I’d always had a very well-honed sense of fight or flight cultivated over years of being faced with such situations over and over again, but this took it to another level.
I’d never actually had to flee for my life.
The tires squealed against the asphalt as I careened from Richmond onto Forest Hill, the left side of the road giving way to trees, and then, up ahead, the rolling green of a manicured golf course.
There was a sharp crack.
“What was that?” I cried right before another shot was fired.
The bullet lodged in the back of the vehicle with a dull thwack. I pressed harder on the gas. “Dio mio, they’re shooting at me!”
The motorcyclist had a clear shot at me now on the road, and he was gaining ground, one hand raised with the unmistakable sight of a gun in his hand.
Hot metallic anxiety pooled on the back of my tongue as another shot was fired and broke through the back window, glass chattering like teeth as it broke into the car. I ducked slightly, panting.
“Take the golf course, Elena,” Dante ordered, his voice a calm, steady weight pinning down my reeling thoughts. “Now!”
Without thinking too much, I wrenched the steering wheel to the right, taking the car off the road through a gap in the trees and onto the smooth grass of the fairway.
“Frankie is looking up the course, but you should be able to follow it across to Richmond Road,” Dante told me as I traversed the green.
A curse tore from my mouth as the car fell from the edge of a small hill, soared over a bunker, and landed lopsidedly on the green once more.
“Dio mio, Madonna santa,” I chanted, forgetting my atheism and my Americanism in my all-consuming panic.
The motorbike had veered off the road behind me, but I could see in my rearview mirror that the SUV had continued on, probably looking to cut me off somewhere ahead.
“Dante, if they get me––” I started.
“Stai zitto!” he barked, ordering me to shut up. “Do not say such things. Focus, Elena. Coraggio!”
So, I focused.
A golfer dove out of my way as I zoomed past a tee box. A ball cracked the front windshield. I almost lost traction trying to slow down to maneuver through a small copse of trees, but finally, the clubhouse appeared in the distance and the parking lot beside it.
“Benissimo, Elena,” Dante praised me as my hands cramped painfully around the wheel. “My fighter.”
Distantly, I was aware of sirens building to a crescendo.
The car skittered over the grass at the end of the first hole and jumped the curb into the parking lot. I lost control for a split second. The body of the Ferrari spun out, and the passenger side slammed into a parked Bentley. My head hit the door with a painful crack I felt reverberate in every bone of my body.
“Elena?” Dante snapped. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head, gritting my teeth. Behind me, the motorbike went around a bunker and barreled toward me, gun raised once more. There were people on the green, around the clubhouse, in the parking lot.
A shot fired, and screams erupted around me.
“Andiamo,” Dante shouted at me.
I put the car in reverse, cringing at the grind of metal on metal as I pulled away from the crumpled Bentley. My hands shook around the wheel, fingers aching as I gripped it too hard. But I ignored all of that and stomped hard on the gas pedal to peel out of the driveway just as the motorcycle jumped the curb.
As I raced out into the street, the GMC SUV nearly T-boned me when it pulled up. I swerved in time to avoid the worst of it, getting clipped at the front right as I shot forward onto Richmond Avenue.
I watched with bated breath as the motorbike wasn’t as lucky.
It flew into the side of the stalled car, the biker’s helmet crashing through the passenger side window. When the man pulled back, not hurt so much as pinned between his bike and the other car, I caught a flash of longish black hair.
Another vehicle coming from the other direction caught the edge of the SUV, spun out, and crashed into the ditch on the other side of the road, blocking traffic.
Blocking my pursuers.
“They crashed,” I croaked, my throat so dry the words hurt.
“Keep driving,” he commanded.
I drove.
Dante coolly instructed me through the neighborhood streets to Staten Island Expressway, which took me over the Verrazzano Bridge into Brooklyn. A black sedan peeled in front of me from an onboard ramp at 92nd Street, and I instantly tensed, air hissing between my teeth.
“Calmarsi, Elena,” Dante soothed. “It’s just Adriano. You can follow him home, si?”
I nodded again.
“Talk to me,” he ordered gently.
“Bene,” I whispered, then cleared my throat. “Okay, I’m good.”
“That’s my girl,” he told me, the warmth of relief and pride in his tone washing over me through the speakers. “Adriano will see you home. I’ll be waiting.”