Chapter 2

Six months ago, the last time I escaped the Russo estate, Dante chased me for two miles.

Rain hammered down that night. I slipped out through the kitchen door during a guard change wearing nothing but a nightgown, a gun stolen from one of the guards clenched in my hand, and by the time I crossed the woods north of the estate, mud had splashed all the way to my knees.

Headlights soon appeared behind me.

I didn't look back.

The woods ended at an abandoned quarry, where an old service bridge stretched between two walls of rock above a drop more than forty feet deep. If I could make it across and over the hill, the highway was on the other side.

I'd barely stepped onto the rain-slick boards when Dante shouted behind me.

"Elena, stop!"

"Go back!"

I gripped the rusted railing and kept moving.

Dante followed me onto the bridge alone. He stopped several yards away, never touching the gun at his waist, his eyes fixed on the rotting boards beneath my feet.

"Put the gun down. That thing won't hold you."

"Wouldn't that be better?"

His face changed.

"Elena."

"You keep saying you want to protect me." I took another step backward. "Then stay there."

The board beneath me cracked.

Dante lunged forward just as the wood gave way.

I didn't even have time to reach for the railing.

My left leg struck the rock first, then my right. Pain exploded through my bones so violently that the world disappeared, and when my vision finally returned, rain was falling directly into my eyes.

Dante was on his knees beside me.

Blood covered the cuff of his shirt. One hand pressed against my injured leg while the other supported the back of my neck.

"Elena, look at me. The ambulance is coming."

I tried to push him away.

My arm barely moved.

"Don't fall asleep."

His voice was shaking.

I had known Dante for years. I'd never heard him sound like that.

His hands hadn't even shaken six months earlier when he'd stood beside my father's body.

"Stay with me."

I looked at the face above mine.

"I'd rather die than stay with you."

His hand went still for a second.

"Then live and keep hating me."

He stayed on his knees in the rain until the paramedics arrived.

Later, the doctors told me both legs had suffered multiple fractures and severe nerve damage. I was lucky my spine was intact. Whether I'd ever walk normally again was something no one was willing to promise.

Dante pulled the doctor into the hallway and asked again.

"Will she walk?"

"We don't know."

"I want an answer."

"Mr. Russo, this isn't an answer you can force out of me."

Through the hospital-room door, I watched Dante stand there in silence.

When I was discharged, he brought me back to the estate and put six guards outside my room.

Then I suddenly stopped trying to escape.

Dante never knew the real reason.

Three months ago, I stood up in the bathroom for the first time.

I lasted only a few seconds before hitting the floor hard, but the moment my left foot actually held my weight, I knew the doctors' uncertainty didn't have to become my future.

From that day on, I hid the truth about my recovery.

Whenever the doctors were present, I lied about what I could feel. When Dante asked, I told him there was occasional sensation in my legs but no real strength. Only after I locked the bedroom door did I practice standing, walking, and balancing until I could move normally around the room and even run short distances.

I blamed the bruises on bad wheelchair transfers and hid the returning muscle in my legs beneath long, loose dresses.

Dante believed me.

Because he wanted to.

The guards began disappearing. My bedroom door stopped being locked. He grew comfortable taking calls, reading files, and listening to reports with me sitting nearby.

I waited for my legs to become strong enough for one more escape.

If everything went right, I would be out of the Russo estate soon.

Then, two weeks ago, I saw the photograph.

Dante was handling business in the sitting room while I read beside the window. His lieutenant came in and handed him a phone.

"We lost the north shipment. Two trucks. Cargo's gone."

"The drivers?"

"Alive. Whoever did it didn't kill them."

Dante took the phone. "Who?"

"We don't know yet."

I hadn't been paying attention.

Then the screen lit up.

A Russo truck sat burned at the side of the highway. On the guardrail beside it was a small white mark, barely larger than a thumbprint.

An M with the upper-right corner missing.

My hand stopped on the page.

It was an old Moretti mark.

When Luca and I were children, our father once took us through a warehouse. Luca decided the original symbol was too obvious and wiped away the upper corner with paint.

My father nearly threw him out.

"Why don't you write our name on the boxes while you're at it?"

Luca leaned against a crate, grinning. "A complete M looks like a name. Take a piece off and the cops won't know what they're looking at."

"If the cops can't read it, neither can our men."

"Then we need smarter men."

I laughed so loudly that our father finally threw both of us out.

The mark had never changed.

Now it was sitting beside a stolen Russo shipment.

"Elena?"

Dante's voice snapped my attention back.

I looked up.

He was watching me.

"What?"

"What are you staring at?"

I closed my book. "You're talking too loudly."

His lieutenant didn't seem to appreciate that.

Dante only watched me for another moment before turning the phone facedown.

"Wait for me in the study."

After the man left, Dante came over and pushed my wheelchair away from the window.

I didn't look back at the phone.

I didn't ask about the shipment.

That night, I locked my bedroom door and stood by the window, reconstructing the symbol in my head.

One streak of paint proved nothing. The Moretti warehouses had been raided and stripped after the attack, and anyone could have seen that mark.

But over the next two weeks, Russo lost two more shipments.

Neither hit was large. No one took territory or left bodies behind. They stole the cargo and disappeared. Dante's men treated the attacks as ordinary probing, but I noticed one of the compromised routes had once been handled by a man who worked for my father.

He had vanished when the Moretti family fell.

My escape plan was still hidden beneath the mattress.

I knew the route and most of the guard rotations. As long as Dante continued to believe I couldn't walk on my own, I had a real chance of getting out.

That night, for the first time, I didn't pull the plan out.

If there were still Morettis alive, the last thing they needed was one more person running for safety.

Russo controlled our warehouses, our routes, and most of what remained of my father's business. At the same time, Dante was steadily removing the guards around me, and his men were becoming comfortable discussing business in front of a crippled Moretti.

I looked at the wheelchair beside my bed.

If I escaped, I could take myself back.

If I stayed, I might take back much more.

I pulled the worn escape plan from beneath the mattress, tore it apart, and flushed the pieces down the toilet.

Dante still thought I was too weak to leave.

I decided to let him keep thinking that.