Their Forever - Chloe Kent Page 0,30
a tote bag, she filled it with a pair of jeans, a hoodie, and a pair of sunglasses. She stuffed it with a pair of flat shoes as well.
I'm coming Bethy, she whispered.
She would have to do this alone. There was no other way around it. Her bodyguards would draw too much attention to where she was going. She could have told Liam about it, and he would have sorted everything out for her in a heartbeat, but that would only instigate a mafia war, and it had nothing to do with the politics of mafia. This was a domestic incident, involving one violent henchman and her close friend. All she had to do was slip in, get Bethy out, send her off where no one would find her.
John was the only person she could trust to help her without involving Liam. He would, of course, first try to talk her out of it, but in the end, he would do her bidding.
She hadn't worked out the rest of the logistics yet, but John also knew people, and when it was time to tell him everything, he would help her get Bethy out of the country with new identities for her and her son.
With a quivering ice-cold hand, she sat on the edge of the bed and called John.
“John,” she said, feeling like a fraud when she greeted him with false cheer.
“Little ma'am. How are you this morning?” he asked in his slow tapered voice.
She blew out a breath and closed her eyes.
“John, I need help.”
“Anything. Of course.”
“I need you to come to the shelter in about an hour and a half. But I need you to park your car at the back entrance. It would help if no one saw you—”
“What's going on, Olivia?” he asked with fatherly concern.
“Do you trust me?”
“You know I do. But you are scaring this old man. Does Liam know whatever is going on?”
She shuddered to think how colossally angry Liam would be if he ever found out what she was planning to do, and alone at that, with only John as her backup. And he wouldn't understand this was not something to start a gang war over because the only people who would end up getting hurt would be Bethy and her son.
The instant they knew Liam Stone was involved in taking away one of their women, a war would be inevitable. It would have happened when Liam took Olivia and her family away from under the psychotic grasp of Nunzio Romano, if he hadn't paid the man such an exponential amount for her. An amount she wasn't even the tiniest, tiniest fraction worth.
It was Nunzio's father who had ensured the deal went as planned, because even he didn't trust his son, to take Liam's money and do something foolish like try and kidnap Olivia afterward.
She had witnessed the wide degree of mutual respect between Romano Senior and Liam. But Romano Senior had warned Liam that his son carried misguided pride and wouldn't forget this easily. Liam, as powerful and ruthless as he was, knew how much Romano loved his son even if the man was an idiot, and he promised not to kill Nunzio as long as he didn't come after Liam or his property, his property being Olivia and her family.
But this, what she was planning on doing, could provoke a war and give Nunzio a valid reason to start it. She would hate to mess up and be the reason Liam had to kill Nunzio, not while his father was still alive, which was the promise Liam had made to Nunzio himself.
The day Romano Senior died, he was coming for Nunzio for daring to lay his hand on Olivia.
Up to this day, the phantom pain she felt in her cheek from being butted with a gun by Nunzio evoked all the myriad feelings of fear and helplessness. That she couldn't have done anything for her family. That she would have ended up in Nunzio's house, drugged and brutally abused by him, then used by his men if it weren't for Liam.
No, she couldn't involve him in this. John would help her. He always did. But she withheld the information of where John was going to drive her. That would certainly make him go straight to Liam whether she begged him or not.
“John, please just wait for me at the back entrance of the shelter. Please.”
For a moment she thought he would demand more information, while she fervently prayed he wouldn't.
“All