We never should have run. We should have gone to the cops.
No. It wouldn’t have mattered. There was never any other outcome to this. From the moment Miguel had died, it was always going to come down to this.
There was no going back.
I ran in the direction of the bus; despite his warning, I was sure he was bluffing. Renato De Sanctis, capo dei capi of New Jersey, hadn’t gotten to his position by gunning down groups of innocent bystanders. The fact that he’d even given me and Lucy the chance to keep quiet proved that he had a code of some kind, even if it wasn’t anything I could understand.
I ran as hard as I could between the parked trucks. After the last one, the bus was only a short sprint away.
I was so close.
I almost made it.
A split second before I escaped the looming truck shadows, his hand snagged my arm. My momentum sent me spinning around and right into his arms. Renato’s hand clamped over my mouth, sealing my scream inside. I bit at his fingers as he carried me deeper into the darkness, and the sounds of activity and potential witnesses faded. My teeth met something too smooth and thick to be normal skin.
Gloves. The man was wearing the gloves.
I was so fucked right now.
New panic beat at my chest as he dragged me effortlessly into the shadows, deeper into the truck stop. No amount of kicking seemed to dislodge his steely arm around my waist. I was utterly powerless. Beaten.
“I told you not to run, Charlotte. You’re only making this harder on yourself,” he murmured in my ear.
I fought to calm my raging fear. Think, Charlie. He expected me to keep fighting, clearly. Maybe I could use that. At my hip, a hard object. Something fastened to Renato’s belt. A gun.
He carried me behind the last truck. There was a freeway onramp there, and a car was parked with the headlights on, illuminating us. It looked just like the black, painfully expensive car that had taken me and Lucy to Renato’s house. He wasn’t alone. Big surprise.
I was so screwed. I had one chance, and knowing my luck, it wouldn’t work, but I wasn’t going down without trying.
I let my body go limp, a dead weight that Renato wasn’t expecting. He cursed in Italian when I fell to the ground, leaning down to keep his arms around me. While he did, I wiggled my hand behind me and grabbed his gun. By the time he straightened up, I had it in my hand. I squirmed away from him, and he let me, clearly realizing what I’d done.
I took a few steps back and leveled the pistol at him.
He stood a few feet away, looking completely unruffled. The bastard smirked. “Clever girl. You’re quite the survivor, aren’t you, Miss Burke?”
“Shut up! I’m the one with the gun, and I get to talk now.”
He lazily raised an eyebrow and then nodded, gesturing for me to continue. His curved lip made me feel like he was only going along with this because he was amused, not because he was afraid I’d kill him.
“You are going to leave Lucy and me alone. We’ll leave town, and you’ll never see us again… You won’t come after us, the cops won’t know where we’ve gone – we’ll disappear.”
Renato pursed his lips as if he was contemplating my plan. “And with what resources would you achieve this disappearing act? So far, it’s not convincing.”
“I’ll find the money. I have friends who can help me,” I said quickly. Truthfully, I had one good friend who might try, a friend from nursing school who lived in Michigan. She was the only person who really knew me, after Lucy.
Renato shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t allow another person to enter this equation. In fact, I need the opposite of that to happen.”
A tear squeezed out of my eye. “She’s only nineteen,” I muttered. “Don’t you have any siblings?”
Renato nodded. “Yes, in fact, I do. A younger sister.”
“So then you know how it feels to need to protect them.”
Renato sighed. “Charlotte, this ends tonight.”
He took a step toward me, and I leapt back, the stolen gun still pointed at him. “Don’t come closer! I’ll shoot you, I swear I will,” I warned him.
“Do you think you could manage it? Your hands are shaking.”
“I can manage it,” I snarled. “For Lucy– I can manage anything.”
Renato stopped his slow approach and tilted his head to the side, watching me carefully. “Anything? I’ve heard that before. Could you really manage anything, or would you fight and scream and refuse what you’d already promised to do?” Renato’s smile was infuriatingly unbothered. The sick bastard was enjoying himself.
