“She was spending time with her sister near Palermo. I don’t know how much she knows. I need to talk to her.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“But—”

“Not now, Gia. Let me think this through. I’m sure she doesn’t want two dead kids to bury.”

That made me stop. He was right. “Victor was always jealous of James. I’d go so far as to say he hated him.” I drank the last of the now lukewarm coffee and turned to him. “How long is the drive?” I didn’t want to talk about this anymore.

“A few more hours.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.”

“What about me?”

“You do as you’re told, Gia, and I won’t have to hurt you.”

“Did you know Mateo?” I asked out of the blue, remembering that sense of familiarity, that moment I’d thought I’d met him before.

“No.”

He wouldn’t look at me. Why didn’t I believe him? And why would he lie?

“You won’t hurt me,” I said, not sure why I said it.

“Sharing a common enemy does not make us friends.”

“You won’t.”

“How do you know I’m not taking you to the auction? Don’t you think it’d be easier for me to transport a cooperative slave?”

He gave me a moment to process that before continuing.

“Quiet now. I need to think.”

Fine. I needed to think too. I needed to figure out how I would proceed. As much as I wanted to kill Victor outright, wasn’t it smarter for me to use the evidence Mateo had collected and turn it over to the feds? I still knew where the copy of the recorded conversations were: safe and sound in plain sight. What then, though? Go into witness protection and live in hiding for the rest of my life? Could I trust Mateo’s contact? Should I go to Angus Scava, or was Dominic right? That he could be involved too? That he could have ordered Mateo’s murder, my kidnapping? Was I naive to think he’d stand by me rather than his own family, even if he did hate Victor? What was I to him? Nothing. Not now that James was gone.

I needed to think. To figure out what to do. How to proceed. How to make Victor pay and stay alive in the process.

I needed to figure out how to manage my captor, how to align his goals to mine, and ultimately, I’d need to figure out how to escape him. I had no doubt his hands were as bloody as Victor’s, and I couldn’t forget that, no matter how attracted I was to him.

11

Dominic

Gia fell asleep sometime in the next hour, leaving me in blessed silence as I drove toward Salvatore’s house.

My house.