Page 50 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
Still, it stings when he adds, "Once this business is behind us, we will speak again of your future. There are still men who would pay handsomely to marry a Lombardi girl. Especially one so loyal to her family."
I nod once. There is nothing else to say.
By morning, the whispers begin to bloom across the city like fire in dry brush.
The Don's wife is missing.
The Salvatores are spinning into panic.
By noon, the word on the street is that Luca is not merely searching.
He is hunting.
That no favor is safe, no alliance sacred, not until he finds the one who dared to help her escape.
And though I have known fear before, this is something different.
The knowledge that if my name is spoken, if even one servant at that estate remembers the shadow of my coat disappearing into the garden, I will not live to explain myself.
We book Valentina's passage before sunset. Sicily. A quiet villa. An untraceable name.
The moment she leaves, Mama hugs me tighter than she ever has, then presses two cell phones into my palm.
One is clean, the other already rigged to burn.
"Call only Luciana," she says, her voice low. "And never the same number twice."
That night, I sleep in my childhood bed one last time.
I hold the edge of the windowsill with both hands and stare out at the city skyline that has raised me, haunted me, crowned me, and now intends to bury me if I am not careful.
In the morning, Papa waits at the main door.
He hands me a passport under another name, and a train ticket to the coast.
"Do not speak to anyone," he says. "Do not come back until I say you can. The second Luca forgets, we will begin again."
I hesitate.
He tilts his head. "Do you understand?"
"Yes, Papa."
But when he kisses my forehead, he adds one last thing. "This is not a choice, Aria. When the time comes, you will marry the man I select for you. That has not changed."
I look at him, the man who taught me how to read a face before I could spell my own name.
The man who calls his love duty.
My heart wants to let him know I'll always love him, even though I was less of a daughter, and more of a chess piece.
The plan with Luciana is in motion, prepared over messages, and it is all I can cling to for a complete exit from this world.
I press a light hand over my belly, my eyes welling up as I step outside the main estate.
Papa does not follow.
It only strikes me now, how much I wanted Enzo and I to work out, even though the odds were always stacked against us.
