Throughout the car ride he was struggling with his conscience. It’s that voice he had ignored for so long. But this girl was different, this girl had forced him to reconsider his plans, changed his mind and make it work, somehow.
The moment he saw the two idiots, he made up his mind. The shovel he had brought in the car ‘just in case’ was going to be put to use.
He sprinted to the car to get it. He sprinted to get his silencer for his gun and ran back to find them halfway through. They were yelling, she was screaming, it wasn’t hard for him to spot them and hit the guy just in time before he did anything to hurt her. Shooting them in the face was the easy part.
She fell asleep on the grass, too exhausted to function.
He emptied the pockets of the two corpses and searched for something useful in their car. There was a brown envelope with papers in it. Her new identity, a passport, birth certificate, ID, everything, he tucked it in his back pants.
He dug a grave and tossed them both in it, he managed to dig it pretty deep and covered the surface with dried leaves from the surrounding area. He drove their car into a nearby pond and let it sink, totally submerged in the water, he made sure there were no traces of them ever being there.
He carried her back to the car, she was in deep sleep and almost seemed unconscious. The day was turning dark. He sat on the driver’s seat and stared into nothing. He had saved the girl. For now.
His phone rang. Anonymous. He thought for a moment and picked it up.
“Where are you?”
“On my way to the airport.”
“Where’s the girl?”
“What do you mean? I dropped her off with the two bozos by the highway.”
“Hmm … they’re late … did you see them leave?”
“No, I just left her there and took off.”
“The transfer good?”
“Yeup … all good …”
Anonymous hesitated, “Okay, man, have a nice flight … or have a nice life,” he laughed.
“Sure.”
He hung up and broke the phone in two pieces. They will find out sooner or later that he never got on the plane. At least he’s buying time.
She let out a soft moan then jolted on the backseat. She just remembered what had happened. She looked at him and her surroundings and let out a sigh of relief.
“Hey … you’re okay …” he glanced at her from the rear view mirror.
She touched her head, it was banging like it had just hit a wall. “I thought you left me.”
He didn’t reply. How could he have left her. If only she knew what went through his mind for the past few days. He wasn’t about to tell her, not until she told him how the hell did she know his name.
“Are you taking me back to my husband?
He paused for a moment, “Is that what you want?”
“No.”
Just as he thought, all those talks about going home were never what she really wanted.
“What now?” she asked.
He looked at the rear view mirror again to find her gaze, “You tell me.”
She turned away and looked out the window. She was still processing everything that had happened. She too had so much to hide and they’ve come to this moment where things needed to be revealed.
She let out a long exhale, “I’m famished … can we go somewhere and eat?”
She wasn’t his captive anymore, she was his rescue.
“I know a place, we should clean up first.”
They stopped by at a rest stop and used the toilet. Marv’s brain had caked on her hair, it wasn’t easy to get it off. She washed off the dirt from her arms and legs. She needed new clothes.
She looked at herself in the mirror. This has diverted her plan. She has to figure out her next move. The difference is, she has Diego with her now.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on here?” Diego asked when they were eating at a shed of an outdoor restaurant.
She kept eating her pasta. She hadn’t been eating well for the past few days, and food tasted better after you had been saved from a terrible fate.
“Thank you,” she said instead. “You saved me.”
He lifted a shoulder, chewed on his mega size burger.
“I had planned this for two years … when my best friend died … committed suicide … I told my dad I didn’t want to marry him.”
He looked at her intently.
“She didn’t kill herself … she was murdered, I was sure of it … she was pregnant with Armand’s baby and he had her killed the day I found out about it … it was our 8th year dating anniversary,” she shivered. “We were having sex that night when he ordered the kill,” the memory came back to her.
He kept listening. He had encountered a lot of bad men in his life, but Armand was a whole other level of vicious.
“That was the last straw for me … he had manipulated me throughout my teenage and adult life … when Katya died … I lost the person that was keeping me sane from all his insanity … even that, he wouldn’t let me have it, he eliminated everyone in my life … one person at a time until he’s the only one left.”
Diego creased his brows, “Hmm … he seemed to be the type.”
“My dad told me … he made a blood pact with the Lombardos, the marriage was inevitable from the day I turned 12 … he didn’t realize what a monster Armand turned out to be, but he couldn’t get me out of that deal … I had to find my own way out.”
Diego nodded, “What did you do?”
“I learned how to defend myself, I took self-defense classes, I learned how to use a gun, … all kinds of guns … I had to do it behind his back, God knows how hard it was ’cause he always kept an eye on me … I had to distract him from getting suspicious,” she grimaced when she remembered how much sex she had to do to distract him.
“It worked … for two years I managed to deceive him … all the while I was planning for an escape … but the ambush … I didn’t see it coming at all,” she scoffed. “I’ve been wracking my brain for days, it must be the Messinas, marriage is a very powerful merge … they must’ve planned to kill us all,” she covered her face.