Page 85 of Auctioned Innocence
They’ve found our blood trail.
Fuck.
The gap leads to another alley, this one lined with motorcycles—overflow parking from the bar next door.
Sofia’s already moving toward a beat-up Harley, keys dangling from the ignition like a gift from God.
“Can you ride?” she asks, noting how I’m swaying on my feet.
“Canyou?” I counter, eyeing the massive Harley skeptically. “This isn’t exactly a beginner bike.”
She throws me a look that’s pure Renaldi arrogance.
“Please. I’ve stolen Vespas in Rome, dirt bikes in Morocco, and a Ducati in Monaco. This rust bucket should be child’s play.”
My eyebrows climb toward my hairline despite everything. “When the hell did you?—”
“Do we have a choice?” she throws my own words back at me with a smirk.
The engine turns over on the second try, loud enough to wake the dead.
Or alert every hostile within half a mile.
I climb behind her, my wound protesting every movement. The world tilts dangerously as fresh blood loss hits my system.
“Hold on,” she says and guns it.
We tear out of the alley just as muzzle flashes light up the darkness behind us.
Bullets spark off the pavement where we’d been standing seconds before.
Sofia takes the first corner at a lean that would terrify me if I wasn’t too busy bleeding to care.
The vibration of the bike sends agony through my entire torso.
Each bump in the road feels like a knife twisting in my ribs.
I wrap my arms around Sofia’s waist, partly for balance, mostly to keep from falling off as my consciousness threatens to fade.
Behind us, headlights sweep around the corner.
Three vehicles, maybe four, in coordinated pursuit.
They’re faster than us, better equipped, and I’m leaving a blood trail that makes tracking us pathetically easy.
“Where?” Sofia shouts over the engine noise, taking us onto a service road that runs parallel to the highway.
“Mountains,” I manage against her ear, fighting to stay conscious. “Back roads. Make them work for it.”
She nods and opens the throttle, the Harley responding with a roar that drowns out everything else.
We tear through narrow streets I barely can see, Sofia navigating by instinct and sheer audacity.
She takes curves that would be suicide for their heavier vehicles, leaning into turns with the confidence of someone who’s clearly done this before.
“There!” I point toward a barely visible mountain road, little more than a deer trail winding into the darkness. “That way!”
For three hours, we weave through serpentine mountain roads that would challenge a rally driver.
