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I lose Elio’s truck in traffic on the highway. He must be heading toward Chicago already, and I understand it. He no longer has an identity that will allow him to pass the scrutiny of TSA at the airport, and we’ve agreed to meet in thirty-six hours.
I head a little further east, needing to make one last stop before joining him in the Windy City.
It’s a four-hour drive to San Antonio, and she’s on my mind every single second of it.
Chapter 30
Madelene
It’s been hours since Elio left the room, and despite my skin itching to leave, I haven’t so much as peeked out the blinds. The fear I’ve lived with for years still hasn’t dissipated. I think the mental torture the Severinos left with me has been the worst.
The bruises have healed. I can almost forget the things they made me do. I no longer close my eyes and feel Marcello’s fingers ripping at my hair as he forced me down on his erection. The time I spent with Hollis has replaced almost all of those horrific memories.
The threats, however, are struggling to hold on. They cling to my consciousness like smoke clings to clothing and heavy air. The Severinos swore they’d see my father dead, and they made that happen. I don’t think Elio was lying to me. He seemed indifferent to the news of our father’s death, not like he told me a lie to hurt me in any way. I don’t think the man cares about anything enough to lie.
As darkness forms around the outer ring of the curtain covering the single window of the motel room, I grow even more antsy, but it isn’t exactly fear that’s making my blood hum.
I want to go to him—Hollis—not my brother.
The man that walked out of here earlier today was right. He’s no longer Elio, and I think I knew that long before we buried those ashes in the crypt.
I should be happy, grateful he didn’t die a tragic death. I worried for his soul, knowing suicide would send him to a different place from where my mother went a year later. I’m not so sure that the man will have an entirely different outcome no matter how he meets his end.
He was at that office, the same as Hollis and that man, Nash, who forced us there at gunpoint. If Hollis works for that Angel guy, that means Elio probably does, too. Hollis had no problem killing Marcello nor Julio, and I highly doubt Elio will struggle with it now either.
Nighttime grows longer, the last tendrils of sunlight drifting away, leaving the heat of the day behind, clinging to the concrete of the city.
I hate the overhead lights outside the door as I walk along the side of the motel, but no one seems to concern themselves with me. I heard a lot of things. Many I don’t believe dripped from Alessio’s and Marcello’s poisonous mouths, but I doubt they were lying when they said all men will take what they want from a woman. The woman could beg and plead, but the result will still be the same.
The protected life I lived with my parents extended to the Severino compound, and even though the guards would look at me in a way that would make me question my safety, the threat of betraying the family kept them away from me. The men that may lay eyes on me now aren’t bound to that same loyalty.
The front desk clerk seems annoyed when I ask her to call me a cab but she does it anyway, her eyes skating over me in a way that makes my skin crawl.
I wait quietly, keeping to the shadows of the building for the car to pull up.
“You got cash?” the cabbie grunts when I open the back door of the car. “I’m not getting into trouble if you’re using a stolen fucking credit card.”
I hold up some of the money Elio tossed at me before leaving, grateful for the plexiglass barrier between the two of us.
He continues to stare at me, and I’m thinking this is the worst idea ever when he speaks up again. “Do you have a fuckin’ address?”
I swallow, not having thought this all the way through.
“The corner of Gumwood and North Seventeenth,” I say, wondering if I’ve made another mistake when his eyes widen.
“Listen, I tip well,” I tell him, and it’s enough for him to turn back around and drive the fucking car out of the parking lot.
I never thought we were in the safest neighborhood, but I never heard gunfire or yelling outside either. This guy just confirmed my suspicions that even if I stepped outside to try and escape Hollis, I might have been in more danger than I was inside with him.
The drive takes longer than I expect it to, and the driver looks at me in the rearview mirror with every red light we catch as if he fully expects me to change my mind with each chance I’m given.
