Eva

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After the knock on Carmine’s front door, I’m frozen in my spot and don’t even dare to breathe while dread rumbles inside me.

Who could it be? I tiptoe toward it and, without making a sound, I check the peephole, but a key turns in the lock. As it’s thrown open, I jump back, and a tall brunette with a bob haircut reaches around her back and pulls out a gun, which she aims at my forehead.

“Holy crap!” I splutter, my palms flying up as we yell simultaneously, “Who the hell are you?”

She marches inside and kicks the door shut. “What are you doing in here?”

“Carmine isn’t home,” I say.

Her brows knit together while she stares at me as if I have a second head, echoing, “Who the hell are you?!”

“Carmine’s guest,” I reply, not knowing what to reveal, so I play dumb.

As she glances around, the wrinkle in her forehead deepens when she spots the purple notebook on the white couch. “What’s your name?”

I answer instinctively, “Eva.”

“So, Eva, you claim you’re Carmine’s guest and that he left you alone in his apartment? That doesn’t sound like my brother-in-law...”

Oh, shit. This is Cam, Adriano’s wife. And I revealed my name; I’m done.

Cam inspects me in the most unnerving manner, yet as I inch to the side, she screams, jerking her gun, “Don’t move!” Then she takes out her phone and types with her thumb effortlessly. Someone replies, because her mouth tightens before her shocked gaze lands on me. Motioning with the pistol toward the couch, she instructs, “Sit. We’re going to wait for Carmine together.” And she perches on the edge of the coffee table opposite me.

I have no choice but to obey because Cam keeps a vigilant watch on me. After I don’t know how long, she starts pacing with her gun in hand until there’s another knock. Hurriedly, Cam opens it and two tall, commanding Italian men advance inside.

One stops before me as I bound up, and he studies me with contempt, terrifying me to my core with a glare he’s obviously honed to perfection. And I realize that this is Adriano, Carmine’s brother and the boss of the Syndicate. He resembles Carmine but has more wrinkles around his eyes and his hair’s a little shorter.

“You must be Eva Conley—” He’s interrupted by the key turning in the lock again, so all three of them move next to the door to hide while Cam keeps pointing her gun at me and Adriano takes out his pistol from his ankle holster.

The door opens, and Carmine meets my eyes with brows furrowed. Then, in the space of a few minutes, everything we secretly built goes tumbling down like a house of cards.

“Carmine! No!” I yell, motioning beside him as he frowns.

“What—”

“Get the fuck inside.” Adriano places his revolver against Carmine’s temple, and Carmine’s hands shoot up as he stares at the three people and then at me.

The door is closed by Cam, and panicked, I lunge forward alongside the sofa to get to Carmine, but the other guy captures me around my middle, keeping me restrained.

“Do not touch Eva, Luca!” Carmine bellows while I struggle, but Adriano slides his finger over the trigger, pressing his gun into Carmine’s skin.

“Shut up!” Adriano’s tone is a growl.

Luca hisses in my ear, “Calm down and I’ll let you go, but you won’t move an inch. Do you understand me?”

“Luca!” Carmine shouts, paying no attention to Adriano, and pitching forward.

Gaping at Carmine due to his outburst, Adriano seizes his arm just as Cam darts in front of Carmine, who stops when he almost stumbles over her.

I go slack while everyone’s breathing harshly, and looking at no one but me, Carmine booms in a low voice, “Let go of her!” before he wrenches free from Adriano’s grasp.

Cam flanks Adriano when he nods at Luca, who releases me, and I fitfully drop my arms.

With his aim still on his brother’s head, Adriano roars, “Who the fuck is she, brother?”

“You know she’s Eva Conley,” Carmine responds, breaking our stare and turning to his sibling.

Cam stashes her gun, and without preamble, the two brothers go one-on-one.

Adriano’s glare intensifies as he angrily motions his pistol at me in agitation. “What the fuck is she doing in your apartment?”

“How did you find out she was here?” Carmine retorts, to which Adriano gives him a stony stare.

With gritted teeth, he counters, “I didn’t want to believe it last night when John brought me a soldier who he claims has been communicating with my Consigliere, until John showed me Tarek’s phone. I knew you were up to something for weeks; you’ve been MIA often and you just didn’t seem like yourself. You forced me to steal your key from our mother, and I instructed Cam to check out your apartment. But to my fucking surprise, Cam messages me during our goddamn meet that Eva is here!” Adriano scours his hands through his hair in the same way Carmine does.

