Levi, Axel and Dario arrived in the second car. Ordinarily, they would have taken two separate cars, one leading his car and one following, but it was late and they decided to head home. No one knew they were making their way back to the hotel. The two bodyguards and Dario exited, and the car pulled away. Valentino turned toward them as Emmanuelle leaned against the side of the hotel as if she couldn’t stand up on her own.
“I might just sleep right here,” Emmanuelle declared, and started to slide down the wall just as a shot rang out.
The bullet hit right where her head had been. Two more shots followed the first one, following Emmanuelle as she dropped all the way to the ground. Valentino dove for her, throwing his body over the top of hers, pinning her beneath him. Levi and Axel faced the shooter, weapons out, bodies in front of the couple.
“Move, move, go to your left,” Levi said sharply. “There’s cover to your left, Mr. Saldi. Can you get her moving?”
Dario had disappeared. Val knew what that meant. He was actively hunting the shooter. Emmanuelle was already heeding Levi’s commands with Val. Neither wanted Levi or Axel in harm’s way, and it was clear the shooter was willing to kill them in order to reach Emmanuelle. She was definitely the target.
Valentino and Emmanuelle immediately rolled toward cover as quickly as possible. The alcove was small, but a thick wall would block the shooter’s sight to them. Emmanuelle hadn’t made a single sound. His anger was back. The idea that someone would want to kill her because of him was almost more than he could stand. The sidewalk had little pebbles on it, and they dug into their backs. He couldn’t protect her from that, and it seemed a silly inconvenience to even consider when they were being shot at, but he couldn’t help what went through his mind.
He managed to pull out his phone to text Stefano. He wanted the shooter. Between Dario and Stefano, they would get him. They remained in the alcove for what seemed like hours. In reality, it was only twelve minutes, but it was twelve minutes too long. He got the all clear the same time Levi and Axel did from Dario. Then he got a second one from Stefano.
“You can’t say life with me is dull,” he said as they stepped into the elevators. He found himself holding his breath. Waiting. Beside him, Levi and Axel seemed to do the same.
For the first time since the incident, Emmanuelle looked up at him. He should have known better. Her eyes were bright. Clear. Shining. Her smile lit up his world. She leaned into him, fitting her body against his.
“I never did like dull, honey. You know that.”
Jason Caruso wanted his own money in order to get out from under his father’s thumb. Emmanuelle discovered his secrets easily enough because he wrote his story down like a movie script, determined one day to produce it for the big screen. He was going to not only produce it, but play the leading role. He had started off small enough, exchanging his identity with Marco’s to see if he could pull it off. He didn’t want to get in trouble when he was talking a girl into paying off his debts for him with her body. Marco had so much more pull than he did. It amused him to think that Marco might wonder why a girl would be so angry with him later when he didn’t call her again after she did so much for him.
In college, he began really thinking about how he could make his own money without relying on his father for support. There were always assholes who wanted women, or younger girls or boys. He had his ear to the ground. They just needed the right supplier. He had to be careful, and he couldn’t ever get caught.
Emmanuelle read through the script that Jason so meticulously worked on, detailing with excruciating care how he’d built himself an empire in sex trafficking to rival anyone. It was slow going, cultivating and developing the various networks. He always used Marco Messina’s identity if he had to meet in person. It was so much more powerful to be a Messina than a Caruso, and those he spoke with were both impressed and scared.
He hadn’t left his father’s employ because he could use the shipping lines and ports. The trucking companies. It felt good to be putting one over on his father, who thought him weak for wanting to be in acting. Acting turned out to be his greatest asset. Even now, his family still made fun of his dreams of acting in theater and movies. Little did they know that he had amassed a fortune of his own, one he had no intention of sharing with them—and he’d done so through his acting.