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They press play and let the recording finish. I listen as Gabriele has his daughter dragged away and locked in a room. I listen as the guard tells her to look for my face on the news.
“It goes pretty quiet after that,” Dalton says. “And then just before morning, the device stopped transmitting entirely. We believe she destroyed it somehow.”
“He’s got her locked up again,” I say, feeling completely destroyed. “The exchange of one prisoner for another was the only plan you could come up with?”
“It’s only temporary,” Dalton explains. “She knew the risks going in and she insisted she would do it. In fact, it was all her idea.”
“Jay has let us know that she’s locked in the same room as last time, at the far end of the house. But he says the number of guards has doubled since last time,” Mattia explains.
Suddenly, walking free doesn’t feel as good as it did only moments ago. My life for hers would never be a fair trade. She is worth far more than I am, not to mention that she is not one, but two. My stomach churns at the thought.
“Why did nobody tell me that this was the plan?” I demand.
Dalton and Mattia look at each other. “She asked us not to.”
“You don’t work for her,” I say. “You work for me.”
“Precisely,” Dalton says coldly. “And thus, we needed to do what was best for you. We couldn’t have told you, you would have stopped us from doing it.”
I lean back in my seat as they play the recording through again. I can hear the anger in her voice as she confronts her father. She was brave, and fierce, and it was successful. It will win me my freedom. But as long as she is in that house, her life, and that of our child, is at risk.
She did it so well, pushing him to speak like she did. I suspect there’s more of her father in her than either of us is willing to admit. Even if it’s just throwing money at everything to get the outcome he wants, he still calculates his moves. He does exactly what he needs to do, just like Aria just did for me.
“She played her role perfectly,” Dalton says. “And she’ll be alright, I promise you.”
“This is far from over, isn’t it?” I ask.
“True, there is a lot still to do before you are truly freed of your convictions. But now, we have everything we need to make it happen.”
“If anything happens to her, I will hold you both personally responsible,” I say darkly.
Dalton smiles. He seems more confident than I have seen him in a long time. I know that it should be comforting, but I also know how unpredictable Gabriele can be.
“Do you know what we have here?” Dalton says, pointing at the laptop that plays the recording. “We not only have him confessing to your wrongful convictions, but also to paying off all those judges.”
“We sent her to get one thing and she got useverything,” Mattia says with a proud smile.
“We can get them all now,” Dalton says, rising from his seat with excitement. “With this we can topple his entire empire. All the people he keeps in his pockets will be investigated and exposed. Gabriele will be no more.”
I know he’s right, and in the end, I want nothing more than that. I would love to watch as everything Gabriele has worked for goes up in flames. I’ll personally make sure accounts of the destruction are sprawled across every newspaper too.
“This is the result of his constant underestimation of his own daughter,” I say with a chuckle.
“I think we’ve all underestimated her, don’t you think?” Dalton says with a smile.
“She’s certainly surprised me many times,” Mattia says.
I want to be as excited as they are, but my heart is filled with worry. She was already so bruised the last time that I saw her, and I am concerned about how much worse it might be this time around. How many bruises will I find the next time I see her?
Then I think about the last time that I saw her, and how she told me she loves me. Those were thelastwords I was expecting her to say. After twenty years in prison, I’d come to believe that I was undeserving of anybody’s love.
Now, with Aria locked in her father’s mansion, I feel that I truly am undeserving ofherlove. Since I came into her life, it’s been turned upside down. I know that there must be some way that I can make it right. All I want is to hold her near and know that she is safe and forever out of harm’s way.
She came into my life so unexpectedly, and everything since then has taken me equally by surprise, particularly my feelings for her. It was precisely those feelings that made me think I could go to Gabriele’s house and get away with it. It was my feelings toward her that landed me back in jail, and resulted in her becoming her father’s prisoner.
She put her life on the line for me, and although Dalton and Mattia are excited about it, I know that she’s still in danger. Who knows what her father will do to her? He still thinks he can get to me. He still wants her statement regarding the kidnapping; he’s already threatened her once to get it out of her, so who knows how he’s going to come at me next. I can’t imagine how afraid she must be. And she’s done all of this for me.
“Do we actually know if she’s safe?” I ask. “How do we know that she isn’t in any real danger?”
