Page 51 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
It didn't help that he did most of the stacking himself.
7
ARIA
The car is already waiting by the back courtyard when I step out, my coat drawn tight around me and my hood low.
The dawn hasn't yet touched the sky.
A deep gray presses over the land like a held breath, the quiet kind that belongs only to hours most people never see.
Yarik stands by the driver's side, one foot planted on the gravel, lighting a cigarette with slow deliberation.
He looks up as I approach, his sharp eyes narrowing in assessment before the flame dies between his fingers.
"You ready?" he asks.
I nod once, my gloved hands clenched around the handles of the nondescript bag on my lap.
It has a few changes of clothing.
A forged passport.
A wallet fat with cash that does not trace back to any Lombardi account.
The driver tosses the cigarette to the ground and crushes it beneath his heel.
"We have to stay ahead of the whispers," he says, pulling the car door open. "They're going to start sounding like sirens any moment now."
Inside, the car is quiet.
The seats are warm.
As he drives through the iron gates and onto the winding private road that snakes down from the estate, I do not look back.
Not once.
There's nothing behind me that will make this easier.
Nothing that will make it hurt less.
Yarik drives with a steady, sure grip.
He takes the curves of the hills with ease, the coastal highway unfolding ahead of us like a silk ribbon laid over stone.
Below, the sea gleams silver, waves breaking in low, soft rolls beneath the cliffs.
I watch them without seeing.
Every turn in the road takes me further from my mother's trembling hands and my father's calculating eyes, from the breakfast table where they plotted to erase me until the scandal passed.
"You didn't tell them where exactly I was going, did you?" I ask, my voice soft but sharp.
"No," Yarik replies. "Your papa gave me a list of places I was supposed to lie about if asked. Said to make sure you vanished in a way that couldn't come back to stain the family's name. But your friend Luciana? She had other ideas."
A smile touches the corner of my mouth, even as I am thoroughly unsurprised at hearing that my father would rather have me dead than caught—actually dead.
"Of course she did."
