Page 160 of Wicked Villain

No phone, no credit cards, nothing. I’ll be leaving New York with just the clothes on my back. Mama told me she’d pack what she could from the few things I had back at the house.

The plan is to buy everything we need once we reach Buenos Aires.

But nothing will be the same. I don’t even have my sketchpads or my artworks. Nothing I’ve done over the last few weeks.

I am saying goodbye to that, too.

I reach the bathroom a few minutes later. The cameras will be switched off from here on out. I don’t even need to check around, but I still do. Just making sure I’m alone.

I am.

The service door is just across from me. I open it and when I step into the dark hallway, this feels real.

God, I’m really doing this.

I inhale a deep breath and push forward. Can’t turn back now.

I close the door behind me and quicken my pace.

There’s a muted light at the end of the hall. I walk toward it, feeling like this escape is a rebirth. Leaving the old life behind and heading toward somewhere new.

Before I reach the end, a man wearing a maintenance uniform steps out into the light. He’s Italian and looks similar to Uncle Maurice. He smiles at me.

“Miss D’Auria,” he says in a gentle voice, using my maiden name. Sounds so weird now. Still, I nod.

“Yes.”

“Come with me. I’ll take you to your mother,” he says, speaking with an accent.

He leads me to a truck with a cleaning logo on the side.

I go in the back, and I’m seated amongst a bunch of boxes.

The door closes and the truck rumbles to life. As we drive away, my anxiety goes through the roof. I keep expecting something to happen.

Surely, this won’t work and someone—most likely Roman—will come after me.

But nothing happens, and no one comes after me.

Thirty minutes go by and the truck shuttles happily down the road.

By now, Anushka and everyone else will know that I’ve left.

Lev may know, too.

He’ll go mad, but it doesn’t matter. I escaped.

I finally ran away.

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

Lev

Corrado. That fucking son of a bitch.

I scrub a hand over my face, scanning the recent report I received this morning on Corrado. My team was able to retrieve email correspondence from the past week.