Page 5 of Worth the Risk

He couldn’t hold her gaze because, by ordering it, he might as well have. His brief lapse into humanity was the opening she was waiting for. She had to save herself.

She was grossly outmatched against his 9 mm semiautomatic. But she used what she had—two banded stacks of one hundred dollar bills. If she failed, she couldn’t be more dead. Besides, throwing his blood money in his face seemed poetic.

She slipped her thumbs under the paper bands, popped the glue seal then let it rain in the walk-in closet. He could have shot her easily through the flutter of falling bills, but it took him by surprise. It gave her the second she needed to grab a more substantial weapon. She snagged a bottle of cologne from his collection. Grenade-shaped, and aptly named Spice Bomb, it fit in her hand perfectly. It was light enough for her to chuck it at his head with enough force to do damage.

Instinctively, he raised his arms, which worked out for her. He couldn’t duck and cover and aim his gun.

Her aim was off, however, and it only glanced off his shoulder. Before it hit the floor, Isabella hurled another. This one hit him in the jaw. He cursed and doubled over, holding his face. Better, but she needed him incapacitated so she could run.

She sent more in follow up, her anger inspiring a barrage of projectiles courtesy of Valentino, Dior, Creed, and Gucci. In a weird twist of irony, it was the $700 bottle of Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather, which she gave him last Christmas, that struck him in the temple and became the felling blow.

Grunting, he lurched to the side, his gun hand coming up not to shoot at her but to hold the gash created by the sharp corner of the heavy bottle.

As he went down, Isabella whirled and ran for the door, covering her head as a gunshot echoed in the room. A searing pain shot through her side. She stumbled but continued forward. If she gave in, there was no chance she’d see another sunrise.

Clutching her side as it burned like fire, she sprinted from the room and down the stairs. She met some of her father’s men coming up and was glad for the dark oversized T-shirt.

“That sounded like a gunshot. What’s going on?” Rudolpho, her father’s body man, and also her cousin, or so she thought, asked as they passed one another.

“No clue,” she replied without stopping. “When I heard it, I didn’t stick around to find out.”

He continued up as she flew down and through the front door out into the cold early March night. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, and they were expecting six more inches by morning. She had on her fuzzy pink slippers and had no coat, no car keys, and no subway pass.

As she ran down the block, she tried to come up with a plan. She had to escape, obviously. But she couldn’t let Lorenzo get away with killing her real father. She could go to the Pietro’s, but with their hatred of all Giordanos, they were likely to shoot her on sight.

Justice and vengeance would have to wait. She had to make it to safety first, then Isabella Giordano / Conti / Pietro, or whoever the hell she was, had to disappear. Another priority had to be the blood soaking her clothes. She ducked into an alley to catch her breath and inspect the damage.

When she went to lift her shirt, she saw she had several bills clutched in her fists without realizing it. The bills might have stuck to her sweaty palms, or she might have grabbed them subconsciously. She would need money and wasn’t about to question her unusual good fortune. When she counted only twelve hundreds, her shoulders slumped in disappointment. It wouldn’t go far, but it might get her out of the city.

***

SHOUTS CLOSER THANthe last had Isabella veering between two houses. She took a few seconds to catch her breath then peeked around the corner at the street she’d just come down. She didn’t see Rudolpho or any of Lorenzo’s men, but they were out there.

Leaning against the brick wall for support, she lifted the hem of her shirt to assess the damage. From what she could see, with no moon out and the nearest streetlight a house over, the bleeding had slowed to a trickle, the wound more of a gouge than a hole. But it wouldn’t do to leave a trail, making it easier for Lorenzo’s men to track her.

Isabella tore off the bottom few inches of her shirt and folded it to make a bandage. With it pressed to her side, she took off again, keeping to the shadows.

Only a half a block from a subway entrance, they caught up with her. There were four of them, and they surprised her, far smarter than she’d always assumed because they had split up. Two approached from the front and two from behind, effectively blocking her escape via the underground trains.

With her pulse pounding in her ears, sweat trickling down her neck, and pain searing through her side, Isabella sprinted down the nearest alley. She had been running for what seemed like miles, although it couldn’t have been more than a few city blocks. But she had neither the speed of a runner nor the endurance of an athlete. The most exercise she ever got was shopping at the mall and, on very rare occasions, a yoga class, and it was showing.

Her lungs seized for air after only a few yards. Making her distress worse—fear. She’d known her pursuers all her life. Some she’d played with as a kid, thinking they were cousins. Her mind reeled at the thought of the only father she’d ever known ordering her death. But she’d always suspected, if threatened, he’d put the crime family over his actual family, and the four armed men in pursuit of her were the proof.

He wasn’t a man to dote or show affection, not even to the woman he married, or her child. Isabella always thought he loved her in his own way. She couldn’t spare a moment to process the hurt of finding out he never had. That would come later. If she had a later.

Although she needed to stop and rest, she pushed her body to its limit, trying to stretch the distance between them. She had exited the upscale residential neighborhood with sprawling houses and enormous yards to an area with rows of townhouses and apartments. With alleys between them, there were more places to hide.

It was a lucky break, too. Because the thud of their footsteps pounding the pavement grew louder with each passing second as they closed in. Isabella ran down one alley, up behind a long row of apartments then darted down another. But she skidded to a halt, gasping for breath, when she found herself face-to-face with a dead end.

She whirled to retrace her path but saw shadows moving up ahead. Trapped, she quickly scanned her surroundings, searching for a way out. As if someone was looking out for her, she spotted a ladder, likely a fire escape, leading up the side of the building to the roof.

Without a second thought, Isabella raced toward it, her trackers hot on her heels. Climbing as fast as she could, she forced herself to ignore the pain in her side and her muscles crying out in protest. She reached the top just as Rudolpho, the biggest and scariest of the three men, reached the bottom of the ladder. A gun fired, the bullet ricocheting off the metal rungs with a ping.

Without taking time to scream, cower in fear, or curl up in a ball and cry like a baby, all of which she wanted to do really badly, Isabella ran across the rooftop, her lungs seizing painfully as she searched for another way down. There was a door to a stairwell, but it was locked. Her only other option was to jump to the next building.

She ran to the ledge and sized up the distance and her odds. The gap between the roofs looked like the Grand Canyon, and the four-story drop, if she didn’t make it, would likely kill her. If she didn’t take the risk, she was dead anyway. In her favor, the other roof was a little lower. Jumping down wouldn’t be so hard, would it?

While backing up to make a running leap, she heard Rudolpho shout, “Don’t be an idiot, Isabella. You can’t make it.”

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