Chapter 27: Chapter 27

I hate running.

I hate running for my life even more because that means fucking danger.

My chest hurts. My tits hurt. I’m not wearing the right kind of bra for this. I don’t have a gun. I don’t know how to use a gun. The men that Val thinks are small enough to be inconspicuous are not. They are fighting for their lives behind us as Frankie runs at my side while I cradle Ava against my body in her snuggler and wrap.

She doesn’t seem to mind the exercise at all as she sleeps peacefully. I just wanted to go for a walk around the damn neighborhood with Frankie. It’s his way of getting me out of the house and away from my thoughts because I’m so fucking scared that shit like this is going to happen!

We run as fast as we can until we get inside the house. I hit the panic button on the alarm control box that’s supposed to send up flares to Batman or something, but I don’t hear anything. Frankie’s moving through the house with a level of skilled efficiency I didn’t know he had. He moves to the front door and kicks a piece of the baseboard that swings a wooden beam in front of the door.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’ I ask him.

‘Upgrades to the security,’ he answers, and grabs me, pulling me toward the kitchen. He spews instructions. ‘Go into the pantry and close the door. The thermostat dial turns and will deadbolt that shit shut like a panic room.’

‘You know that only works if the intruders are not inside the home yet,’ Saul says from the kitchen table. My heart plummets and my body shakes.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I ask him, moving Frankie behind me. Frankie eyes me crazily and switches positions to put himself between me and Saul.

Saul’s cavalier words make me uneasy as he speaks. ‘I can ask you the same thing since I got a very traumatic ass video of you being butchered. Now, I gotta ask myself if Lia Bonetti is dead and her boy toy is getting dumped in a hospital bed every few weeks to deal with the pain⁠—’

‘What?’ Frankie asks with bewilderment rippling through his one word.

‘Hey, don’t kink shame.’ Saul jabs a finger toward Frankie, and then turns to me. ‘Like I was saying, you and Valley boy are doing the dead and gone thing. So, I ask myself why is my girl being shadowed by a bunch of spooks? First, you know, first I thought it was your folks. I know they hopped, skipped, and jumped into WITSEC, but honestly? They probably ditched the Marshals and are sipping piña coladas on a beach somewhere. They closed the business, and their daughter’s pretending to be dead. There’s nothing left in New York for them.’

‘What do you want?’ I ask him.

‘What I am owed!’ Saul says, slamming his fist against the table.

It makes me flinch and forces Frankie to pull me even closer to him. Ava’s still sleeping and I want it to stay that way.

Saul takes a deep breath, reminding me of the stench he used to leave stinking around the construction trailer. ‘Me and Valley made a deal. He stays out of my business and I stay out of his.’

‘You kidnapped me as soon as you made that deal,’ I argue with Saul.

‘Tomato, potato. How do I know this WITSEC shit with your parents wasn’t cooked up that day I heard it from a little birdie in the DA’s office that they were spilling their guts about my crimes against humanity?’

Frankie nudges me with his foot to take a step back, but it doesn’t go unnoticed. Saul pulls out his gun, cocks it, and points it at Frankie.

I scream. ‘No, don’t! I’ll do whatever you want. He’s all I got left. If you kill him, imagine what that will do to me and then what that will do to Valentino? He won’t care about La Familia anymore. He won’t care about a war. If I’m hurt⁠—’

‘I know, baby girl, that’s why I know you’ll come with me peacefully. Let’s go,’ Saul commands and waves his gun for us to back out of the kitchen. There are two men coming down the stairs with bags in hand.

‘What are you guys doing up there? What is that? Put that stuff back!’ I stammer with tears in my eyes.

‘Sh, sh, sh,’ Saul says. ‘You’ll wake the baby. We cannot put that stuff back because you have a newborn. I know a thing or two about babies. They need a lot of shit. They eat a lot of shit. So we’re packing you all up for a nice little trip. We’re not going far and by the time Valentino gets here, it will be too late to do anything to stop me. So, come quietly, Lia. If you don’t, I will put a bullet in your cousin’s head, and then one in your leg, and carry you out. Fuck a war. La Familia sanctioned that asshole getting revenge on me. Fuck them and fuck their rules. Let’s go.’

Saul leads us to the front door and snickers at the beam in front of it. ‘I’m not going to lie. This is some cool shit. I gotta get Barten to come do security at all my clubs if he can do this shit for a house.’

‘Fucking psychopath,’ I mumble.

Saul spins around so quickly, I stumble back into the goon behind me. Beads of moisture fly from his mouth as he snarls. ‘I am not, and you don’t have the education to diagnose me. Now move, cunt, before I change my mind about being nice. Oh yeah, Frankie? Tell her baby daddy that the price has gone up. I want twenty mil, by the end of business. He can call Dimitri for my account information.’

Ava coos softly against my chest and I hate that this man is still alive. I kind of wish that Val had just killed him and gone to war, but then, would that have solved anything? Or would some other terrifying form of his reincarnated Don Caputo emerge out of the Mafia ranks to make me pay for Saul’s death?

Saul opens the back door to the minivan waiting outside my house, my parents’ home that I’m scared I’ll never see again. I stop, stiffening at the sight before me.

‘I can’t get in there without a car seat. She needs the car seat. I won’t drive anywhere without Ava’s car seat.’ I’m rambling, stalling, trying to make sense of the face I’m looking at because it can’t be.

Saul clears his throat as the last goon comes forward with Ava’s spare car seat out of my car. The brand-new car Valentino gifted me after we brought Ava home and I didn’t want to go all the way back to Pilsner for my beat-up Chevy.

‘Now go on and get in, Lia.’ Saul snarls from beside me. He’s blocking my path so I don’t have any choice but to get inside the van.

‘Why are you doing this to him?’ I ask Hera.

‘I told Valley that I needed help.’ She huffs as if we’re an inconvenient stop along her way. ‘How does he repay his mother? By calling someone else Ma? By denying me the right to see my granddaughter? By refusing my tiny request for a loan that I’d pay back?’

‘That’s what all this is about? Money?’ I question as the door slams behind me. I take my time unwrapping Ava to put her in the car seat. I hate this. I hate them. I hate these people.

Fucking fuck stupid Saul Fucking Caputo.

I have to contain my temper so they don’t take it out on Ava, or me. I have no idea what these two are up to, but I don’t want anything to do with either of them.

‘Two million dollars isn’t just money,’ Hera replies snidely. ‘It’s life changing money. Money I need to take back to Chicago and take care of that good-for-nothing husband of mine. Valley knows what I need the money for and still wouldn’t give it to me.’

‘You abandoned him,’ I tell her. ‘He doesn’t owe you anything.’

‘He owes me his life,’ she shrieks, which wakes Ava out of her slumber.

Wails from my baby barely two months old make my breasts leak, and all of this shit is terrifying and annoying at the same time.

‘I’m sorry, can you pull over so I can feed her?’ I ask Saul, who’s in the passenger seat. ‘I promise it won’t take long.’

‘You can feed her when we get to where we’re going,’ he says as we continue to drive. I try my best to soothe Ava, but she’s not going for anything. She wants to be held, and so do I as I let my own tears fall.