Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
And what about the Moretti brothers? They’d lose face, too. And would they even let me go? Massimo might pursue me to the ends of the earth just out of spite if I left him like that. And the thought of never seeing Stefano and Carmine again was extremely upsetting.
As for Massimo ... if things continued as they were between us, maybe, just maybe, I could be happy with my life. But there was still the big question of what I’d found in the attic. It hung over my head, affecting all of my interactions with him.
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” I said after a long silence.
“But do you want to stay with him?” Piper asked.
“I have to.”
“We’re saying there might be a way that you don’t,” Zoey said.
“I appreciate that. More than you know.” I took a deep breath. “But I’ll stay where I am.”
“Are you sure?” Zoey asked.
“Yes,” I said, though the word maybe had been on the tip of my tongue.
“Does he treat you well?” Piper asked.
“Sometimes.” Or almost well. He sure gave me a lot of physical pleasure. As for the other parts of the relationship, well, hopefully those would develop over time. And he’d been really understanding when I talked about my parents’ different treatment of my sister and myself. But then there was still the main problem. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course,” Piper said. She and Zoey leaned in close.
“I found something in the house. Something that used to belong to Massimo.”
“What?” Piper’s voice was soft and low.
“A dress, I think, or part of it. There was blood on it. And there was a note, just a few lines, from a woman, I think. She was begging Massimo to stop something from happening.”
“Stop what from happening?” Zoey’s eyes were troubled.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.” That was an understatement. “I wonder if maybe ... someone hurt her.”
“Massimo?” Piper asked. “Or the big guy over there?”
I really didn’t want to think that. I wasn’t completely naïve. I knew that both of them could be violent. But to hurt a woman? I really didn’t want to think that. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe she wanted Massimo to rescue her from whoever was hurting her,” Zoey suggested.
“That’s what I think, too.” Which led to the biggest question in my mind: had he?
“Tell me something,” Piper said. “I’ve only heard rumors, but Massimo’s organization has joined forces with your father’s in New York, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why? What each organization stood to gain from it?”
“No.” Well, I did know that my father had needed cash, among other things, but I still had no clue what Massimo had gotten out of it.
Zoey had a theory on that. “It’s likely your fiancé got access to something in New York, something he couldn’t get here in Chicago.”
“Yeah, probably.” I nodded and then I caught the devastated look on Piper’s face. “What?”
She hesitated, her eyes troubled. “I know of one thing he could get in New York that he can’t here.”
“What?”
“The ports.”
That puzzled me. “We’re on Lake Michigan.”
“Yeah, but there’s no easy access to international waters.” Piper reached over to squeeze my hand. Her expression was really troubling. “Honey, sometimes mobsters use those ports for human trafficking. To get people—usually young women—into or out of the country illegally. Sometimes the victims end up in the ER where I worked. It isn’t pretty.”
My heart stuttered and stumbled at the mention of human trafficking. “Do you really think Massimo and his family would be involved in that?”
“Many of the bigger families are,” Zoey said, looking grim.
Was that what the woman who wrote the note had wanted? For Massimo not to sell her to someone, for some sort of horrible purpose? The food I’d eaten felt like lead in my stomach, and nausea filled me. “So I’m being married off so that my husband-to-be has an easier time selling women?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Zoey said. She looked sick to her stomach, too.
Piper rubbed my arm. “Breathe, Leila.”
I nodded, but panic was filling my mind.
“Carmine’s looking at us,” Zoey added. “You have to act natural or he’s going to come over.”
Carmine. My stomach dropped even more. If Massimo was involved in something that hideous, then Carmine was, too. He was Massimo’s right-hand man, after all. But that seemed even harder to believe.
“Are you rethinking your answer about a possible rescue?” Piper asked.
Truthfully, I was. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to decide now,” Zoey said.
Piper nodded. “Yeah. Unfortunately, we don’t have any plans in place right now—I wish we did, but we’re on your fiancé’s turf.” She turned to Zoey. “So what can we do?”
Zoey turned her thoughtful eyes on me. “Well, if I agree to sing at the reception, you can let me know if you’ve changed your mind about making a run for it.”