I stared straight ahead, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel inch by inch.
Easiest mark.
Pathetic.
Send her to the morgue.
Swap out her child.
Blood welled up in my throat. I forced it back down.
Half an hour later, the happy family of three dragged several oversized suitcases out and piled into their car, chatting and laughing. They didn't check the street. Didn't scan the parked cars the way anyone connected to a Family should. They had no soldiers, no lookout, no discipline. Just the careless ease of people spending someone else's money.
I sat in place for ten minutes. My skull hummed. My mind was blank. Through the windshield, the iron gate of the Kingsgate villa stood open behind them, and a light on the second floor still glowed in the room they'd just left. The room I had paid for. The life I had funded, down to the last silk pillowcase.
My assistant's call jolted me awake.
"Donna Montecarlo, the person you asked me to find. I found her."
My whole body went rigid. I barely trusted my own ears.
It took a long time before I found my voice again, and when I did, it was shaking. "Where?"
The Montecarlo Estate to Ashford. Over five hundred miles. I didn't stop once.