Luca adds on a snarl, “What have you been doing, Carmine? And for how long?”

“Weeks...”

“Why?!” Adriano yells.

“Roman killed Eva’s brother. I protected Eva because she’s innocent and because she helped me,” Carmine explains, defending me with honor, but his brother’s temper doesn’t subside. Quite the opposite, it sets him off.

“So you decided to lie to us?!”

“No, I didn’t decide to lie to you. I decided to help her. I knew I could trust her, and she just needed to get out of this mess.”

Abruptly, another female voice says, “What’s going on?”

All gazes whip to the doorway where a short woman with long curls stands, and another tall man with black rimmed glasses steps past her to shield her.

“What are you doing?” the man asks, taking in the scene with amazement.

“Henry, sister, please join us while Carmine clarifies why a girl we’ve been hunting is safe in his home!” Again, he motions his gun at me in aggravation, and I raise my arms on instinct to protect myself as he smirks maliciously.

“Clearly, what the situation needs is more opinions,” Carmine grumbles irately while Adriano’s muscles ripple in rage through his dress shirt.

“Mary and Henry will stay,” Adriano overrules him, and Mary shifts close to her brother.

“Adriano, stop talking to us like we’re your men. We’re a family first. You need to take a breath,” Mary implores, glancing at me and Carmine with a deep crease in her forehead. “What’s happened?”

“Carmine has been keeping information from me! To protect a girl.”

Mary’s confusion deepens. “So who is she? Why is that such a problem?”

“Because she was an escort for Club 7, and she was Carmine’s mission.”

Carmine clenches his jaw, and I can see his mind working as he puts in, “And the mission has been completed. I got us a new deal. She was never a liability to the organization, regardless of everything. What can you do now, Adriano? Are you going to shoot me? What will you tell your mother if you hurt her son? Don’t take your anger out on us, and especially not on Eva. I’m warning all of you...” Carmine points his finger around, ending on Adriano.

Adriano’s scowl deepens, and everyone takes a step back as he hisses, “I decide what we do in this family!” And he strides forward, but Cam blocks his path with her palm against his chest, so he halts and grips her hand tightly while he and Carmine sneer at each other.

Cam tries to defuse the situation. “This is getting out of hand. Everyone needs to relax!” Then she looks back over her shoulder, addressing me, “You need to go with Mary and Henry. You’re not a part of this discussion.”

“No! I said no one touches Eva!” Carmine bellows, trying to march to me, but Adriano rapidly jumps in front of him so that they’re nose-to-nose.

Adriano almost spits in his face. “So you’re her savior? How charming. But it doesn’t sit well with me since she got you to lie to us! She’s an escort, Carmine. What did you think would happen when we found out?”

“Don’t call her that, or I swear to god!” Carmine’s venomous tone causes Adriano to rear back.

And then his dark eyes turn enormous. “I can’t even believe it – you like her? Is she blackmailing you?”

“No! Don’t blame her. This was my choice, my doing.”

“You protect her over your Syndicate. Do you realize what you’ve done?!” Adriano crowds Carmine, grabbing his suit jacket with his gun still in hand. “You deceived me! Why?”

Luca keeps cutting his eyes at me with irritation.

“Because I trust her,” Carmine responds with conviction and calmly tries to pry off his brother.

“How do you know you can trust her?” He looks back and forth between Carmine and me about six times in the span of a few seconds.

“Because I trust my instincts.”

Brusquely, Adriano releases Carmine and tosses him aside before he points his pistol at me, spewing, “What did you do to my brother?!”

And he comes at me, but I lamely slap him off, lumbering backward while he attempts to capture my arm. But Carmine grabs Adriano’s biceps to drag him back and pivots him around. Adriano backhands him in the face, and for a split-second, both brothers freeze in shock as time is suspended. Their incredulous glares meet and hold before Carmine dives toward him.

“I warned you not to touch her!”

Adriano moves to the right, circles around, and raises a fist.

“Oh, my god, Carmine!” I shout as Carmine spins and blocks a blow.

Bending low, he punches Adriano in the side with a vicious groan. Yet Adriano locks his arm around Carmine’s neck as he tries to push him to the floor.

