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CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE PURSUIT

I sank into the cavernous silence, waiting for my legs to move. I fiddled with the bracelet on my wrist. Hope. I didn’t feel any hope. We hadn’t even done the countdown. Was it even midnight in Colorado? All I could think about was that death toll, creeping up my throat, choking me.

Evelina pottered somewhere overhead, getting ready for bed. Emilia had been asleep for hours.

Outside, a headlamp bathed the street in a sudden flash of bright light. I curled my fingers in my lap, my breath catching in my throat. The light vanished as the car rounded the bend, headlamps shutting off as quickly as they had appeared. The engine rumbled towards the house.

I crossed towards the window, peeked through the curtains at the Mercedes sitting outside Evelina Falcone’s house and felt my knees go weak.

Was this my father’s final coup? Was it a trick all along? Or had fate come to punish me for Felice’s death?

The engine cut out and silence descended once more. My pulse raged in my eardrums. My family was dying hundreds of miles away and a Marino was sitting less than twenty yards from me, ready to complete the final task.

I knew instantly what I had to do. I crept into the hallway and pressed my forehead against the front door. I had done a lot of stuff I wasn’t proud of, committed acts that would haunt me for ever, but in this I could be brave. I could do the right thing.

I slipped outside and shut the front door behind me, hearing the lock shift into place. I marched towards the end of the driveway, until I was close enough to the car and the shadows inside it. Close enough so they could see their final target standing in front of them.

The driver’s door swung open, and I did the only thing I could do. I turned on my heel and ran as fast and as far away from Evelina’s secret as I could, forcing the air into my lungs, waiting for a bullet in the back of my head.

Just not here. Not outside Evelina’s house. Not in their world.

Somewhere on a yacht in Chicago, the Falcones were dying, and somewhere in the middle of a snowy mountain town in Colorado, so was I.

Maybe this was how it was always meant to go down.

I sprinted hard, spurred on by the sound of footsteps behind me.

There was no room for fear, just intent.

I wasn’t running for my life. I was running for Emilia’s life. For Evelina’s life.

And I wasn’t afraid, not any more.