Page 6 of Jude

Heart hammering, I slid the document to her, and she tucked it into her bag, sliding it next to the weapon.

Luisa rushed me out of the ladies’ bathroom and back onto the bus, where she sat beside me with her purse on her lap.

Multiple times as we rumbled down the highway, she let the flap part.

Just enough for me to see the dull metal of the pistol barrel pointed at me.

I was in effect her prisoner.

She was twenty-five, four years younger than me, but with all the worldly know-how of a woman fifteen years older.

Hailing from Udine, she wore her bright copper hair in long waves down her back and had a wild streak that made me nervous.

She’d claimed she was a pro at modeling and music videos.

She swore the promised gigs in New York and Vegas would pay our rent for the whole year.

How naive I’d been to trust her.

We’d worked together in a factory where she befriended me over our quick lunch breaks.

Luisa spent those hours eating paninis with me, waxing lyrical about how beautiful I was.

She went on and on about how much money a face and a name like mine, as a former Italian beauty and famous actress, could make in America.

Then she made promises to get me the right paperwork to work in the US.

How could I have been so foolish to trust her?

In shock, drained and so over my life, I didn’t even fight her.

I wanted to call for help, reach out to my cousin Anya in Calabria, but my phone’s battery was at 12%, and Luisa was monitoring me.

Why had I ever listened to her?

I wished I had never gotten caught up in the fantasy she described and succumbed to the temptation of the better life she painted for me.

We got off the bus on the outskirts of a town.

She checked her phone several times for directions, and soon enough, we walked down a gravel access track that led to a battered van with its headlights cut off.

We spent an hour in the cramped cabin with five others, as we traversed the highways through a series of pine-heavy mountain corridors.

The ride seemed to take forever until we veered toward a sign that read ‘Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport’.

A message popped up on my phone.

Dario: You’ll soon be in New York, with the big city lights and well-paying gigs. The model photographers and I can’t wait to meet you.

Luisa peered at my screen over my shoulder.

‘He really can’t wait to get his hands on you.’

Her smirk was laced with a diabolical edge, and I shivered.

What plans did they have for me?

With the glowing terminal signs of Burlington Airport in view, we got dropped off behind an isolated gas station off Williston Road at 5 a.m.