It took her a minute to comprehend what I’d said.
“Where are we going?”
“Away from here. Hurry up.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“I…is it time? Is the two weeks up?”
I was confused for a moment, then realized she thought it was time to go to auction. “No. We’re leaving this place. I’m not taking you to the auction.”
“Then where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere safe.”
She studied me, uncertain.
“Let’s go. Unless you want to stay here and wait for someone to come find you. It could be today or a few days from now when you don’t show up at auction, but they will come, and I don’t want to be here when they do. Now I don’t mind you naked—in fact, I prefer it—but you might be more comfortable wearing clothes, seeing as how it’s freezing out there.”
“Why would you help me?”
She moved toward the clothes on the bed. I met her there and uncuffed her wrists, taking the restraints. She pulled the hoodie over her head. I watched it fall almost to her knees.
“Because you’re going to help me. I don’t like Victor Scava, and I think he’s playing games.” I left out the part about the games being played against my family. I did that for two reasons. First, I didn’t want her to know who I was, and second, I couldn’t figure out why I still considered the Benedetti family as my own.
Gia put the pants on and pulled them up. She had to bunch them up and hold them in place so they wouldn’t slide off. She then stood there, looking at me, waiting.
“These will be too big, but it’s just until we get to the truck.”
She slid into the pair of boots I set on the floor. She looked a little ridiculous, but I liked her in my clothes.
I stepped aside and gestured for her to follow.
She moved, uncertainly at first, then more assuredly, in a hurry to get out of the room. Just as she passed me, I grabbed her arm and made her stop.
“Just one thing. You do as you’re told or else. You need me to survive right now. I’m the only person who can keep you safe from Scava. Don’t fuck with me. We clear?”
“I don’t like you, Dominic, and I trust you even less, but I do know you hold the key to my freedom, so I promise not to fuck with you, okay?” she said, trying to free herself.
I tugged harder and leaned in close, close enough that the scruff on my jaw brushed against her soft cheek as I inhaled, then cupped her face so we stood nose to nose. “You’ve got a smart mouth, but I like it better put to other uses.”
She jerked her face from my hand.
“Don’t mistake me for a pussy, Gia,” I said, shaking her once. “I’m doing this for me, not for you.”
I grabbed the duffel bag with my clothes and computer, and we walked out of the cabin.10GiaDominic drove the SUV with its black-tinted windows through a narrow opening out of the woods, leaving the cabin behind us. I looked back at it as we bounced along, shuddering at the feeling it gave me, like a decrepit, abandoned, haunted place. Maybe it was haunted. Maybe the ghosts of the girls who’d gone before me lingered in that terrible cabin.
I physically shook. Dominic glanced at me, his expression looking as if he were deep in thought, so deep my involuntary movement seemed to surprise him.
“The heating will kick in soon,” he said, returning his attention to the dirt road.
He thought I shook with cold. No. It was terror that still gripped me with its long, icy fingers.
“What’s changed?” I asked. What had happened between yesterday and today? And was he stealing from Victor now by taking me away from the cabin? What did that mean for him? For me? What use could he possibly have for me?
“What do you mean?”
“Why are we leaving? Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not. I’m helping myself.”
“What game is Victor playing with you?”
“I don’t know just yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand. You just need to be grateful.”
“Where are we going?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“If you answer one, maybe I’ll stop asking.”
“Smart-ass.”
“Bully.”
“New Jersey. We’re going somewhere Victor won’t think to look for you. Because when he finds out you’re gone, he’s going to come looking for both of us.”
“And he’ll find out when I don’t show up at auction?”
He nodded and turned the SUV onto a lonely paved road. I saw a sign for a highway twenty-six miles away.
“Franco Benedetti promised my father he would protect Mateo and I when my father died.”
“Did he?”
Dominic didn’t sound surprised. “Maybe I should go to him.”
“Because he did a bang-up job protecting your brother?”
“You have a point.” I was silent for a moment. “How many days until I would have gone to auction?”