“Adriano, stop it!” Cam howls, and when Mary starts crying, Henry pulls her out of the way.

Luca shifts to Adriano, but Adriano propels him off, making Luca reel backward.

“Jesus Christ, Adriano! Calm down!” Luca barks, swiping his mouth.

Meanwhile, overlapping accusations are shouted back and forth.

“How could you betray me?!”

“Fucking listen to me first!” Carmine defends, twisting his brother off for a moment.

But Adriano jumps on Carmine again and they topple onto the floor with a loud thud. Luca manages to barrel into Adriano, causing them to collapse sideways with a grunt and roll to their backs.

“Stop fighting each other!” Cam orders everyone to breathe before she helps Adriano up.

Then Carmine surges up and shouts, “Eva, run!”

Without hesitation, I spring over the couch as Carmine yanks me ahead of him and practically hurls me out the doorway while Mary and Henry watch us go without getting in our way.

I stumble to the elevator, pushing the button, and luckily, it opens right away.

Snatching his revolver from his waistband, Carmine slams the door to his apartment, and since his key is still in the lock, he turns it and breaks it off with the butt of his pistol while Adriano utters a string of profanities and someone bangs on the door.

I jump into the elevator and push the button as Carmine rushes inside, and I hear Adriano bellow, “Shoot the damn lock,” before a thud resounds.

Then Adriano runs into the hallway, dangling his gun from his hand while he races toward us as the door begins to slide closed. “Carmine, don’t fucking go!”

The second before he reaches us, the door shuts, and I flinch when Adriano unmistakably smashes his pistol against the elevator in fury as Carmine and I descend.

“Goddammit!” Carmine thunders, stashing his weapon in the back waistband of his slacks before regaining his composure and turning to me to cradle my face in his hands. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” I loop my arms around him as he hugs my middle firmly, lifting me a little to bury his face in my neck.

“We have to get away from here.” As he pulls back, the troubled expression painting his features scares me.

“Where do we go?”

“Anywhere but here,” he comments just as the elevator pings opens, and he entangles our hands, tugging me onward through the entrance of the high-rise and outside.

It’s bitter cold as we rush through the darkened streets, and I don’t have my coat. After we cross the intersection, I pause, pulling Carmine to a stop, and he looks back at me.

“Isn’t that Gwen?” I stare at her blonde hair just as she scowls at us and ducks into a vehicle on the other side of the street.

My and Carmine’s gazes lock before we glance back at the Astoria Tower, seeing Adriano, Cam, and Luca charging out the entrance and surveying the area until Adriano spots us across the intersection and they immediately sprint in our direction.

However, I’m distracted by a car running a red light. “Oh, my god. Is Gwen coming at us too? What’s her obsession with you?”

“She’s the least of our worries,” he raises his voice over the drone of all the vehicles blazing past us, yanking me with him as we dart around the corner, zigzagging our way through skyscrapers while the chilly wind rustles my long hair.

“I’m not so sure she is,” I mumble, getting out of breath when Carmine moves too fast, but I manage to keep up.

After three blocks, I follow him into an alleyway as he constantly looks over his shoulder, but neither Gwen nor Adriano is on our tail anymore. All of a sudden, we stumble upon a deserted dead end street, and while I’m freaking, Carmine unclasps our hands and is already inspecting the building to our left and towing me to the sidewalk toward a metal door. He pushes the lever down, but it’s locked, of course, so Carmine takes out his gun again. Leveling it at the lock, he pulls the trigger, and apparently, it has a silencer, because there’s only a rapid thump before the lock trickles to the ground. Carmine throws open the door and shoves me inside, hurriedly kicking the pieces of the broken lock in with us before he sticks his head out to check the alley and closes the door.

I swivel around to be met with the vast expanse of a gigantic warehouse with dozens of rows of storage racks filled with big brown boxes. Down the middle, there’s an aisle leading to another door at the far end that I can see only because the fluorescent ceiling lamps are on.

But when I turn back to Carmine, he’s pushing his fingers through his hair, and I step closer to him so that his disheartened gaze shoots to me.

Hesitantly, I ask, “What happened at the meet? Cam let herself in your apartment with a key right after you left.”

