Page 37 of Take A Chance

Greta’s hands trembled and her lip quivered, but she confessed. “Sir, I think Emma might be messed up with some bad people. I think maybe she was coming here to get away. She felt safe here.”

I wracked my brain to try to understand what Greta was talking about. Emma, mixed up with bad people? But she was just a twenty-something looking for a job, not a runaway. Her record was clear, no prior convictions or even arrests.

“What are you saying, Greta?”

“I’m not sure, sir. Just things she said to me.” She trembled harder, and I heard the pitter-patter of Katelyn’s footsteps in the hallway upstairs.

“I need to call the police,” I grumbled, and Greta’s eyebrows rose.

“Sir? I’m worried about her.”

“Me too...” I squared my shoulders and looked away. “Look, take care of Katelyn. She can’t hear a word of this. As far as you know, Emma is having a day off. Got it?” She nodded, and I continued. “I’m going to my office to think. I don't want to be disturbed.”

And with that, I breezed past her toward my office. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t think. All I could do was drink and pace. The whiskey calmed my shaking hands, but it did little to stop the obsessing. Emma was messed up with some bad people, Greta had said, but what bad people? And Why? Who would want to hurt her? Who would want to take her?

I exhausted myself for hours, calling her phone, calling Wilem. I waited to call the police. They’d tell me she just ran off or that I had to wait. So when my legs grew weary of pacing and my mind was tired of thinking, I slumped behind my office desk and turned on the television. Immediately, my eyes were blasted with an image straight out of hell.

Joseph Bonetti, head of the Caruso crime family, stared at me through the screen. The image was unmistakable. His eyes, the high cheekbones. I’d seen that face. It was too familiar to not be recognizable. Emma wasn’t just mixed up with someone dangerous. She was related to him.

And now, she was in danger.

I had to get to her before it was too late.

21

Emma

The gun jammed into my side just as the man’s hot breath breezed across my cheek. “Boy, you’re such a pretty little thing. I’d love to bend you over this fucking desk and teach you a lesson or two.” He licked my cheek, a long, slow movement that made me shudder. My hands were tied tightly, circulation to my fingers so constricted I was beginning to lose sensation in my fingertips.

“Please,” I whispered, “leave me alone.”

“Oh, that just isn’t possible, sweetheart.” I shuddered as the gun scraped along my ribs, pressing into the side of my breast. “You see, the boss gave us strict orders to keep you here ’til he gets here, and while he said to keep our hands off you, he said nothing about our cocks.”

I heard at least two other men laughing and what sounded like a zipper being undone. “No...” I swung my arms in the air. Though they were bound together, they were still free to move about. “Don’t touch me.” I spun around, still blindfolded and unable to see my potential attacker. My frantic movements only made the men laugh harder. “My father will—”

“Your father gave the orders, honey. Who do you think is going to stop us?” The cold steel of the gun pressed under my jaw, and I froze. “You think he wants his little princess to go unpunished? You’ve been such a bad girl, scheming with the enemy, plotting some very nasty things. You thought you’d get away with that?”

“Please...” I cried, trembling. “You don’t understand. Louie—”

“Was a lying sack of shit.” I heard someone spit and the gun was taken away from my chin. “And you are going to be held accountable for your part in that plot.”

“No, please.” Someone pushed me as I pleaded for my life, and I toppled backward. I didn’t realize there was a chair there, and it was a welcomed gift of mercy.

“Sit there and shut up now,” a different man said. I recognized the voice but couldn’t place it with a name. So I sat there shaking, wondering what they had in store for me. Minutes went by, and I heard the door opening. Before he even spoke, I knew it was my father. The scent of his aftershave was always thick in a cloud around him. As a young child, it had been one of my favorite things, that scent, knowing Daddy was here and I was safe. Now, it became torture. He stood there, not speaking to me, knowing I could smell him as I trembled with fear.

“Papa?”

“Oh, now I’m your father? Now when you feel afraid for your life?” Another scent mixed in with that of his cologne, tobacco. He was smoking a cigar. “Get her up. Take that damn blindfold off. She’s seen it all.”

The rag tied around my face was immediately removed, and I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the light. Dad looked tired, like he’d lost some weight. His eyes were sunken in. Old, weathered hands held a cigar and a lighter. He’d only just lit up, likely just before he entered the room. He slid the lighter into his pocket, puffed on the cigar, and pointed at the door.

“We have a place to be.” His voice was gruff, the way it got when he was angry about something. I’d heard that voice more times than I could remember. I sat there shaking. The rope tied around my wrists dug into my skin, chafing it. I twisted my arms, wishing he’d have them cut the rope too. “Get her in the car.”

At his order, the man to my right grabbed me by the arm and forced me to my feet. I stumbled, nearly falling. It bent my arm at an awkward angle, hurting my shoulder. “Get up,” the man barked, kicking my feet. I struggled to get my legs beneath me before he started moving. I heard the men chuckling.

“You can’t do this to me.”

“Shut up, or we’ll gag you too.” The man gripping my arm put the gun back in my side, and I bit my lip. We walked through the storage room of the little deli owned by my family. The door ahead loomed in front of me like a death sentence. I wondered if this was where they did it—took me to some deserted place where they put a bullet in my head and left me to rot. That was how my father dealt with his enemies, and somehow, I’d gotten on that list.

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