Page 41 of Deal with the Devil
He sounds amused about the last part.
“Don’t touch me!” I snap, wrenching my arm free. “I have working legs! I can walk on my own.”
The man on my left defers to Il Diavolo with a glance.
Il Diavolo gives a sigh. “Lasciala camminare.”
Both men refrain from touching me, merely walking at my side. We leave the interrogation room behind, moving through several corridors that seem to be for airport personnel only.
On the outside I’m calm, but on the inside, I’m in a state of panic.
I’m being escorted by a powerful mafia boss and his men to who knows where.
I’m alone in a foreign country, where no one knows where I am, only my sister, who I explicitly told to forgo contacting me.
All because I was obsessed with uncovering the truth.
It seems so damn reckless and stupid in hindsight.
Of course, I always knew it was a risk—that’s part of being an investigative reporter. You’re willing to go deep, dive into situations that most people would be unwilling to go, sometimes having to put yourself at risk.
But I hadn’t realized it would happen like this.
For all I know, I could be living my final hours. Il Diavolo could be escorting me to my death…
We come out a private exit in an employee parking lot of the airport. A limousine is already waiting for us, the door propped open for me to slide inside.
I pause for only half a second before realizing it’s fruitless. I’m going one way or another. If I try to resist, Il Diavolo and his men will simply force me.
My stomach sinks with dread as we pull away from the airport.
His men sit up front. We’re alone in the back of the limousine. Though there’s ample space for seating, it still doesn’t feel like it’s enough given the situation.
I need an entire football field between us in order to feel comfortable.
I can’t even look in his direction, keeping my head turned the opposite way. But he seems to feel differently, his gaze set on me from behind his devil’s mask.
We ride in silence with only the sounds of gravel being crushed under the wheels and the chaotic beat of my heart against my chest.
My palms are clammy in my lap as the act I’ve put on starts to slip. I’m really being kidnapped. I’m being taken captive by the mafia.
The man I thought I was falling in love with. Different potential strategies flit through my head. Things like maybe seducing him or sweet talking him somehow.
It couldn’t have all been an act, right?
Somepart of him had to have cared about me. He was attracted to me.
I could use these things to my advantage…
The limousine winds along narrow mountain roads. Sicily unspools around us in vivid fashion—jagged hills with sun-dried brush and crumbling stone. The landscape is golden and bruised but rolls out toward the glimmering sea that never seems to end.
Every so often we pass a small village that seems to have been forgotten over time. The homes remind me of the ones I’d come across in Ragusa when I talked to Natalia with red tiles on the roofs and laundry strung up outside. Children play freely and goats roam untethered.
More so than I can in this moment.
I heave a heavy sigh watching them.
Il Diavolo watches me do so. “It was always going to come to this,” he says cryptically. The first words he’s spoken since the airport. “The sooner you accept that, the easier you will adjust, Portia.”
