MY OFFICE. NOW.
The text appeared on the screen of my phone with a sharp ding, and I dropped my mascara wand on the counter, narrowly avoiding smearing a black streak down the front of my white blouse.
I reread the text three times to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. Three words. Impossible to misunderstand. Impossible to ignore.
I ran down a mental list of anything I could have done that would have drawn his ire, but came up with nothing. I went to work—the job he allowed me to have. I came home. Everywhere I went, I was chauffeured by a man with a gun in a big black SUV with armored doors and bulletproof windows.
But that didn’t mean my father texted me. Actually, he rarely remembered I existed.
A knock sounded on my front door, and I shoved the mascara wand back in the tube. A summons from Dom Casso, head of one of New York’s most notorious crime families, didn’t allow for any delay.
I hurried toward the door, catching my stockinged foot on the handle of a bag I’d left next to the couch. My toe slammed into the table leg, sending pain rocketing through my foot.
“Shit.”
The knock turned into pounding as I winced.
“Eden, hurry up.”
The voice belonged to Angelo, my regular babysitter. Excuse me, I mean security.
“Just a second.”
“Don’t got a second. We need to move.”
I shook off the stubbed toe and rushed across the room, avoiding any more potential tripping hazards. I peeked through the peephole as I’d been taught, ensuring that Angelo was alone and not being held hostage at the end of someone’s gun.
It appeared all clear. And for the record, I thought that rule was ridiculous. I probably ranked in the triple digits on Dom’s list of priorities. Illegitimate daughter fell just below resoling shoes and remembering to pick up a new black golf umbrella.
“I’m hurrying. I swear.”
I slipped into a pair of pale pink Tori Burch flats I’d left in a haphazard pile of shoes by the door and snatched a black trench coat from the whimsical iron hooks I’d screwed into the wall with my very own drill—and it wasn’t a pink drill either. Don’t mind the few pieces of patched drywall where I missed the studs.
I unlocked the four dead bolts and pushed back the security bar. Angelo, who looked just as tall, dark, and Italian as his name suggested, stepped inside.
He surveyed me from the top of my golden-blond head, which definitely didn’t look Italian in the least, to the soles of my less-than-practical flats. But it wasn’t like I was walking the streets of New York.
God forbid I should do such a thing.
I shoved my arms into my coat and tied the belt around my waist. “That was me swearing when I stubbed my toe. Don’t worry. I’m good.”
I stepped out of the apartment, and he waited impatiently while I locked and checked the door before leading the way to the elevator.
“What’s the hurry? What’s going on?”
Angelo pushed the call button and stepped inside first when it came. “You know I can’t tell you nothing. It ain’t fair for you to ask me shit like that.”
This might have been true, but I also knew that Angelo had a soft spot for me, which was why he’d finally brought me dinner from The Halal Guys’s cart on 53rd and Sixth last week after months of me begging him to take a detour during our drives to and from work. Even though I hadn’t actually gotten to have the whole experience like I was craving—standing in line, avoiding making eye contact with strangers, yelling my order as loud as I could over the noise—I still appreciated the gesture all the same.
Regardless, it also meant I kept pushing for an answer as the doors slid shut and he became a captive audience.
“It has to be something big. Dom never wants me in Hell’s Kitchen. Why now?”
Angelo shrugged and leaned against the mirrored wall. “I’m sure he woulda rather come to your place, but he just don’t have time.”
I needed the reminder like I needed another credit card in my wallet.
“Just tell me so I know what I’m walking into.”
“E, I swear, even if I knew what he was going to say—which I don’t—I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that bad shit is happening and we’re on the defensive on every front. Dom sure as fuck don’t like being on defense, so he’s gonna hit back and hard.”
Chills traveled up my spine despite my black trench coat, because even living in the little bubble that made up my world, I had an idea of the brutality that Angelo alluded to. Well, at least I imagined I did. I’d seen The Godfather movies, after all.
“So, what does that have to do with me?”
Angelo met my gaze as the elevator door opened in the lobby. “Wish I knew, Eden. Really wish I knew.”
Twenty minutes later, Angelo and I stood outside the doors to my father’s office on the top floor of a brownstone on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen. Angelo knocked, and from inside, someone barked the command to enter.
I hadn’t exactly spent hours and hours committing Dom’s different vocal pitches to memory, but it didn’t sound like him.
Angelo pushed the door open and gestured for me to enter first. As I always did before entering this office, I steeled my spine.
