Page 38 of Merciless Daddy

“Yes.”

“So much for freedom.”

“I’m free, too. Free to go where I please. And right now it pleases me to be behind you.”

I reached the garage door and faced him. “Fine. You’re free to follow me. I’m free to leave. So, let’s make a list, then. I need my passport. Money. A phone that doesn’t report my position to your little office upstairs. Transport.”

Sal stood one step above me, tall enough that I had to tilt my chin back. The cut on his cheek made him look rougher this morning. More dangerous. His dark hair was still slightly damp from a shower, combed back from his forehead. The shirt stretched across his shoulders when he moved.

He reached into his inside pocket and took out a slim envelope.

“Temporary passport.” He handed it to me.

I opened it. The photograph was mine. The name was not.

“Ana Sokolova?” I said.

“You want something different? Might have to wait a day or two.”

“How did you get this.”

“Our financial analyst, Angela. She is very good.”

There was another envelope. Five hundred dollars in cash. Then a clean phone in a sealed box. Then keys.

“The car is in the garage,” he said. “Full tank. No tracker. You can verify it if you like.”

I stared at the things in my hands.

He went on. “I’ll send you to a hotel. The airport. A police station. Any address you name. But I won’t send you to New York. And I will know if you go near Gianni. And I will stop you. Other than that, go, have a good life. I can put you on a flight under that passport, or give you enough space to disappear without me knowing where.”

“You expect me to trust that?”

“No.”

“You expect me to accept help from the man who dragged me off a road at gunpoint?”

“No.”

His answers made my anger stumble.

I recovered it quickly. “Mill Basin.”

His face changed. Not much. The line of his mouth hardened.

“No.”

There it was.

I laughed once. “There it is.”

“I will not take you to Mill Basin.”

“One forbidden road. Very generous. Is that how freedom works in Sicily? Every direction is open except the one a woman wants?”

“You know what is in that house.”

“Kiryl.”