Three days have gone by since.
Sienna went to her job. She smiled nicely at the people she served. She cleaned the tables, carried the food, and made the coffee.
But inside, she couldn't stop thinking about that night, the blood, the rain, the stranger sleeping on her couch, and then his sudden disappearance.
Every now and then, she looked over at the woods behind the restaurant, as if she thought a man might be standing there in the shadows of the trees.
Stop thinking about him.
She had lived through worse situations. She ran away from worse people.
She had made a life where no one knew who she was, and no one cared.
But peace was never going to last for someone whose family name was covered in blood.
It happened very quickly.
Sienna went outside after the busy lunch time, to take the trash out behind the restaurant. The alley was empty.
Then,
The clear sound of a gun being loaded.
The sound of shoes moving on the rocks.
A quiet voice behind her said, "Don't scream."
She stopped breathing.
Before she could turn around, someone covered her mouth with their hand.
Other arms grabbed her from behind, and lifted her a little off the ground.
Her heart beat so fast.
"Take her," a calm voice said. "Now."
"Wait,!" She tried to fight, moving her body around, but they were trained and worked well together.
She didn't even get to breathe in all the way.
A cloth went over her eyes, and everything went dark.
She felt a huge burst of panic in her chest.
"Please,please don't," she said, but her words were hard to hear as they moved her forward.
"Don't fight," one of the men said, in a surprisingly soft way.
"We're not going to hurt you."
That didn't make her feel better.
People who say that usually mean the opposite thing.
Her foot tripped on the uneven ground, and they held her tighter, helping her into a car.
The door closed with a slam next to her. The engines started up loudly. The tires made a loud noise.
The car moved quickly, and her scream was lost.
She made tight fists in her lap, and her nails dug into her skin.
She could hear two, maybe three, men breathing in the car. She could feel them watching her.
This is it. They've found me.
Her mind was racing.
The Morettis.
Her father.
Adan Micasso, the man she was promised to, like an animal.
She thought about how Williams would look if he knew where she was.
She ran? From us?
He would do horrible things to her. Adan would probably do even worse things.
Sienna made herself breathe slowly. She had lived through the night her brother killed a lot of people.
She had lived through running away from a big mafia group.
She had lived through problems with herself.
But she wasn't sure she would live through this.
She lost track of the hours that went by. The vehicle went on different roads, at different speeds, and maybe had different drivers.
Sometimes she could hear people speaking in Italian. Other times, it was so quiet it felt like her chest was being squeezed.
Her mouth was dry. Her hands hurt from holding them so tightly.
At last, the vehicle began to slow down. There was gravel under the wheels.
She could hear the crunch of a long driveway that seemed to go on forever. Gates were opened.
More vehicles arrived. More men appeared.
The door was opened.
"Let's go," a quiet voice said.
Hands helped her out; they weren't rough, but they didn't ask if she wanted help.
She tried to keep her feet on the ground, but her legs were shaking uncontrollably.
She almost fell, but someone held her arm to steady her.
"Please," she whispered, her voice cracking.
"You must be mistaking me for someone else."
She stopped speaking when they removed the blindfold.
Light filled her eyes. Her vision was blurry, slowly making out shapes.
A big house.
No, it was a huge property, wide with tall columns, perfect hedges, and fountains made of marble.
Men were everywhere, on balconies, on the paths, and near cars. Not just guards. Soldiers.
Their eyes looked sharp. Cold. Deadly.
Her heart sank.
This wasn't the Moretti family.
This wasn't Adan.
This was something else entirely.
Something even worse.
She took a step back, but a hand gently took her arm, not to hold her back, but to stop her from falling.
"Miss," the man holding her quietly said, "take a breath."
She didn't do it.
She couldn't.
She was terrified.
Then a door opened at the top of the marble steps.
A man came out.
He was tall, wearing a black shirt and pants that fit perfectly, with the sleeves pushed up to his lower arms.
His watch sparkled on his wrist. He walked calmly, with confidence.
He stood in the courtyard.
Sienna froze.
She forgot how to breathe.
His eyes, a dark, hard-to-read brown, looked at her very intensely. And when he spoke, the courtyard went silent.
"You rescued my brother."
His words hit her so hard that she briefly forgot her fear.
His brother?
She opened her mouth slightly.
Then,
The smell of cedar.
The smell of gunpowder.
The feeling of a body on her sofa.
A man covered in blood in the middle of a storm.
Her blood went cold.
The stranger she helped. The man who disappeared.
The one who looked like danger in human form.
"That…" Sienna swallowed hard, her voice shaky. "That man, was he your brother?"
The man on the steps nodded once.
He didn't smile. He didn't blink. He just confirmed it was true.
"That was Dante Luciano."
The name shocked her.
Luciano.
Not just any Luciano, but that Luciano.
The most feared Mafia family in Europe.
The hidden empire.
The shadow organization that even the Moretti family avoided provoking.
Sienna felt like she might fall.
She had taken Dante Luciano into her cabin.
She had stitched up his cuts.
She had touched him.
She had let him sleep in her house.
She had let him go away and not be seen anymore.
And now she was standing right in the center of his family's big, protected home.
"I..." Her voice broke a little. "I didn't know who he was at all. I wasn't trying to get mixed up in anything bad. I just, I just saw someone who was hurt and bleeding."
The man's face didn't change to look nicer, but something changed a little bit, even though it was hard to see.
"I'm Matteo," he said clearly. "I'm Dante's older brother."
Her heart was beating so hard in her ears that she couldn't hear anything else clearly.
Matteo walked one step down the stairs, putting his hands easily in his pockets like he wasn't in charge of a big business.
Like she wasn't shaking with fear.
"You were captured because Dante woke up," Matteo went on. "And the very first thing he said was that someone had saved him." He stopped for a moment. "A woman had saved him."
Sienna moved back a little, like she was hurt.
Matteo's dark eyes looked all over her, like he was searching for the part of her that Dante had talked about.
"You should know," he said in a soft way, "my family is not used to owing anyone anything."
A cold feeling went up her back.
She took a step backwards, and almost bumped right into a guard who had a weapon.
Matteo lifted his hand a little, telling the men to step back.
"You're not in danger here, Sienna Moretti."
Hearing her real name made her feel like she had been hit.
Her whole world seemed to tip to one side.
Her breath came out in a shaky way.
"You, how,"
"Dante knew the way you talked," Matteo said to her.
"And the papers you had were changed to be fake by someone we know well." He moved his head a little to the side. "When we want to know something... we find it out."
She felt like she was going to be sick.
Matteo's next words were quiet, but they carried a lot of weight.
"You went into danger to save my brother's life from being lost."
Sienna swallow
ed with difficulty.
"And now," Matteo Luciano spoke,
"you've walked right into the middle of our world."
She couldn't see very well. The big house. The guards. The brothers.
She had run away from scary creatures.
Only to end up where evil people were in charge.