Normally, Dom sat behind his big wooden desk, doing whatever it was mob bosses actually did during the day. I wasn’t quite sure what that was because there hadn’t been a take your daughter to work day for organized crime. Today, the desk sat empty.
I scanned the office and my eyes locked on Vincent Francetti as he turned from the window. Dom’s second-in-command had dark hair slicked back from his face in a style I swore came right out of Hollywood. It might as well be called the mobster.
He’d always made me uneasy for a reason I couldn’t articulate. I’d never been in a room with him without Dom present, and trepidation crept into my veins like a tiny team of commandos.
“Where’s Dom?” I hoped he couldn’t hear the tremor in my voice.
“Dealing with more important things.” Vincent snapped out the words, and the slice of his insult hit the mark.
I shoved my shoulders back and lifted my chin, determined not to let him see how much his words stung. Just because I knew my father didn’t care, didn’t mean I wanted it shoved in my face.
“I can come back at a time that’s more convenient for him.” I kept my tone crisp and my statement pointed.
“He needs you gone now.”
“Gone?” I choked on the word.
Vincent looked at me like I was a child, and a developmentally delayed one at that.
“Yes. Gone.” He strode to the desk and grabbed a thick manila envelope off the leather blotter before holding it out to me.
It seemed like a dare, as if he knew I didn’t want to get any closer to him than I had to, but he was going to force the issue.
Digging deep into my stores of poise to appear unaffected, I crossed the room and reached out to take it. Vincent jerked it out of my reach, toying with me.
Now that I was close, he lowered his voice so that not even Angelo could hear. “You’re going to take this envelope and you’re going to disappear. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, especially any of your little friends.”
If there had been any room for awkward humor in this situation, I would have laughed at that. Friends weren’t exactly part of Dom’s policy of enforced isolation.
“There’s a number in here to a line you call only in an emergency. If you’re not bleeding to death or being held at gunpoint, think twice before using it. Only use the ID, credit cards, and cell phone in here. Don’t even fucking take yours with you. Leave it all at home. Do you understand me?”
I dipped my chin a fraction of an inch, indicating that I understood what he was saying, even though I didn’t. “I’m just supposed to leave?”
“Lay low. Don’t attract attention. And for fuck’s sake, don’t tell a goddamned person who you are.”
“How long?” The question came out a whisper.
“Until you get a text from the number in here telling you to come back.”
The orders he issued repeated in my head over and over until they began to sink in. Disappear. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.
He finally held out the envelope again, and I reached to snatch it from him, praying that my hand didn’t shake. But Vincent didn’t let go as I tugged.
“Don’t fuck this up, Eden. You’ve been a liability to Dom since the day you were born, so for once in your life, do something to make yourself less of a fucking burden. Don’t call Dom. Don’t bother him. Just get the hell out of here.”
With that verbal slap to the face, I yanked the envelope from his grip and turned away from the distaste stamping his features.
The words sliced at my insides as they played on a loop in my head. Make yourself less of a fucking burden. I wanted to scream as Angelo followed me out the door and down the stairs.
I never asked to be a burden. Why can’t they understand that?
We walked in silence until I slid into the backseat of the SUV.
“I’m supposed to take you home to pack and then to the airport.” Angelo glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and his tone carried an apology.
I nodded, but my brain was already moving forward.
Where will I go? What will I do?
As much as I’d chafed against the restrictions I lived under, I never realized that they also acted as a security blanket until the moment they were ripped away.
It was one thing to paper the bulletin board in my office with pictures of places I wanted to see with thoughts of someday I’ll go, but all of a sudden, someday was now.
The freedom to go anywhere, all by myself, should have been heady and intoxicating, but instead unexpected anxiety invaded my every breath.
Angelo had spent more time with me than any of Dom’s other soldiers, and he recognized the change in my mood.
“It’s going to be okay, E. Just pick somewhere, check into the nicest hotel in town, order room service, get a massage, do girly spa shit, and pretend you’re on vacation. You wanted a break from all this, so now you got it.”
I inhaled a deep breath and let it out. I can do this. I’ll be fine. This is what I’ve wanted for years. Regardless of how uneasy it made me that it was being shoved upon me, I vowed to embrace the opportunity. The proverbial door to my gilded cage had been flung open, and it was time for me to explore.
But one piece of this whole thing continued to elude me. “Why is he doing this? What happened?”
Angelo’s gaze dropped away from the rearview mirror and fixed on the road. “I thought Dom would be there and he’d tell you what’s what.”
“Apparently he couldn’t be bothered.”
