The Woman at the Docks - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,12

a small advantage creeping around in the daytime.

Even if it was disgusting, the humidity so thick it made my chest feel tight when I tried to take a deep breath, even if I was wishing for a dark sky and a slight evening breeze off the water.

It was okay, though.

It would be worth it if I found what I needed, if all of this could end right now.

But three hours later, my entire back slick with sweat, I couldn't find a single container that had been brought in from South America.

Not one.

When there should have been dozens of new ones. On a busy day, even hundreds.

What the hell was going on?

Heartbeat skittering, I rushed back out the way I had come. Or I thought it was the way I had come. But then there was a turn I didn't remember. Then a cluster of containers I wasn't sure I had seen before.

Panic swelling, I turned back, sure I made a wrong turn somewhere, and got turned around, not being used to being in the area in the steadily decreasing daylight.

But turning back seemed wrong too, sending me further into oddly stacked containers, not in the neat, parallel rows they were typically in.

I generally thought of myself as a pretty calm, reasonable person, not one prone to panicking, to overreacting to any situation.

But whereas a calm, rational person would have stopped, taken a few deep breaths, then slowly gone back the way they came from, I lost my ever-loving mind and charged forward, heartbeat hammering, sweat pouring, stomach twisting into painful knots.

That said, I wasn't sure anyone could be calm and rational when illegally trespassing on private property owned by the local Cosa Nostra. After having already been threatened by them. When they were actively looking for me.

"Shit. Shit shit shit," I hissed, gulping in air as I shot around a corner, finding myself in a larger than usual open space with a narrower exit.

Praying it was finally a way out, feeling like I was choking on unfamiliar claustrophobia, I bolted down that narrow row.

I realized it all three seconds too late.

The movement of the containers from South America, the new arrangement of the stacks, the way I couldn't seem to find my way out.

They'd created a maze. And I was the mouse inside of it, completely clueless, being driven toward a dead end.

Where I wasn't alone.

"I hope whatever you are after is going to be worth all of this," Luca Grassi's voice called, sounding resigned, making my head whip toward the corner to find him leaning there, watching me, seemingly completely unaffected by the heat even in his three-piece suit while sweat dripped off my jaw and fell to the concrete at my feet.

Even as I turned to run, I could hear footsteps closing in behind me, unhurried, knowing they had me trapped.

I turned fully anyway, wanting to see the face of the other man who might take my life.

He seemed to be around Luca's age, wearing all black, handsome in a very lethal sort of way.

"Fuck. She's prettier than Dario said," the other man said, shaking his head as he looked at my face.

"No," I snapped, voice a strange, deep sound, completely foreign to me, born of a bone-deep fear of their hands on me.

"Relax, baby, I don't touch what isn't freely given," the man said, sounding offended. "And Luca here hasn't touched a woman in, what, eight months?" he teased, smirking.

Smirking.

Teasing.

While I was pretty sure I had somehow managed to swallow my own heart, and it had then taken up residence in my stomach, thumping away.

Luca ignored the bait, moving out of the shadows, coming closer to me.

"I'll ask you one more time," he started, voice ominous. "Who do you work for?"

"I work for the state of California," I told him. It was the truth, even if he didn't want to hear it.

Disappointment darkened his eyes as he sighed out his breath, nodding his head at his man.

"Don't," he demanded, reaching out for my wrist. "Don't make this difficult," he added when I jerked away, slamming back into the shipping container, feeling a corner of it ram me in the hip.

Don't make it difficult?

Did anyone in my situation actually make it easy on them? Knowing what everyone knew about the mob?

"We just want to ask you a few questions," the guy added, coming closer again.

"If you wanted to ask questions, you could ask them here," I snapped back, rushing around the back of Luca Grassi who made no