Page 56 of Mafia Bride
Not one of Santino’s goons. The guy in the back seat is grittier, dirtier, with a greased-back widow’s peak and a thin wedge of a nose.
Behind me, Santino growls, a powerful roar that would terrify lions on the savannah.
“I got her!” Wedge Nose says to someone in the front.
A loudbangechoes behind me.
I cry out and try to drop to the ground, but the man in the back seat has me. He pulls me in, grabbing my dress by the waist to hoist me up, and through the window.
“Santino!” The scream rips from my lungs. “Santino!”
“Shut up, whore,” the guy in the front says; he’s built like a hydrant, with a nose that looks like it had been broken a dozen times.
I scramble—kicking and screaming—trying to get a grip on the door handle, but he pulls and before I know it, I’m trapped in the back seat behind tinted windows.
“Shut her ass up!” the driver snaps.
I didn’t even know I was screaming.
Wedge pulls my hair and sticks a gun in my face. “Shut it.”
He and Fire Hydrant spit rapid-fire Italian until the driver flings his arm back, gun out.
“Scumbag at four o’clock.”
He squeezes the trigger as he swerves, and his bullet shatters the window, but not before hitting Wedge Nose in the head. Blood and brains spatter over the rear windshield.
“Fuck!” Fire Hydrant barks, veering right to avoid a city bus.
I’m screaming like I’m someone else, pinned down by a dead body with an exploded head over the neck as the car screeches away. There’s blood and gray mushy stuff all over my dress. Outside, shots are fired. I follow the sound to Santino’s Alfa Romeo.
The driver guns it, swinging his arm over the back seat to point his gun in my husband’s direction. Except, I’m in the way.
“Get the fuck down!”
He doesn’t want two bodies in the car, but I want to be dead. I want this to end right here, and either I’m going to die frozen in fear or die trying to be free.
Pushing the body off me, I leap for him with an ungodly scream and dig my nails into his eye. He swings his arm to get me off him, and the SUV rocks like it’s going to tip over.
He swears in Italian and tries to steady the car. I pull the door handle. It won’t unlock. I can’t fuck with it another second and try to crawl out the window. The shattered glass digs into my arms but I can barely feel it. My body works in autopilot—get out, get out, get out.
I offer up a silent prayer as I move, as frantic and desperate as the rest of me.Dear God, set me free or let me meet my parents and Rosetta in heaven.I don’t know if I have the right to pray anymore, if God still answers my prayers.
The car swings back and forth as the driver grabs for my legs. His hand slips on a lump of brain on my calf. The torque of the last swerve pushes me out of the broken window.
I land in the middle of the street with anunfand my head hits the concrete with a thick crack and an eyeful of stars.
The Suburban screeches to a halt and the driver comes stumbling out after me. I have to get up. My body screams, but adrenaline pushes me up to run.
A black Alfa Romeo screeches up next to me. Santino throws open the door from the driver’s seat.
“Get in. Now.”
Behind me, Hydrant lifts his gun. In front of me, my jailer is demanding I return.
I should run. I should keep running. I should run until a decent person finds me broken and bloodied and offers to save me. Run until I drop dead.
Run to...where? Zio and Zia will send me back. My friends have no idea what’s going on. My American friends would only make it worse and endanger themselves. I can’t do that.
