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I’d light the world on fire and burn it to the ground.
CHAPTER52
Luna
“If I knew anything, you’d have been arrested already,” I said.
“You think I’m that stupid? I know why they haven’t arrested me.”
I waited.
“They catch the shipment, I go away for life, and they confiscate it all. Get some other players, too. So, you’re going to tell me what information Dominic told you and what you told the police, so I know which ports are compromised with a possible sting.”
Ports. Shipments. Something was coming into this country.
Something that must be too big for Franco to stop. Franco might be a big man in his criminal enterprise, but even Franco was accountable to others. And those individuals likely yielded more power and delivered swift, lethal consequences. They wouldn’t take too kindly to encountering major complications with this massive shipment—of what I could only assume was narcotics or weapons—especially if they believed they’d been double-crossed. Hence, Franco had a lot riding on this shipment.
I didn’t know that I believed in miracles. It was a hard thing to grasp on to when everything in our family had gone so horribly wrong, but right now, I began to second-guess that. Because semi-lodged in a cut on the top of my forearm was a tiny shard of glass, no bigger than a pea. One I could reach, thanks to my wrists being crossed in an X behind me.
Whether it became lodged there during the car accident or when I was subsequently dragged out of that car, I didn’t know, but it became a beacon of hope in this otherwise bleak situation.
The little shard was my key to survival.
“How many?” Franco asked.
“How many what?”
“Ports! How many fucking ports, exactly?”
I needed to say something that would make him leave for a moment—or at the very least, turn his back to me so I could free my arms. I opened my mouth and rolled the dice on an answer.
“All of them are compromised,” I claimed.
Franco stared at me, and looked at the three men behind him, as if weighing my words. Did he believe me? I wasn’t sure, but he and his three goons walked off to the side and had some sort of huddle.
“Call Diego,” Franco said. “Ask him if he sees any signs of surveillance. I’m going to make a call, too.”
While Franco and one other guy moved farther away to make the calls, the other two guys began talking in hushed whispers while also texting from their phones. Not the ideal distraction, but it would have to do.
Hopefully, they’d be preoccupied long enough for me to free myself.
Determination coursed through my veins as I began to widen my wrists, trying to loosen them a bit so it would make it easier to saw my way through them, but no matter which way I moved, I couldn’t seem to make any progress.
My eyes stung, the frustration and desperation of my situation intensifying. The helplessness of holding the key to my freedom yet being unable to unlock the shackles that bound me was agony, mocking my every attempt to escape.
But even in the face of despair, I couldn’t give up. I had to find a way to free myself and escape this nightmare.
It took a concerted effort to twist my fingers at the right angle, but I managed to grab hold of the jagged piece in my upper forearm, trying not to wince as the sharp edges dug into the skin between my finger and thumb.
Despite the pain, I squeezed it even harder because, covered in blood, the thing could slip through my grasp in a split second.
Now, a new challenge. I had the shard of glass between my finger and thumb, but reaching the duct tape was incredibly difficult. And once I did, I couldn’t stop the shard of glass from also scraping against my skin. But I had no other choice.
I began scraping what was probably a centimeter of the tape. It stung, and the tape was stubborn, glued to my skin, but the great news was how minimally my body was moving. Franco and his army—still making their calls and texts to vet the problem with the ports—seemed none the wiser as to what was happening behind my back.
The first split of duct tape made my heart swell with hope. As I predicted, it loosened the tape just enough to work on the next millimeter. Again, the glass scraped against my wrist, my skin stinging, and burning, the tool on the precipice of being dropped.
It was strange how life and death had come down to this little pea-sized sliver of glass.
