Page 52 of Forced Vows

But tonight we're not two women trapped in a world we were born into and can only leave by death. Unless we want to leave all those we love behind.

Tonight, we aren't two mob princesses. We are just two young women having some innocent fun.

There's a door in the back of the movie room, hidden in the wall. It's for staff to use and leads to the inner hallways they use to move around the mansion efficiently and unobtrusively.

They have more direct routes from one area of the house to another, which we are using tonight to reach the backdoor.

Of course, the passageways are monitored, but Kara is some kind of genius with technology and she's programmed a glitch into the system that will give us three minutes to get out the back door unseen.

If she weren't a mob princess who married at eighteen, she'd probably run a dot.com or one of the big software companies by now.

We're both breathless when we reach the backyard. We have to wait one minute for the sensors in the backyard to glitch like those in the house.

"Remember, we have one minute to get down to the boathouse," she says.

I nod. "Pull up your hood."

We both tighten the drawstrings so only a little bit of our faces show and then we run toward the boathouse, using the route we carefully mapped out to decrease our chances of getting caught.

My cousin insisted on disabling the security systems for the shortest amount of time possible, staggered like this so no one trying to breach the property could take advantage.

Not that anyone knows the systems will be down. Or that we are leaving. Not even moma.

Because of Kara's scary smart brain, the biggest problem we face is timing our movements to avoid the perimeter guards. If one of them deviates from their routine by even five seconds, we're not going anywhere.

But our sprint across the lawn, past the pool and down to the boathouse goes unseen. Not even by the backyard cameras. Kara disabled those too.

The rest of the plan is my idea, including the dark camo clothes we're wearing. I pull the inflatable lifeboat out of the bathroom that I took off the yacht earlier this week. Fi inflated it this morning.

She spends more time in the backyard and the boathouse than the rest of us, so her being there today didn't cause any suspicion.

"This is fun," Kara says breathlessly.

I grin at her. "Just call me 007."

"Oh, I want to be Salt."

Crossing my fingers for calm waters, I drop the waterproof duffle with our clothes for tonight in the bottom of the dinghy.

The yacht has a full size, motored lifeboat of course. But there are four dinghies for backup only the family and my uncle's most trusted men know about.

Men like Uncle Brogan have to be prepared for any eventuality. Including having his yacht sunk and the lifeboat disabled. Mob life.

What can you do?

But that extra precaution is working in our favor. If I had to order an inflatable rubber raft off the internet, it would never be delivered without being checked by security.

All packages are.

Adrenalin pumping, we each take an end and lower the boat into the water beside the speedboat. Like Kara planned it (which she did), the bay door opens halfway.

"We've got two minutes to launch."

This isn't new to us. We used to have a rubber raft both of our parents let us use as long as we didn't paddle too far from shore. It sprang a leak and dumped us into the bay one day and disappeared the day after.

Too dangerous.

Kara gasps and starts tipping toward the water. I grab her hoodie and yank her back. We don't have time to exclaim over her close call.

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