AllFreeNovel
Share Us
By rights, the building should have been noisy at this time of day, as kids got back from school and left for clubs or to hang out with their friends, as moms chatted in doorways. But there was nothing as I came up the first, then the second flight of stairs.
When I got to the top floor I was panting, but I froze when I heard a shotgun’s pump click.
“STOP!O DISPARO.”
It chilled me to the bone. I knew what that meant. I’d heard Raúl, Sara’s kid, watching Spanish cop shows on the TV.Stop or I’ll shoot.
“Sebastien?” I said.
I heard the shotgun pump click again, and Sebastien appeared from round the door of the apartment.
“Lola,” he said, and the look on his face already told me what had happened.
“Sebastien?” I said, and stumbled forward, down the corridor to the door of the apartment.
Inside, the place was a mess. The table had been thrown over and there was stuff on the floor, children’s toys and crayons.
And on the sofa was Sara Loseña, my best friend, with an ice pack on her head.
“LOLA!” she said, and stood up. I could see tears already forming in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she whispered.
“No,” I said.
“He came with a gun…I couldn’t do anything. He hit me.”
“No,” I said again.
“We called the cops and they’re coming,” said Sara. “How did you know?”
“No,” I said, “no, no, no.”
But no matter how many times I said it, it was still true. As Sara told me the whole story, she wept, and so did I. She showed me the note he’d left behind.
Dearest Lola
No doubt the father of your child will have received this message already. You are to call me within 24 hours to give me five million dollars in cash. You and Alex are to come ALONE. You will not tell anyone. You will not call the cops. Disobey these instructions and I am afraid little Macy will come to ENORMOUS HARM.
Your old boss, L.
Luca had come to the apartment.
And he’d taken Macy.
Chapter 24
Alex
“Ninetysix,”Igrunted.“Ninety seven. Ninety…eight!”
A hundred pull-ups. There are professional athletes who wake up and don’t have the energy to do a hundred pull-ups. But of course, it was not about energy. It was about motivation. And I was highly motivated during the three-hour workout I’d just subjected myself to, during which I’d already beaten all my personal bests and was about to beat another.
“Ninety-nine,” I cried, and then came the last one. Every muscle in my body was burning already, but I didn’t care. Anything not to think about what had happened since I’d got back to New York this morning.
I collapsed onto the floor, and lay flat on my back, almost weeping from the pain. When I got up, I could see myself in the mirror, angry, red-faced, and soaking with sweat. I warmed down for a while, and then hit the shower. But even a gentle comedown from the enormous levels of physical strain I’d been under wasn’t enough to stop my legs from turning to jelly.
The revelation that my father was alive had shocked me. But that he was the one who forged the birth certificate? I should have known. When the detective said it was impossible to forge my dead mom’s signature, I should have remembered that Max Lowe, the deadbeat to rival all other deadbeats, would know how. He’d forged a bunch of my mom’s stuff when we were kids—he even used to joke when I was little about how he could sign checks from her to the bank and they’d cash them.
