Chapter 1
Anna
I was running away. I was old enough to live my own life and make my own choices. I wasn’t going to let my father control me for the rest of my life. Maybe, back in the day, arranged marriages were a thing. They weren’t anymore and running away had been the only way to avoid my father forcing me into marriage. If I had been a normal person who had been raised in a normal family, I might have been able to sit my dad down and talk to him about it. But my dad was Frank Santora, head of the Italian Mafia in New York, and he was the type of person to shoot first and ask questions, never.
He wouldn’t have shot me, of course, but my dad wasn’t a talker.
I leaned forward and looked up through the windshield. The snow was coming down in torrents, and the weather was getting worse. It wasn’t the best time of year to travel to the Rocky Mountains, but it wasn’t like my dad had waited for the right season to ruin my life. I turned up the heat in the car and shivered. It wasn’t the best car—it was a lemon—but it was the best I could find on such short notice. I had flown to Salt Lake City from New York even though my destination was Colorado. I had done it in hopes of throwing my dad off track. I had bought this car second-hand, cash so my dad couldn’t trace me to a rental agency, and I was on the I-70. I should have followed the I-40, but I had made a wrong turn, and even though this way would take me longer, it would still take me to my destination, eventually. I was headed to my best friend’s parents. Lizabeth had suggested I hide out at their place in Steamboat Springs. I knew Lizabeth’s parents well enough that I was comfortable with the idea.
Now that I was out here all alone in the snow, unsure of the road and driving a crappy car, I was starting to wonder if it had been such a good idea.
The gas light came on.
“Oh, shoot,” I said under my breath and tapped the gas light with my finger as if it would help the car change its mind. I had thought I had at least two more hours of driving left before my gas ran out. I was on edge, panicky about my dad finding me and uncomfortable with the road I didn’t know.
I looked around, searching for a sign. A little further down the road, the sign for the next exit popped up and indicated a gas station. Thank God.
I took the exit and pulled into the gas station, but my heart sank. The gas station was abandoned, quiet and dark. It had been shut down and judging by the looks of it, it had been shut down for a while.
I had to make another plan. I pulled out of the gas station and back onto the road. If I got back onto the Interstate, I didn’t know how long it would be before I found another gas station. If I followed the road I was on, my luck might be better. So, instead of heading back to the Interstate in search of another gas station, I drove into the darkness down a road that I had no idea where it led.
There wasn’t another gas station. In fact, there was nothing at all, no buildings or lights that suggested there might be life out here. I was alone in the dark. After another couple of miles, the car spluttered and then died.
“No, no, no,” I said, trying to turn the ignition. The car whined a little, trying its best before giving up completely.
“Dammit!” I cried out and reached for my handbag behind the passenger seat. I fished for the burner phone I had acquired to stay in touch with Lizabeth. I had left my own phone behind so my father couldn’t track me. As head of the Mafia, he had every resource at his fingertips and running away from him was a game of cat and mouse.
I found the burner and switched it on. Great. There was no cell service. Of course, there wasn’t. Why would it have been easy for me to get away from my father, I thought bitterly. I looked around. I could barely see anything through the sheets of snow, and it was getting colder still. At least I was able to keep the heater running so I wouldn’t freeze to death.
When I had left home, I had run away in the middle of the night. Lizabeth had picked me up and taken me to the airport where I had bought a ticket to Salt Lake City, cash. I was my father’s daughter, even if I didn’t like it, and I had a trick or two up my sleeve. The flight to Salt Lake City had been a breeze. Finding the car had been easy enough, and I had hoped that I could make this work.
That hope was slowly starting to fade. Since I had taken the wrong turn, everything had started going wrong. First the road, then the gas station, now my empty car. The heater didn’t feel like it was doing much, but I was sure it was better than being out there in the snow. Where was I? I wasn’t exactly sure. There had to be a town somewhere close by. It was getting dark, the night pending. I had been driving all day. If only I waited out the night, perhaps I could find someone to help me by morning. It sounded like a bad idea to spend the night in a broken-down car in the middle of a snowstorm, but I didn’t have much choice.
I was starting to get hungry, and I had finished my water bottle much earlier. I should have bought more food and water, but I would only have been on the road for about six hours. The idea hadn’t been to be out here so long.
