Page 5 of Jude

To much denser forest, with a dense canopy of pines flanking us on both sides of the highway.

When the Greyhound bus hissed to a halt at a desolate transit stop, I bolted for the restroom.

I was scarcely inside the cubicle when the door rattled, the latch snapping open as Luisa barged into my personal space.

She slammed the door shut behind her, her eyes hard, glittering with malice.

‘Listen to me, woman,’ she snarled. ‘Now that we’ve crossed the border, the rules have changed, capisci? From now on, I’m your minder. You eat, sleep and pee when I tell you, and you obey every single word that comes out of my mouth. Understood?’

Before I could reply, her hand slid into her jacket.

She pulled out a sleek, black semi-automatic handgun and shoved the cold iron muzzle against my temple.

The steel bit into my skin.

I jolted. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’

‘You think this is a game?’ she hissed, her fingers tightening on the grip. ‘If you so much as look at me wrong, I’ll call Dario. I’ll tell him you’re running, Sofia. I’ll tell him you’re a liability, and he will have you killed, regardless of whether you’re a former actress and star. Don’t test me.’

I’d been held up in the streets back home before and learned the hard way how to stay calm in a holdup.

Panic was a death sentence.

I held my cool, eyes on the graffiti-covered door and taking slow, deliberate breaths to steady my racing heart.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked her, trying to hide the quake in my voice. ‘I thought we were friends.’

‘Friends, fuck that. I’m being paid to deliver you to Dario in one piece,’ she hissed at me. ‘If that doesn’t happen, we’re both dead.’

Panic hit me.

‘I hear you, Luisa,’ I whispered, keeping my eyes locked on the cracked tile wall, forcing my voice to remain steady. ‘Put the gun away. We’re on the same team.’

‘Sì! All the way, one team. You try to escape, we’ll find you. You tell a soul about us, we’ll cut your tongue from your mouth,’ she hissed at me. ‘We won’t care that you are Sofia Antonelli, the once-famous Italian actress in La Tempesta dell’Amore and I Segreti del Mercato. You won’t model, dance, or ever act anymore.’

‘Who’s we?’ I dared ask.

‘The Compagni Syndicate.’

My heart sank at the name of one of the most notorious crime families in Italy.

‘Dario is Compagni?’

The handsome Italian man who recruited me to travel to the States via an IG video in my DMs was part of the mob?

Luisa grinned and nodded.

I froze as the cold, terrifying reality of what I had become caught up in hit me.

I thought I’d run away from organized crime when the syndicate bosses took over a slew of movie studios in Naples, forcing us actors into servitude.

Worse, my management agency, Talento Italiano, cut and ran, leaving me out of pocket and owing me millions in pay.

Broke and desperate, I escaped to Milan, trying to disappear into a life of anonymity, working in factories and cleaning jobs.

Yet somehow, the underworld’s trouble had found me again.

‘Your passport?’