“Let me go! EMILIO! EMILIO!”
I run up behind them, taking Sian into my arms, trying to hold her back, but she’s proving stronger now that the drugs have left her system.
“Sit down,” I tell her, shoving her into a seat almost as harshly as Niklas had shoved me.
“SIAN!” Emilio’s angry voice rings out.
Two gun barrels are pointed at Emilio’s head when he comes rushing up the steps to get into the plane. I can just barely keep Sian restrained in the seat; sobbing, she digs her fingertips into my arm. “Please! Let me go!”
When Emilio sees her, relief and heartache wash over his features; he can’t move toward her unless he wants to get shot, but he…oh my God, he does love her. I can see it in his eyes.
“How’d you know where to find us?” Niklas demands.
“I followed you when you left the mansion,” Emilio says, but he can’t take his eyes off Sian. “Now let her go; let her go or I’ll kill you.”
“She’s mine.” Niklas pushes the gun toward Emilio, daring him to move any closer.
It suddenly dawns on Emilio—we aren’t who we claimed to be. He tears his gaze away from Sian long enough to see Nora pointing a gun at him, standing beside Niklas as his equal and not his slave; Emilio is confused.
“Who are you people? I knew it! You’re a fraud. Sian, did they hurt you? Did he touch you?” His voice begins to rise; he starts to move forward anyway, wanting to get to Sian, until Niklas and Nora remind him who’s in charge, and he stops.
“They helped me,” Sian calls out over the few rows of seats. “No one hurt me, Emilio.”
Emilio’s eyes dart to and from Sian and Niklas; he’s in clear need of answers.
“Step out of the plane,” Niklas warns Emilio, walking forward to force Emilio backward.
“Sit down,” I tell Sian, and I shoot up from the seat. I look down into her tortured face, seizing her gaze, hoping to make her trust me. “Please just wait here; let me talk to them.”
She nods, tears slipping down her cheeks.
“Niklas,” I say, moving toward them, “let him inside.”
“Get back, Izabel.”
“Niklas, please—they love each other, that much is obvious to me; let him in the plane.”
“Bullshit.” Niklas keeps his eyes and his gun trained on Emilio. “This motherfucker is sick; the whole family is demented; he fucks his sister for Christ’s sake!”
“I’ve never fucked her!” Emilio roars. He moves back up the steps despite the guns pointed at his face. (Please don’t shoot him, Niklas, please don’t shoot him.) “Francesca and I were close all our lives, closer than any of our sisters; we were all each other had—and you’re right, our family is demented! But Francesca, as she got older, her love for me evolved into something…different. I never gave into it fully, but I did what I had to do—and I never fucked her! She needs help; she always has. But I’m not going to be the one to help her; I’ve wanted out for years.”
“Then why are you still there?” Niklas asks, and I can tell he doesn’t believe a thing Emilio is saying—or he doesn’t want to. “Why give in to Francesca at all?”
Emilio sighs and looks briefly at the floor.
“Because she’s my sister,” he answers, raising his eyes, filled with shame and conflict. “For a long time I just pretended; I hoped she’d change, but she didn’t—she got worse.” He glances at Sian. “Then Sian came along and I changed, too. I vowed to her I’d help her get out, that we’d leave together.”
“Then why haven’t you?” Nora asks.
“I was waiting for the right time,” Emilio says. “It’s not as easy as it may seem; things had to be done…carefully.”
“Looks like it was pretty easy for us,” Nora adds.
“No”—Emilio shakes his head gravely; a knot moves down the center of his throat—“you don’t understand: we couldn’t just leave.”
“Francesca was an evil bitch,” Niklas speaks up. “I give her that much, but aside from the shit she did behind closed doors, she didn’t seem like much else—her security was even a joke to me. If you were afraid she’d follow you, I doubt she would’ve gone far.”
Niklas is right: the security at the mansion wasn’t as top-notch as Victor warned us it would be. I felt more in danger in Arthur Hamburg’s mansion in Los Angeles than I did here in Italy. It doesn’t make sense.
“It’s not Francesca who’d find us and kill us,” Emilio says. “It’s not my sister who everyone is afraid of, believe it or not—it’s our father, Vincent Moretti. Francesca was his favorite, his Little Girl.” He looks across at Sian again and says, “We’ll be running forever, Love; my father, when he finds out from Francesca that I abandoned her, abandoned the family, he’ll hunt me down and kill us both.”
“Then we’ll die together,” Sian vows, now standing behind me; she reaches out her hand to Emilio.
I move to the side to let her pass.