It’s a good idea to leave the country. Papà’s influence goes far, but he’s not omnipotent.
“The cash is in my purse,” I say. “Take whatever you need.”
She grabs the bag from where it’s wedged between her feet and pulls out the wad of cash. Then she counts it. “I’ll take four grand. That’ll be enough to get me home.” She continues to count. “That leaves you with six.”
Six grand, a knife, a gun, and the clothes on my back. That’s all I have left to my name.
“What are you going to do?” the girl asks.
Run.
Run and hope they don’t find me.
My sisters won’t understand why I left because they don’t know anything about Lazaro’s sadistic games. My parents won’t ever tell them, but maybe this will be their wake-up call to not do to Gemma and Cleo what they’ve done to me. I wonder how they’ll explain my disappearance. Cleo will be skeptical no matter what they say, but Gemma might believe them. She’s loyal. Committed. Just like I used to be. Before my wedding, Mamma told me she was pleased with how well I absorbed all of her lessons.
Sorry, Mamma. I’m about to become your biggest disappointment. I couldn’t handle the life you wanted for me. No one’s going to call me a perfect wife after this.
“Did you hear me?”
I glance over at my companion. She’s gnawing on her nails. She looks so scared. It makes an ache appear in my chest.
Is she going to make it on her own? What if I shot my husband only for her to get taken by someone else? I have no idea what her story is, or why Lazaro was ordered to take her. What if he wasn’t the only one after her?
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I say.
A tangled strand of hair falls into her face. “Will you come with me to buy my ticket?” Her voice shakes. “I don’t want to look suspicious to the airline workers. You can say you’re my sister and that you’re buying me a last-minute trip.”
I don’t want to know where she’s going, but she has a point. She looks young and she’s travelling with no luggage. What if they think she’s in trouble and don’t allow her to board?
“Okay, I’ll go with you. As soon as you get past security, buy yourself a change of clothes and wear a hat. Don’t talk to anyone unless you have to.”
“Do you think they’re following us?”
“If they’re not already, they will be.”
The international terminal is right here. I pull to a stop in a no-parking zone, and we get out.
“Won’t they tow your car?” she asks.
“We’ll be quick.” Let them tow it. I’m not coming back to it. Once we get the girl’s ticket, I’ll buy my own to somewhere far from here.
We stop by the departures screen, and she points to a flight to Barcelona. “That one. I’ll be able to get picked up from there.”
It’s leaving in an hour.
“Let’s go,” I say and lead her to the ticket counter.
For all our worrying, the agent doesn’t bat an eye as she issues the girl her ticket.
Clutching her passport in her hand, she turns to me. Her hazel eyes meet mine.
There’s one last thing left for me to say. “Don’t ever come back to New York. Ever.”
She sucks in a ragged breath. “This city can go to hell.”
Her pink-soled Converse shoes slap against the floor as she jogs to the security line.
I wait until she’s out of sight and then walk over to a different agent.
When I tell him I’ll take any flight leaving in the next hour besides the one to Barcelona, he shakes his head. “Every other flight we have leaving in the next hour is full,” he tells me. “You can try going to a different airline to check what they have. Terminal two.”
I grind my teeth. There’s no time to run around the airport. Papà might already be figuring out what happened. “But there’s availability on the flight to Barcelona?”
“We have one seat left in business class,” he confirms.
Converse girl managed to get the last economy seat. I’ve started calling her that in my head, because it feels strange to have lived through the most intense hour of my life with someone who’s name I don’t even know. She’s Converse girl from now on.
“How much is it?”
“It’s three thousand five hundred and two dollars.”
My eyes bulge. Jesus, it’s expensive, but that’s what I get for buying a ticket minutes before the flight boards. I don’t want to go where she’s going, but I don’t really have a better choice. I hand him the money.
The two and a half grand I have left in my purse feel like nothing, especially since I don’t know what I’m going to do once I get to Europe. How long is that going to last me? I have no idea how to find a job. The only “job” I’ve ever had was helping Mamma organize charity events, and I didn’t have to interview for that. What skills do I have? I don’t think keeping secrets, cooking a mean lasagna, and looking pretty screams “hire me”.
The agent’s voice saves me from descending into a total meltdown.
“Here’s your boarding pass.” He hands me a slip of paper. “You should hurry to the gate.”
I bolt through the airport, pass through security, and duck into a store to get myself a hoodie and a hat. My dress is too recognizable, and I don’t want Converse girl to see me and think that I’m tailing her.
At the gate, I spot her sitting in one of the seats, so I make sure I’m not in her line of sight. It’s all families and excited tourists mulling around, but every time I see a single male, my heart skips a beat. Is he reaching into his jacket for his phone? Who’s he calling? Did he just look at me for a second too long?
The paranoia is brutal. I force myself to take deep breaths. There’s no way Papà could’ve tracked me down this quickly. Even if I only inflicted a flesh wound on Lazaro and he got up as soon as we left the house, he’d need some time to track me down. He can’t know where I went.
Unless they tracked the car.
Oh God. I’m so stupid. Of course, they’d track the car’s GPS signal. If Lazaro can see I dropped the vehicle off at the airport, that means he knows I’m here. He’s probably on his way now. He might be at the terminal already.
By the time they start boarding, I’m barely holding it together.
I stay back until the very last group and move through the boarding procedure in a daze. My body is firmly stuck in fight-or-flight mode, but I’m forced to wait in one line and then the next. I’m jittery and sweaty. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them I have flight anxiety.
When I get on the plane, I see Converse girl in one of the far rows in economy. She’s got a hat pulled low over her face, and she’s not even trying to look at anyone. Good. I slide into my window seat in row five and turn my face to the window. I’ll be off the plane before her, so as long as I stay in the business section during the flight, there’s no chance she’ll see me.
When the door to the plane shuts and we start to move, a moan of relief moves past my lips. With it go the remnants of my energy. I thought I’d be on pins and needles the entire flight, but my body shuts down, and I plunge into sleep.
VALENTINA