I sat back and closed my eyes. Maybe if I slept, it would make the time tick by faster. The night stretched out before me, and it seemed long and dark and impossible. Now that I was out here in the snow, stranded without gas and cold thanks to a pathetic car heater, I was starting to wonder if running away had been such a good idea.
But what was the alternative? I couldn’t stay home and be forced to marry a man I could never love.
I thought about Sam Markowitz, the man my father wanted to set me up with. He was a Class-A asshole. He had no compassion or sympathy. He would do what needed to be done even if it was against the law, and he saw women as objects to be owned. The latter was the biggest reason why I couldn’t be with him, but he was no Prince Charming. His ugly personality shone through to his looks, and he was revolting.
Sam was a lot like my dad. Maybe that was why my dad approved of him. He was controlling and mean. I couldn’t stand the guy. If I married him, I would wilt away until I was dead on my feet.
And who he was as a person would clash with everything in my life, including my career. I had studied Criminal Psychology. It was ironic considering what my father did for a living, but I had seen him cheat, lie, and steal my whole life, and I hadn’t wanted that for myself. I had wanted to be on the right side of crime.
My dad had refused to pay for my degree until I had convinced him I could use it to help him. There was nothing more attractive to a Mafia Boss than thinking his daughter could help him cheat the system. He still hated what I did, but he had paid for my degree, and I had won that round.
None of that mattered, now. My focus was on escaping. Even if it meant I worked at a fast food restaurant or something. I only needed to get away from him and the life he wanted to force me into.
I shivered. It felt a lot colder than it had a moment before. I frowned and pushed my fingers against the air vent where warm air had been blowing out steadily for the past two hours. That had stopped, now. I tried to switch on the car again, at least one click so the battery would be on and the heat would start flowing again.
Nothing.
I hugged myself, the panic pushing me to the verge of tears. What was I going to do?
“Just breathe,” I told myself. “You can’t freak out, now.” I had to keep calm. I could get out of this. This couldn’t be the end of the line for me.
I sat, huddled against the car seat, trying to fight the cold that crept into the car. The windows were covered in snow so that I was trapped inside a cocoon of winter, and I felt claustrophobic.
When I couldn’t stand the cold anymore, I opened the car door and stepped out, sinking into the snow all around the car. It had snowed a lot more than I had expected. The cold took my breath away, burning my face, and I wondered if I should stay in the car. But I couldn’t do that. At this rate, the car would be buried under the snow before morning. And it was getting too cold. I had to set out and find people. I had to save myself.
I couldn’t take my bag with me—it was too big, and it would only slow me down. I had to reserve the bit of energy I had left to stay warm and walk as far as was needed.
As soon as I walked away from the car, I got lost. With the snow all around me and a blanket of snow covering the world, I couldn’t tell which way I was going. I looked up, but there was nothing to see but snow. The clouds covered the stars, and I had no way of tracking where I went.
I headed in what I thought was the direction that would bring me back to the Interstate, but I had no idea if I was right. I remembered stories of people walking in circles because they had no direction.
“Don’t,” I told myself. “You can do this.”
But I was starting to doubt it. I was so thirsty and so cold, and my legs felt like they were going to fall off. My feet were numb from the cold, and my thighs ached from the strain of marching through the snow.
I walked slower and slower, my energy depleting.
When I fell to my knees, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t get stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. I could die. Until now, the journey had been scary, but it hadn’t been life-threatening.
“Help!” I shouted, but the wind scooped up my voice and carried it away. Even if there were people around, they wouldn’t hear me. And in this weather, I could walk right past them and not see them. I wanted to cry, but I was scared my tears would freeze on my cheeks. So I swallowed my fear. I had to get out of here.
I tried to stand up, but I was suddenly very lightheaded. I pressed my palm to my forehead and pushed up on one knee. The world around me became blacker than black, and the cold started to retreat. This was a good thing, right?
I couldn’t see anything anymore. I tried to look at my hands and realized it wasn’t the weather, it was me. I was blacking out.
This wasn’t a good thing at all. I fell forward, and I was aware of the snow in front of me, soft like a pillow. And I couldn’t feel the cold at all.