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)
“Loss was nothing to me back then. Only monetary but not this time around.”
“What do you mean?” he asked eagerly. “There’s more at stake? Like a person?”
“Yes,” I replied.
His eyes glittered. “As far as I know you don’t have any family. So … it must mean … a woman.”
I stared at him and thought of the truth and falsehood in his words. “I did have a family. Marco Leone was my family, which is why the lie your organization is trying to put forward that I would do anything to hurt his daughter is so ridiculous.”
“We never said you would hurt her,” he said. “All we said was you might have kidnapped her.”
He pushed his chair closer to me and stared deep into my eyes.
“I’ve always considered you an ally because you’ve always made things easy for me. Throw me another bone, will you? Let’s both get out of this unscathed.”
I stared right at him. “Can you guarantee her safety?”
He lifted his right hand and swore. “You have my word.”
I smiled with amusement.
“You don’t believe me?” he asked.
I had nothing else to say and knew that one slip of the tongue and he would officially be sending me into custody, so I kept my comments to myself.
“If you don’t cooperate you will jeopardize your case. I’ll make sure of that,” he threatened. “But cooperate and I’ll give you a way out. The DA will be itching to give you nothing less than twenty years, but I’ll put in a good word and get you ten. Good behavior means you’ll only do five years.”
I turned to him then and shook my head in wonder. “You’re trying to get an innocent man to take the fall?”
He laughed out loud. “Ha! Ha! Innocent man. Come on, Moretti. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I know more about you than I know about my own son.”
“In that case, you should know you’re wasting your time right now.”
The ringing of a cell phone reverberated in the room and I was happy for the reprieve. Listening to him was beginning to give me a headache.
His colleague, who had been silent all that time, answered the phone, actually grunted into it, and then returned it to his pocket.
“There's news,” he said.
Hudgens kept his gaze on me, a sick smile playing at the corner of his lips. “What news?”
“Leone’s daughter,” he said in a dull voice. “She’s just been sighted going into her old apartment building about five minutes ago.”
There was surprise in Hudgens’s eyes at the information, but there was no way I could hide the shock and annoyance in mine.
“Jackpot,” Hudgens gloated with delight.
Chapter 53
Zola
An hour earlier
Icouldn’t believe it had come to this.
I was waving a gun riotously at Dante’s men, but they seemed unfazed even though they watched me closely, like hawks on prey. They were certain I was either bluffing or didn’t even know my gun was without bullets. Giotto had removed them before giving it to me. What they didn’t know was that I had found some in Dante’s room.
In order to let them know I wasn’t joking around, I turned around away from all the people present and fired the gun. It resounded in the air like a bomb, almost forcing me to cover my ears with the unexpected blast. One of the female staff screamed, but all I could think of was the hole I’d put in Dante’s gorgeous wall.
Anyhow, that’s solved my problem. The men no longer looked unfazed. I saw their shared looks of concern.
“Get out of my way,” I shouted wildly.
“Calm down, Miss Leone, please. Why not talk to the boss first, huh? Let him come home. What can it hurt to wait a little … hmmm?”
I shook my head. “No, my mind is made up. If you all don’t get out of my way, I’m going to shoot. Starting with you.”
“You’re making a mistake, Miss Leone. This is not a good idea. You are safe here. You won’t be out there.”
“I said, get out of the way.”
“The boss will be angry with us if we let you go.”
‘I swear I will shoot you if you don’t,” I warned.
Reluctantly, they stepped out of the way and I ran to the car in the garage that responded to the key fob in my shaking hand. I had just opened the door when a vehicle screeched to a stop in front of me.
“Get in,” the man who had tried to persuade me said. “We’ll take you where you want to go. You can’t go on your own. It’s too dangerous.”
I hesitated. I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust that they didn’t have a trick against me up their sleeve.
“That car you’re trying to steal has a jamming mechanism,” the guy in the passenger seat said in a thick New York Bronx accent. “It’s not going to start unless we decide to let it.”