Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
And he spoke a single sentence that would hurt me like nothing else ever could in my lifetime.
“He’s dead, Boss. We saw him lying in a pool of his blood before we entered.”
I felt cold inside, icy cold with fury. Revenge was like a poison inside me.
“And his killer?”
“We couldn’t get a good look at him,” he said. “He fired at us and escaped through the window. His bullet hit Aldo in the shoulder.”
“Where are the others right now?” I asked quietly.
“In pursuit, Boss,” he responded. “I’ll update you if they catch him when they return.”
“And the girl?”
Before he could respond, however, I heard sirens in the distance.
“The cops are there?” I asked.
“Yup. We’ll have to leave now, but what about the girl? Do we take her with us?”
“No, leave her with her father and get out of there quickly,” I instructed. There was nothing further that they could do except protect themselves.
As I cut the connection, regret came over me. I shouldn’t have listened to him. I should have followed my own instinct. In my mind, Marco Leone’s voice echoed convincing me that he didn’t need protection.
“Look, Dante, why have you got your men watching and protecting me around the clock? They’re not interested in me per se. I’m just a lawyer with inflexible morals. Less valuable than a used condom to them. You should be diverting all your resources to protecting the whistleblower. We really need him. Without him, we’re cooked. I don’t know how else I can tell you, but he is absolutely pivotal to us winning your case.”
He had sounded so confident, so utterly sure in his conviction, I’d taken him at his word. I’d decided to listen to him this one time and now I was too late. My men were too fucking late. Inside, I was raging, but there was nothing I could do. I was still forty-two thousand feet in the air. Impotently, I slammed the phone to the floor and watched it smash into pieces.
No one said a word or even attempted to come around me. I couldn’t lose control. Not yet and not now. I needed to be clear-headed so I could stay on top of things and make decisions as needed.
“How much longer till we get to New York?” I growled.
One of the air hostesses who was standing in the corner with her head slightly lowered responded. “Forty-five minutes, Sir,” she said.
I unclenched my fist, took a deep breath and leaned back against the seat. There was pain in my chest. With my eyes shut I thought of the man who, from the time I was a kid, had treated me with concern and dignity. He had believed in me and helped me when no one else would, and I had failed to protect him.
“How much longer until we land?” I asked and the response soon came.
“Forty minutes, Sir.”
Only five minutes had passed, but it seemed like forever.
Chapter 3
Zola
Iwondered if the nightmare would ever end.
Sooner or later, I would wake up and find none of it had been real. But the sun rose, chased the darkness away, and confirmed, all of it had been real. My father had died in my arms the previous night.
I could barely speak.
The shock was still too palpable.
In many ways, I imagined I was dead as well because apart from the fact I was still somehow breathing, no other part of me felt real. I felt completely numb.
The moment I’d heard the gunshot my first instinct had been to scream and run up those narrow steps, but something else even more powerful inside me couldn’t allow whoever the bastard was to find me, so I covered my mouth and crouched down to hide my face between my knees.
But the nightmare had only just begun because a mere second later I heard him begin to stomp his foot on the floorboards around the table. I’d known then he was aware of the latch and of the crawlspace I was in and I wondered why. And how? I’d lived here practically all my life and had been denied access to this room, but I’d never discovered it. It was obvious to me this attack had been meticulously planned and orchestrated by people knowing more than they should have about my father.
And that was further confirmed when he flipped open the door, saw me, and pulled me up the steps by my hair. My scalp burned like it had been torched, but as soon as I saw my father I didn’t care if I was dead. All I knew was I wanted to hurt that murderer more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life. I saw my father’s gun on the opposite side of the room. It must have been flung out of his hand.
I started to crawl to it but before I could, my attacker kicked me so viciously on my side that I went flying in the other direction.