Chapter 11 - INTO THE WATER
Sophia jumped.
She didn’t think.
Didn’t breathe.
Didn’t listen to Lorenzo shouting her name.
She went over the broken railing and hit the black harbor water.
The cold punched the air from her lungs.
“Mia!”
Nothing.
Sophia dove.
Dark water.
Oil.
Debris.
Her hands swept through empty space.
Then she touched fabric.
She grabbed it.
A coat.
Not Mia.
Sophia surfaced.
“Mia!”
A tiny cry came from behind the tugboat.
“Mommy!”
Sophia turned.
Mia clung to a floating piece of wood.
Sophia swam harder than she had ever moved in her life.
“I’ve got you.”
Mia wrapped both arms around her.
“I knew you’d come.”
Sophia nearly broke apart.
“I will always come.”
A life ring splashed beside them.
Lorenzo pulled them toward the boat.
Once on deck, Sophia held Mia so tightly the child complained.
“Mommy, I can’t breathe.”
Sophia laughed and cried at the same time.
“Good. Complain all you want.”
Then she remembered Valentina.
Lorenzo was already beside her.
Valentina lay against the deck.
Blood covered her side.
Her eyes fluttered open.
Sophia looked at the woman who had beaten her.
Threatened her.
Helped save her daughter.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about you,” Sophia said.
Valentina gave a weak smile.
“That makes two of us.”
Lorenzo pressed cloth against her wound.
“Stay awake.”
Valentina looked at him.
“I did care about you.”
He said nothing.
“I know you won’t believe that.”
“I believe you made choices.”
“That’s worse.”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“Victor survived.”
Sophia stared toward the burning pier.
“How do you know?”
“He always has an exit.”
Lorenzo looked up.
Victor had disappeared.
So had Carlo.
Sirens approached from the north.
Sophia said, “We need police.”
Lorenzo shook his head.
“We need the right police.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Victor has judges, cops, customs agents, and federal contractors in those ledgers.”
Sophia stared at him.
“Then who can we trust?”
Lorenzo reached into his shoe.
He removed the tiny drive.
“My father.”
Sophia frowned.
“Your father is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Then how does that help us?”
“Because before he died, he built a dead-man protocol.”
Lorenzo inserted the drive into his phone.
A password screen appeared.
Three attempts remaining.
“What’s the password?” Sophia asked.
“I don’t know.”
Valentina opened her eyes.
“I do.”
Everyone looked at her.
She whispered two words.
“Emma’s mother.”
Lorenzo went completely still.
Because Emma’s mother had supposedly died ten years earlier.
And according to Valentina…
May you like
she hadn’t.
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