“Is this fun for you? Toying with your victims before you kill them? Are you getting off on it?”
He chuckled. “I admit I preferred when you kneeled and prayed to me to spare your life… but this has its own appeal.” He checked his watch. “But we don’t have all night.”
“Stop! I’ll shoot, I swear to God,” I babbled wildly as he started toward me. I slipped the safety off, my fingers smearing sweat on the metal.
“Go ahead, bambina. Take a man’s life in cold blood and sink into the darkness…let it grow in your heart. Give up on your chances of Heaven and fall,” he mocked, now striding my way fearlessly.
He was nearly close enough to swipe the gun from me. I was out of time. Instinct took over, and my finger jerked. His eyes locked on mine, and something passed between us in that second. Something real and honest. A terrible moment of truth. I might be a good person and one who had dedicated her life to helping people, and yet I would kill for the right reason. I would cross that line and take that sin onto my own soul.
The gun clicked. I pulled the trigger again, the muzzle now pressed point-blank against Renato’s chest. Another click. Renato waited as my gaze fell to the empty gun and then back up to his face.
“You knew it was empty?” I blurted as he smoothly took it from me. I was done. I couldn’t run. He wouldn’t let me get away again. “You walk around with an unloaded gun?” The arrogance of this man was infuriating. Even now, at the end, it pissed me off.
He held the gun with the ease of someone used to handling firearms. He aimed it at the ground behind me and pulled the trigger two times in succession. One empty click, and then a bang. The shot was the most terrifying thing I’d ever heard. I flinched and bent over at the waist, my fight-or-flight response screaming at me to run again.
“Of course not,” he replied calmly, like I hadn’t just held a loaded gun on him and pulled the trigger. “But I wanted to see how far you’d go.”
I swallowed hard. He switched the safety on and tucked the weapon away. I didn’t think I’d be getting my hands back on it. His black gloves shone in the moonlight overhead.
“And now?” I asked, suddenly weary. I had been fighting for so long – days, weeks, decades – and now, I was done. I was finally done.
“And now, I know,” Renato said.
He stared at me, a new look in his eyes that I couldn’t read. Who knew what a man like him thought about? He was impossible to predict, and I gave up trying. I was out of my league here.
“You’re not going to shoot me? What’re the gloves for? Strangling?” I rambled. A shrill laugh left me, and then another one. I sounded insane, but I couldn’t do anything about it right now.
Renato watched me giggle, even as fresh tears slid down my cheeks. He glanced down at his hands. “The gloves? It’s cold out tonight.”
I blinked at him and giggled again, then dissolved into a fit of laughter. An edge of hysteria threatened to consume my mind, and I’d given up the fight.
“So, what now? Will I be bludgeoned to death? Am I going to fall off a bridge, or maybe the hotel roof? Maybe I’ll just overdose, that would be nice and clean, wouldn’t it? Too bad I don’t have a history of drug use…” I was definitely rambling now, and when I finally shut my mouth, Renato sighed.
“You have quite the dark imagination.”
“You were giving me another chance, remember? You gave me the tracker, and you were waiting to see if I could keep my promise.”
“And you were clearly intending on doing so. It’s what, a few hours later, and you’ve already gotten rid of it and are trying to flee the state.” He tutted disapprovingly. “I’d say I was disappointed, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do with you, little nurse.”
Just then, the passenger door of the waiting car opened, and light flooded the dim interior. Elio stood in the open doorway and watched us. I looked past him into the interior of the car, and my heart squeezed hard.
Lucy lay sleeping – or drugged, I had no idea – in the backseat. Her white cat pajamas looked so out of place in this dark, terrifying scene.
“You’re coming with me, Miss Burke, for better or worse, until death do us part.”
I jerked my head toward Ren, unable to comprehend his words.
“I need a wife and a mother to my children.”
He stepped toward me, and I was too frozen in shock to move. His leather-gloved hands gripped my shoulders and tugged me toward him.
“And?” I breathed.
A shadow of a smile passed over his lips. “And – you’re going to be both.”
