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Stitches and the rest of the safehouse crew have been unable to get a hold of him. No one has speculated what that means—at least not to my face—but the brutal reality hangs unspoken in the air.
My eyes sting with tears. Stitches knocks insistently at the door. “Delphine, come down. We’ve got dinner. Authentic lasagna. Oscar’s made it using his mom’s recipe. All you can eat—”
“STITCHES, GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE! CODE FIFTY!” Fabio roars from downstairs.
Faster than I can blink—than I can inhale my next breath—Stitches is gone from my bedroom door. The villa seems to erupt into chaos. More than half a dozen feet pound the floor as the crew reacts to whatever emergency code Fabio has called. The click of weapons being readied and loaded and the clash of their voices are just some of the other sounds that fill up the house—so many conflicting sounds it’s impossible to tell what’s going on.
I catch only a few random sentences here and there.
“Who the fuck is this?!”
It’s Lev who says it. I recognize the pitch in his voice.
My legs take me to the bedroom window, and I discover what he’s talking about.
Several unmarked white vans have pulled up outside and a team of men have descended upon the front of the house.
Clean cut and uniformly dressed. Some with sunglasses. Tight-lipped expressions and a cockiness to their walk as they stop in front of the door and beat their fists.
Both my brows knit as the late afternoon takes another puzzling turn. Are we being raided by law enforcement?
delphine
“Run!”Stitches yells the second he sees me.
So I run. No questions asked.
I’m mid-step when given the command. The hall crowded with Salvatore’s men changes course like the tide in the ocean. At once a powerful wave of solid men built of muscle surges toward me. I spin around so fast my ankle bends at an impossible angle.
There’s no time to protest with a crew of men barreling my way.
I stay a couple paces ahead, along with Stitches, running from whatever the fuck has showed up on our doorstep.
It can’t be anything good. The men looked like some type of government agency.
Perhaps not local law enforcement, but potentially FBI. Salvatore was already being investigated for Ralph Mirra’s murder—did Dad take it a step further and elevate the criminal case against him?
BOOM!
The thunderous noise rocks the foundation of the house itself. The first time it catches me off guard enough that I almost trip and lose my balance. The second time, as the sound reverberates and the villa shakes, I realize what’s happening.
Whoever’s at the door is slamming a battering ram against it. One that must be triple the size of a standard ram.
Their second attempt is successful. The door crashes in and they swarm into our once safe house.
Gunfire explodes between their side and our side. I crouch lower, tossing my arms up over my head.
“Keep running!” Stitches shouts. “We’ve got an emergency escape truck out back.”
He and Lev provide me cover, occasionally pausing to return fire, as we navigate the halls of the home.
I’m running in such a mad panic that everything blurs together. It’s similar to a slip of consciousness. In a single moment I shift from rounding a corner with the violent bangs of gunshots mere feet behind me to diving inside the emergency truck Stitches described. Lev slams on the gas and we shoot across the lawn.
Face flushed and disoriented, I struggle righting myself. I’ve landed upside down on the floor of the truck, wedged between Stitches and the dash. He helps pull me right side up by the arm.
“Stay down,” he says. “This truck’s bulletproof, but it ain’t invincible. Fabio and some of the other guys are trying to get out.”
“Are we on the run from the FBI?” I gulp down some air, trying to twist from the floor of the truck.
