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“Yeah, I know about it, Oz. Cut it the fuck out before you get us all killed. The Bratva is not amused with your dipping your toes into their pond.”
I don’t say anything else as I leave his house and my phone rings. This time, it’s a video call. Evelyn’s sweet face is grimy with sweat and smudges of dirt.
“Alessandro?” Her eyelids flutter and lay heavily.
“Mio dolce. I’m coming for you.”
28
EVELYN
Vroom. Vroom. Vroom.
The steady throbbing of my brain pulsing inside my head leaves me feeling woozy with that sound being the only thing I can identify. It’s not even a word I can say, it’s just a steady vroom, like a turbine inside a jet engine.
“Evelyn, babe, please open your eyes, mio dolce.” Alessandro’s voice sounds so far away.
“Where are you? I want to go home,” I whimper in the direction of the voice. My wrists are bound in front of me, but my arms are free to wipe some grit off my face. My ankles are individually tied to the legs of the chair I’m siting in.
“Open your eyes, Evelyn,” Alessandro demands with a much sterner tone.
It takes every ounce of energy to press my lids up, but the room spins and I feel out of breath, like I’m falling, weightless and heavy all at the same time.
“Mrs. De Luca,” a different voice sings my name. “Come on, I need you to read this to your darling husband so he knows where to come get you.”
Okay. This is real. This is not a drill. I'm being held somewhere dark but near the water. There’s that salty quality to the air. If I’m here long enough, I’ll be able to figure out which borough I’m in. They’re all near fucking water.
The car!
Bits and pieces of my abduction barrel into my mind. We took Jenkins’s SUV a few minutes before switching cars. Alessandro needs to know that. I’m sure Jenkins is already tracking his car.
“Read it, honey. This isn’t a social call,” the abductor demands.
“I’m having trouble seeing that. My head is throbbing. Can I have some water? You have to have some nearby. I can smell it.”
“Oh, you don’t want water out of that dredge, my dear. Read the sign.”
“Depot?” I remember stopping at a red light on the floor in the back seat of the new car. I saw the MTA bus depot sign against a beige building. Still don’t know what borough.
“Come on, don’t tell me you’re too pretty to read.”
“Too dizzy is more like it. I can’t hear myself think with all those buses.”
The loud exhausts and rumblings of serval bus motors rolling in and out can be heard in the distance. It’s like white noise to the average resident. I’m desperate to distinguish any other sounds, but my time is running out.
“Read it, or I’ll cut out your tongue and read it for you.”
“You touch her, and I’ll kill you,” Alessandro snarls over the phone.
“Oh, you mean like this?” The man comes closer. His face is covered in greasy black paint as he sticks his tongue out, dragging it from under my chin to the bottom of my ear. My skin crawls and my gag reflex activates.
I retch but nothing comes up. “Oh, God, you smell like you crawled out the Bronx River.”
“Honey, you’re going to be floating in it by the time I’m done with you if you don’t do what you’re fucking told.”
“Put the money in two small black duffle bags. Bring them to a luggage storage locker at Madison Square Garden. It’s in a gift shop. Rent a locker and set the code to 1189. I’ll be on the corner of Columbus Circle and 59th Street, unable to move until the money is picked up and counted. Once the money is good, I’ll be let go.”
“Thanks, Alice Andrew,” the kidnapper sings and hangs up the phone before Alessandro can confirm the instructions. The guy stares at me with a triumphant grin. “You did marvelously. Now, keep quiet and I’ll let you walk out of here the same way you came in.”
