of the rest of the family—clad in suits. He had classically good-looking bone structure with facial hair that was more than a five o’clock shadow, but not quite a full beard, and really distinctive eyes. He had one light brown eye and the other was a grayish-blue. Heterochromia, it was called. He claimed that the chicks loved it, but that it was a work liability since not many people had it, and it made him too identifiable if someone ever saw him doing his job.
