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“Where’re you going?”
I spun around, hoping he didn’t notice my rapid breaths or the pounding of my heart. “I need to get out of the house. I’m going for a walk.”
“Want some company?”
I stuffed my buds into my ears. “I’m good. I’m going to head down to the boathouse, and then run a few laps around the property.”
With a wave, I headed out the door. He called for me, but I took off at a good clip, afraid he’d tag along anyway.
My footfalls pounded on the pathway. Once I was in the shelter of the trees, I deviated off the trail. The ground was soft. Twigs snapped under my feet. I ducked under low branches of the oak and sycamore trees.
A twelve-foot perimeter wall surrounded the Jilani estate. After my uncle Pauli’s murder, security cameras were installed. At night, the guards patrolled with dogs.
But I knew of one blind spot. I prayed the wind never blew over the massive sycamore or that my mother didn’t one day want it for a new table or firewood. The massive trunk grew close to the stone wall. The thick leaves gave just enough camouflage.
The trunk was too wide, and the branches were too high for me to climb. Knox could climb a stripper poll, but he’d installed tree bolts into the backside of the tree for me. The soles of my shoes gripped the thick screws, giving me enough leverage to scale the tree.
I held to the trunk as I watched the mounted camera. As soon as it panned to the left, I had about fifteen seconds. I lunged onto the flat top of the wall, swung my legs over, held on by my fingertips, and wedged the tip of my shoes into the cored-out grooves in the cement.
I clung to the wall and carefully lowered one hand and one foot at a time until I could safely drop the last four or five feet to the mulch below.
Staying behind the tall cypress hedge and avoiding the street about twenty feet from the wall, I jogged toward the bottom of the hill.
Standing on the corner, I was out in the open. I checked the app to see if my driver’s ETA had changed. Two minutes. I paced, watching in both directions.
Finally, a white four-door pulled along the curb. I didn’t wait for the text confirmation that my ride had arrived. I swung open the back door, climbed in, and scooted down in the seat.
“Thanks. Can you flip around?” I didn’t want to drive past the security gate. Every car that passed had the license plate photographed.
“Sure.” The young, blonde girl pulled away from the curb and headed back in the direction she’d arrived. I watched her eyes in the rearview mirror shift from me to the road. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just need a day off.” I smiled to ease the tension I’d brought into the car.
The rideshare dropped me off at the skate park. I sent Knox a quick text telling him that I was here and sitting on a bench. I could see the parking lot to the left and the street to the right. Then I powered down my phone to hide my location.
I heard the scream of his motorcycle as he pulled into the parking lot. A helmet rode on the back of his bike.My helmet.Like always, my breath caught as he slid off his motorcycle. I fought the buzzing of my nerves as he crossed the grassy park in black combat boots.
Tattoos covered his arms and crawled under a tight, white T-shirt clinging to his muscular biceps. He’d have a gun strapped to his ankle and a blade of some sort in the pocket of the black jeans hugging his thin hips.
He smiled, so maybe the news wasn’t terrible. Before this week, I would have run into his arms and wrapped myself around him like a koala. Technically, not exactly married, but I belonged to Marco now.
Knox dropped down onto the bench beside me and slouched back. “Fuck, why does it feel like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you?”
I felt the same way, even though it hadn’t been two weeks.
He lifted his hips and pulled his cigarettes from his pocket, stuffed one between his lips, then spun the wheel of a cheap plastic lighter.
“I heard about don Bruno.”
I settled in next to Knox. His arm snaked across the back of the bench and played with my ponytail the way he had a thousand times before.
“Marco went back to Italy.”
Knox jolted forward, flicking ash from his cigarette. “What the fuck? Ally, shit, are you okay?”
“You don’t have to worry about me. In the first ten minutes, I threatened to stab him and have our future kids by in vitro fertilization. By the end of the night, his wedding ring was at the bottom of the lake.”
Knox laughed. “I take it the wedding is off?”