Rubbing his palm over his chin as everything becomes clear, he explains, “Adriano didn’t let on that he suspected anything. Although I did notice he was looking at me oddly last night at dinner, and evidently, he stole the spare key from my parents. Adriano has probably interrogated Tarek, and he’s most likely dead by now.” Carmine pauses, and I can tell he’s upset because his usual controlled façade wavers. “Our meet went perfectly, and we have a new shipping partner. Adriano and Luca left right before I did – to go to you. Cam must’ve been the one who texted him while I was there.”

“Shit! And what about Gwen? You think Gwen and Roman also knew I was with you?”

“I’m starting to think that, yes. And that they coordinated the entire clusterfuck this morning.” For a second, his eyes widen as if he recalls something. “She could’ve gotten my phone Tuesday night when I saw her at the club. Christ! I was so careless. All I was thinking about was getting back to you.”

He’s done so much to protect me, and now his own brother is his adversary. When Carmine expels a loud sigh, I can almost feel his inner torment – I’m falling irrevocably in love with his loyalty to me. It’s heartwarming yet unsettling at the same time, because it was very clear that his brother blames me. Carmine was right; they’ll never believe me, or accept me, for that matter.

So I suggest, “Why don’t we just go through the other door? I think we shook Gwen off; the car couldn’t have trailed us through the alley.”

“No. We wait ten minutes and then go back to the Astoria.”

Panic rises. “Why? No! That’s too dangerous. We should keep going.”

“We can’t, Eva. I need my car because I can’t protect us from the Syndicate with only one weapon.” He waves his gun in annoyance. “I have cash and ammo stashed in my BMW.” Carmine begins to pace as I bite my tongue, and we wait.

Silent minutes tick by, yet our anxiety doesn’t lessen. After we haven’t heard anything for about five minutes, Carmine instructs, “We go back to the Astoria parking garage, okay?”

Tentatively, I nod, so he wraps his arm around my neck and presses a kiss to my forehead as I tremble. But when he opens the door, Adriano’s standing there and tilts his head to the side, so Carmine slams it shut with his back.

“No!” I cry, planting my palms against the door as well, but Adriano isn’t attempting to push it open. Instead, he knocks once, which frightens me more.

“Carmine, there’s nowhere to go,” Adriano says, and then silence stretches on.

He studies me dejectedly, and I mutter, “He’s right. There’s nowhere for us to go. We have no chance together.”

“We have to stay together,” he returns angrily, and I fight back impending tears as I start to understand how I can help him for once.

Inhaling an encouraging breath, I whisper, “We’ll never get out of this warehouse alive. Your brother is furious; you were right about his reaction. But, Carmine, I saw how they were all angry at me. Adriano blames me. They want me, but there’s a good possibility you can be saved.”

Carmine steels his jaw and straightens as he starts to understand my intention. “So what do you propose we do?”

I murmur in a hurry, “Maybe you can give them the story they want to hear and say it was my fault?”

Carmine bristles, but before he discounts my idea, I edge close to him and brace his nape as he rests his forehead against mine. “I don’t want this to be the end, but you were correct – it was all too dangerous. They’ll believe it if you tell them that you made a mistake and fell for my lies.”

“You were never a mistake,” he infuses in a tortured tone, cupping my face almost roughly, like he’s afraid I’ll bolt any second, and ghosting his lips over mine.

I grip his neck tighter, going on my tiptoes. “You won’t get out of here alive with me. Maybe this is it for us?”

“No, not like this,” he objects gently, as if he also realizes that there’s no way out for both of us.

“It doesn’t matter how we part. You’ll be okay – this isn’t your mess, Carmine. I can’t let you go down with me when there’s a chance you can survive.”

Adriano’s dark voice interrupts, “Brother, you have five seconds to open this door so that we can talk. Or I can come in, and then I won’t be lenient on either of you.” Without pause, he begins a countdown. “Five, four...”

Carmine winds both his arms around me and palms the back of my head while he molds me into him and presses hard kisses on the crown of my head. A tear seeps from the corner of my eye while I nuzzle his throat, inhaling his fresh sandalwood cologne as a lasting memory.

From the tremble I feel moving through him, I realize that he’s accepting our doomed destiny to never be together like a regular couple. We created a fantasy, wanting to escape real life. This is the moment we valiantly fought to avoid and we failed. My stomach sinks like a stone during our goodbye.

...two, one.” Adriano finishes counting.