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Of course, it’s him. I have no more use, so might as well be sold for spare parts.
Whoever’s strong-arming me is like a living refrigerator, whipping me around like a ragdoll. All of the nasty trafficking rules run through my head as my arm is squeezed almost numb.
Don’t let them take you to the second location. If they do, you’re done.
Terror triples when an SUV screeches up to the parking lot and a door swings open.
Three more men in black masks camouflage almost entirely with the vehicle. I scream so hard my ears pop. I push in an attempt to piss myself, but a swift punch to the gut stops me.
The wind is knocked out of me, and no oxygen is able to get back in. I don’t want to die like this. But when a bag is shoved over my head, and I’m tossed headfirst into the Escalade… I know what happens next.
Chapter 2
Ellie
My ears ring from smashing my head against the door. I can hear voices, three of them, but they’re all swimming like I’m underwater. The cloth over my head makes it hard to breathe. My wrists are bound by wire that’s cutting into my skin, and I lost one of my flats, probably from kicking with all my might.
Now it’s over.
I’m in transit. The rumbling beneath my backside says so.
How dumb am I to trust that Paul would keep his word? Loyalty is a thing of the past after my father – Ronny the Shadow Rigiano – was put away for life. His succession plan went to shit since my brother, Marty Loophole, failed to uphold the same standards for the family.
Now here I am, the sacrificial lamb to satisfy whatever wrongdoing my brother caused for these people, whoever they are. Russian mob? Irish? More dirty cops?
Dizziness slows and my hearing sluggishly returns. Their accents are clearer – Italian, off the boat. That’s not good. Not good at all. Usually they import people to do the dirty jobs. Kill me and dispose of me.
Fuck. Can’t stop trembling, and anxiety blooms in my chest like a reignited flame. Was this the terror Marco felt before they stabbed him through the back seat of his car? Or was it quick?
“She’s awake,” one of the men say in a harsh accent.
Another one closer to me rips off the cloth over my head, and I shut my eyes tight, careful not to open them.
The men laugh at that.
“Look at me, sweetie, I’m not that bad.” The closest one snickers and whips open a knife, lifting my chin with the point. If we weren’t at a red light, I’d already be carved up just by the bumpy road.
“No. If I see your faces, then I have to die.” My voice comes out shakier than I thought it would, which makes me even more terrified – like my whole body knows there’s no hope. “I—I want to make you a deal, same as I had with Paul.”
The men laugh harder.
“A deal? Paul?” The man with a knife lifts my chin higher. “That sad excuse for a cop sold you out to us for a hefty price. The Shadow’s daughter… How can you trust anyone after that?”
“I can’t. But I want to live. I just want all of you criminals to fuck off and leave me be!” Now I’m sobbing, there’s no stopping it. “I didn’t ask to be a Rigiano!”
“Oh, oh, oh,” the man shushes me like he’s trying to quiet a baby, the mockery. “And I didn’t ask to be born drinking out of the sewers in Sicily. But we all work with what we have.” He snickers again, then stops.
I fear he’s going to carve me. My teeth clatter as the cold steel wobbles under my chin.
“Open your eyes, little birdie. Open them now!” he yells, and I twitch. The knife presses harder into my skin, threatening to break it.
I do as he says.
The spindly man closest to me has the ugliest smile I’ve ever seen, and his knife looks like it should be too heavy for his arm. That makes him all the more terrifying. I don’t recognize the other two men in the hollowed out mid-section of the SUV, but they are certainly Italian.
One has a ponytail and resembles Furio from The Sopranos. The other looks like a Goomba from that godawful Super Mario Brother’s movie from the nineties – head too small for his massive body.
They crowd me like I’m a cornered animal, and I wonder what they’re going to do. There’s no clear plastic tarp… Maybe they won’t kill me here. But there are worse things than death in my family’s world.
