Chapter 25—Maria

I went down to the cellar and started checking the shelves with the beer.

Francesca, one of the bartenders offered to show me what to do, but I told her I was practically born to do this.

I waitresses a lot, but stock taking was a thing that came with the job specs.

In my experience lots of people loathed this part of the job. I on the other hand loved it.

It offered a sort of refuge. A place out of the way to think.

Thinking was what I was doing now.

Thinking about Elliot Granger. Again.

God … it was really on the tip of my tongue to tell Dante about him, but what I had said to him stood.

Be twenty percent sure.

With what I’d seen him do to Todd, that made me want to think it was him. It was speculation and assumption and I wasn’t going to put Dante in danger based on that.

I hated to admit it, but Christina kept a lot of secrets from me. Towards the end I just saw more and more of only what she wanted me to see.

Based on what she said when we had that little argument of ours, it confirmed what she thought of me, and what she must have thought of me the whole time. She might have said it in the heat of the moment, but she for damn sure meant it. I knew she had meant every word.

It didn’t however change how much I loved her.

While Dante was only telling me as much as he could, I wanted to help I wanted to help in whatever way I could.

Deep down though I wanted to get the answer so I could shove Elliot Granger to the back of beyond if it really wasn’t him. Or, find out if it was.

This was a personal mission I wanted to fulfill. A quest for an answer.

I was many things, but I wasn’t a coward. My time with Franco was awful and I became my worst nightmare by staying in an abusive relationship. I became the coward. Some may call me that now for running and if they did I would tell them to go fuck themselves.

They could do just that because it was never cowardly to run away to protect yourself. It made all the more sense to do so if you had a child.

Staying would have been the coward’s way. It would have been foolish—deadly.

As for Elliot, I would never be the kind of woman to know he killed Christina and keep it to myself.

It already felt like some kind of damnation in keeping knowledge that he was one of her guys to myself. I just knew what would happen if I unleashed that and I was wrong. What I needed was that twenty percent of certainty.

It was Luc rubbing off on me. I had learned that from him, one of his rules on instinct. He’d always said if you could be twenty percent certain of something you could infer a further thirty percent to get you to fifty. It meant you could check something out based off instinct—gut instinct.

I believed in that and did so accordingly. I lived by it.

If I got any form of inkling in my efforts to help that Elliot was responsible I would tell Dante in a heartbeat.

The idea of his to go to his mother’s place and look at Christina’s stuff was a good one. All her stuff from my old place had gone there. It was all placed in Christina’s old room. Their mother left the room exactly the same as if Christina had never left to come live with me. When I’d first seen it, I wished then that she hadn’t. I wished I’d gone solo and just got the apartment for myself. Being on our own like that at nineteen was the perfect breeding ground for us to get up to all manner of things, none of it good. It was the perfect set up for her to stray off the path of life and end up where she was now.

I counted the beer on the shelf and ticked it off against the sheet I was given. I lifted my head to proceed to the next row that housed the wine when my eyes met the cold hard stare of the man in front of me.

My heart jumped into my throat and I screamed from the shock.

“Oh my God, you scared the shit out of me!” I gasped.

I took him for one of the staff, but as I looked at him properly I didn’t think he was. He had a rough and rugged look about him that no one who worked here would have sported. They all dressed trendy and looked the part. He looked like he’d just walked in off the streets. Tall with a hood that was down, he had greasy hair, a full beard and red blotchy eyes.

I turned to go, but someone from behind caught me. I screamed when I saw a muscular guy with a tattoo of a snake on his face.

“Let go of me.”

“I don’t think so. You are coming with us. Mrs. Deville. ” The first guy said.

Mrs. Deville Franco. These were his guys.

Oh God, these were his guys. I was right. Fuck, why did I have to be right?

They found me.

“Help!” I screamed and kicked, but it was to no avail.

The guy holding me covered my mouth and tried to carry me.

I was shit scared, terrified for my life. Still I wasn’t just going to allow him to pick me up and carry me back to Franco to die. I had Flynn to worry about.

Flynn, my baby, he would need me to protect him.

That single thought was all it took. I bit down so hard on the man’s hand that covered my mouth he screamed and yelped, dropping me. I took the opportunity to grab a wine bottle smash it and hit him in his face with the broken end which caused a nasty gnash on his cheek and pierced his left eye. I kicked the other guy who came at me and slapped him too before stabbing him in his chest with the broken bottle. The impact made the rest of the glass shatter.

They both looked shocked probably thinking I was one of those girlie girls they could order around.

With them momentarily stunned I ran, grabbed my phone from my back pocket and called Dante.

“Hi doll, miss me?”

“Dante there’s some men in the cellar, help I –” I was just about to run up the stairs back on to the main floor when one of the men grabbed my leg and yanked me down. It was that first guy I’d seen.

Shit!

I dropped the phone and had the wonderful reminder of falling down the stairs when Franco had pushed me as I bumbled down the first three steps and knocked my face on the hard floor.

I screamed out from the pain.

“You little bitch. You fucking little bitch. You’ll pay for that big time and won’t get away with it.” He snarled.

He dragged me by my leg over the floor, pulling me along like I was little more than a rag doll. Tears rolled down my cheeks, blinding me, while terror raced through my soul. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

This was how Franco would get me and kill me.

The man went to lift me up again when the door burst open and several shots were fired.

Fired straight at him landing in his head, his neck, and his chest. Blood sprayed everywhere as he went down.

My leg slipped from his grasp, and fuck, it wasn’t just the two guys like I’d thought. Four more came out from behind the shelves. They seemed to be coming in from somewhere.

More bullets sprayed making me move to my knees, crawling over to the table where I could find some cover.

I saw Dante first. He shot one of the guys taking him down.

Alex and Gio just appeared out of nowhere, guns firing, and then I saw someone I didn’t expect; Luc.

Instead of joining the guys he pulled me out from under the table heaving me over his shoulder and ran up the stairs with me.

I watched in horror as Dante rammed a knife into one of the guys who came at him. There were another two coming for him too.

He whipped out those twin Berettas and ended them before they could get another foot closer to him.

Luc took me through the door and it closed sealing off everything else.