“I’m sure it’s not like that.” Angelo’s words came out stiff because we both knew it was like that, at least for the last decade, with no signs of changing anytime soon.
“Just tell me.”
He stopped at a light and turned around to look at me. “You can’t tell anyone I told you any of this.”
I lifted the manila envelope. “And who am I going to tell while I’m in exile? Hell, who would I tell here?”
“Cash houses got hit this morning, and so did some of the businesses.”
Unease bloomed in my belly. “Which businesses?”
As much as I wasn’t supposed to know that the spa where I kept the books—clean, legit books—was a front, I wasn’t dumb enough to ignore the comings and goings of Dom’s people, and the briefcases and duffels they carried.
“The spa. It . . . it was bad. That’s why you gotta go. They don’t know if it got hit because you work there or if it was just part of the overall plan. Either way, I’d get you out of town too.”
The dozens of questions I wanted to ask were wiped away in the wake of the most important one. “Was anyone hurt?”
Angelo glanced up at the rearview mirror, his face apologetic for a beat before taking on a hard cast. “They threw a Molotov cocktail through the front window before they shot up the place from a car out front. Four of the girls went to the doc to be treated, but no one died.”
Oh, thank God there were no casualties. But still, the thought of any of the girls being injured twisted my gut in knots.
“Do you know who? What kind of injuries?”
His eyes back on the road, he shook his head. “Didn’t get any details.”
“Then why am I going to some undisclosed location and not a safe house somewhere?”
Angelo’s shoulders tensed. “No fucking clue. Not like Dom and Vin explain themselves to me. But if I had to guess, I’d say they’re worried the organization has been compromised. If no one knows where you are, no one can tell.”
You’ve been a liability to Dom since the day you were born.
I stayed silent for the rest of the drive to my apartment.
“You’ve got twenty minutes to pack, and then we need to be on the road before it gets leaked that you’re leaving town.”
Angelo’s words started my internal clock ticking down as soon as we stepped into my apartment. My mind chaotic, I strode into my room and stared at all the clothes in my closet for a full minute before I realized I couldn’t pack anything until I decided where I was going.
Spinning around, I headed for my office and the bulletin board of all my maybe somedays. Clippings from magazines, printed articles, postcards, and pictures of skylines covered it. Must Do lists for each city hung along the bottom.
Just pick one, I told myself. But decision paralysis set in. What if this was my only chance to see a piece of the world?
“Can I leave the country?” I yelled to Angelo.
“Are you fucking nuts? No, you can’t leave the fucking country.”
Disappointment slammed into me, but I shoved it down. Good-bye, Paris, Rome, Dublin, and Barcelona.
Focus on the positives. It narrowed down my choices. I paced my small office, my gaze flicking to the bulletin board with every pass.
“You got fifteen minutes, and I don’t hear any fucking packing,” Angelo called.
“Stop rushing me!”
“I’m not fucking around, Eden. We gotta move when your time is up.”
“Fine. Now stop yelling at me.”
Just pick a place.
Pictures of San Francisco, Nashville, Seattle, and Miami all hung there, but my gaze zeroed in on something else.
New Orleans.
I’d seen ads on top of cabs for the last two weeks, advertising an upcoming Mardi Gras party at a club, and wished that someday I could see a real Mardi Gras parade.
I’m taking it as a sign.
I was going to New Orleans. I reached out to grab the Must Do list, but snatched my hand back. If someone came into my apartment and noticed it was the only one missing . . . wouldn’t that be giving away my location?
I reached out again, grabbing the lists for both New Orleans and Nashville off the bulletin board.
Spinning on my heel, I ran for my bedroom and stuffed my carry-on with all the clothes I could possibly make fit before exchanging my ID, phone, and credit card for five thousand dollars in cash from the safe bolted into the back of my closet. I stripped out of my trench coat, skirt, blouse, and pantyhose, and tugged on jeans, a polo shirt, and a lighter jacket.
When I wheeled the bag into the living room, Angelo was staring at his watch.
“You ready?”
Ready to leave the tower and experience life without a bodyguard dogging my every step?
“Yes. I’m ready.”
When we pulled up to the curb at JFK, I gave Angelo a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Take care, big guy.”
“Be safe, Eden. If you need anything—”
He cut off his offer because he knew I couldn’t call him.
“Thank you for everything.”
When I got to the ticket counter, I pulled my new ID and credit card from my wallet. When I laid them on the counter, I got my first look at my new name. Elisha Madden.
“I need a ticket on the next flight to New Orleans. One way.”