Page 71 of Capo
Twenty-Three
Chloe
When the seatbelt sign is turned off, I head for the cockpit again. “How long before we’re there?”
The co-pilot half-turns in his seat. He’s a clean-shaven man with a sharp chin and kind, brown eyes. “Fifteen hours. We’ll make a brief stop and refuel in Paris. But we just got word that we might need to land in Jacksonville too before we leave the States. We don’t know for how long.”
“Fifteen!” I groan. “Is there any food around?”
“Sure. There are prepared meals in the back, in the fridge.”
“Oh, thank God!” My stomach growls loudly at his words and I spin around and make my way to the lounge area, raiding the fridge, finding it stocked with meals in plastic packages, both breakfast food and main meals. There are bottles of juice, sparkling water, red and white wine, beer, and tiny booze bottles. My hands shake as I rip open a breakfast package and stuff my face. I put vodka in a glass of orange juice and gulp it down. Who’s gonna care? I can get shit-faced. No one’s here to tell me what I can and can’t do.
A part of me is excited, the tiny part that doesn’t feel imprisoned, violated, and completely at the mercy of a ruthless, uncaring man. Sicily! Europe! Fucking hell! I’ve never been out of the States.
I sleep, but twitch awake over and over from quickly escaping nightmares of hands that grab me hard, threats of rape, of death. In some of the dreams it’s Salvatore who hurts me. In some of the dreams he holds me and makes me feel safe. I haven’t looked at the bruises again, but I sense them all too well. We end up spending the day in a hangar outside Jacksonville and I’m bored out of my mind. I down more wine and, after some fiddling, kick life into an entertainment system and watch two movies back to back. I become best friends with one of the couches, a throw blanket, and a couple of pillows, my mind a little too fuzzy to focus.
I’m glued to the window as we pass over the coastline to France, little villages, vast fields. It’s gray and winter, sadly not a lot of snow, though. We went skiing a few times when I was a kid. I miss the snow. I should have moved north and not to fucking San Francisco. I squeal when we pass over Paris and I take in the wide river running like a serpentine through its city center, and the actual Eiffel tower!
The pilots take turns taking a break while we refuel, but I’m not let out of the plane. Clearly, Salvatore reaches me even here. At least I get a whiff of French air when they open and close the door. And a heavy smell of fumes from the fuel.
We don’t make another stop. Flat fields. Snow covered mountains that feel so close that I think I can touch them. Ocean. Blue, glittering ocean.
We traveled into the night, smacked into the Earth shadow that came rushing toward us over the Atlantic, we met dawn in Paris and now the sun shines relentlessly from a near-cloudless sky. Pressure builds in my ears and the seatbelt sign is turned on again. I’ve been pleasantly buzzed the whole time, having had wine with my meals and drinks in between. Who knows what awaits me? I imagine a convent, or a dungeon, chains and shackles. How the hell can he imagine I won’t try to get away as soon as I have the chance?
One of the pilots comes up to me. “Time to buckle up, ma’am. We’re about to land.”
I glance out the window and see nothing but mountains. “Where?”
“It’s a small strip of a private airport.” He turns to leave, and I grab his arm.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Our job was to take you here. I expect someone will meet you. Put on your seatbelt now.”
I snap it in place across my hips, but as soon as he’s back in the cockpit, I unbuckle and make a dash for the fridge, grabbing the last little bottle of Vodka. I need liquid courage if I’m gonna survive this.
The airfield is tiny, and I hold my breath as we land, clutching the armrests. I’m not generally afraid of flying, but damn, we stopped a few feet from where the tarmac ended. To the side stands a black car and a man, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, looking very casual apart from the gun on his hip. I look pleadingly at the co-pilot as the stairs descend. This isn’t normal, don’t leave me here! But I don’t speak. I’m trapped in the claws of their capo, and maybe they are too?
The heat slaps me in the face as if I walked into a wall and I gasp for air, sweat breaking out all over my body in my thick outfit. As I set foot on the uneven white concrete I realize I still don’t have shoes. I look at the barren mountains surrounding us, the rough dry grass, the barracks, and give up all resistance.
I’m not going anywhere.
“Hi,” I mutter to the man, who is admittedly quite hot. He’s tall and dark, sports a thick beard, his muscles bulge beneath his pristinely white T-shirt.
“Buongiorno, Signorina.” He holds open the backdoor for me. The motor is running and the air inside is blessedly cool.
“Oh, please tell me someone speaks English,” I groan.
The man hops in the front and turns halfway around, firing off a huge smile. “Si. I do. But where you’re going, I’m not sure many do.” His accent is heavy, but his English is good.
I shuffle forward, eager for any sliver of information. “Where am I going?”
“A little village in the mountains,” he tilts his head to the left and I look where he’s indicating, toward the winding, dusty gravel road, disappearing in the distance.
I catapult backward as we suddenly move. “Who lives there?”
He shrugs. “People.”