Too much loss in her vovó’s life. Too many hard things. And this was probably going to be the worst of it all.

Unless Sola got herself out.

As feelings too big and complicated to hold in threatened to short out her brain, she struggled to contain them … and the eventual solution for that was a surprise. She went with the impulse, however—in the same way she intended to use what she had found in the trunk wall.

Putting her only weapon down by her hip, she clasped her hands over her heart and bowed her head in prayer, chin to chest.

Opening her mouth, she waited for the rote passages of her Catholic childhood to resurface in her brain and tell her tongue what to do.

And they did. “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

The words formed a cadence, a beat like that of her heart, the rhythm uniting her with a whole host of Sundays in her distant past.

When she was finished, she waited for some relief or strength or … whatever you were supposed to get from this age-old ritual.

Nope. “Damn it.”

Words—it was all just words.

Frustration made her kick her head back, slamming it into the compartment—in just the wrong place. “Fuck!”

Time to get real, she told herself as she tried to reach around and rub the sore spot.

Bottom line? No one was coming to save her. As usual, she had only herself to fall back on, and if that wasn’t enough to get her out of this? Then she was going to die in a truly horrible way—and her grandmother was going to suffer. Again.

Talk about your prayers? Sola would have given anything just to go back and rewind the evening, hitting pause at that moment when she had come home and missed the strange sedan parked across the street. In her perfect, redo world, she would have gotten her gun out and put a silencer on it before setting a foot past the front door. She would have killed them both, and then gone upstairs and told her grandmother she was going to move the furniture around just as her vovó had asked the week before.

Under the cover of night, she would have then taken the pair of men out into the garage, backed the car up, and put them in her trunk. Or … more like one in the backseat and the other in the trunk.

Out to the boonies. Bye-bye.

After which, she would have packed up her grandmother and they would have left within the hour—even though it would have been the middle of the night.

Her grandmother wouldn’t have asked questions. She understood where things were at. Hard life, practical mind.

Off into the sunrise, so to speak, never to be seen again.

See? Much better movie all around—and maybe that could become reality again, provided Sola took care of business when Benloise’s bodyguards put on the brakes and finally let her out.

Grasping her flare, she started to prepare herself. What angle she was going to take. How to come at them.

Just mental masturbation, though, wasn’t it—everything was going to depend on split-second timing that was ultimately unpredictable.

As her mind floated into the zone, her breathing slowed and her senses sharpened. Waiting was not a problem anymore; time ceased to have any measure. Thoughts were not an issue. Exhaustion didn’t exist.

It was as she settled into that netherworld between now and later that something truly transformative happened.

She saw clear as day a photograph of her grandmother. It had been taken back in Brazil when she was nineteen. Her face was unlined and full in the best sense, youth gleaming out of her eyes, her hair down and flowing, not bound.

If she had known then what awaited her in adulthood, she would never have smiled.

Her son dead. Her daughter dead. Her husband dead. And her granddaughter, the only one who was left?

No, Sola thought. This had to end well. It was the only option.

Sola didn’t say anything out loud this time—there were no rote phrases or clasped palms. And she wasn’t sure she believed her own prayer any more than the other ones that had been taught to her. But for some reason, she found herself bending God’s ear in earnest.

I promise, Lord, that if you get me out of this, I will leave the life. I will take vovó and get out of Caldwell. I will never, ever endanger myself or steal from another or commit an evil act. This is my solemn vow to You, on my vovó’s beating heart.

“Amen,” she whispered aloud.

THE IRON MASK, CALDWELL, NEW YORK

“Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God…”

As Trez held the blond college student up off the floor, he had a good grip on the backs of her legs—but he was sorely tempted to drop her like a Hot Pocket. The sex was adequate—along the lines of the cold-pizza standard: Even if it’s cold, it’s still pizza.

But it ain’t no Bella Napoli on 7th Ave in Manhattan.

And this about-to-see-God stuff? Total buzz kill, and not because he was religious in the human way or jel that she was having a great time while he was thinking of pizza. Her grating, squeaky YouPorn performance with the head throws that kept landing her extensions in his face was getting on his nerves.

Closing his eyes, he tried to concentrate on the feel of his cock going in and out of her. The woman had big fake tits that were as hard as basketballs, and a stomach that had some jiggle, and he couldn’t decide what was worst: the fact that he wasn’t attracted to her in the slightest; the reality that he was fucking this skank in the front bathroom of his own club—so his staff was going to catch him walk-of-shaming it; or the chance, however slim, that his brother might hear about this from somebody.

Shit, iAm. The male had a stare that could make a football player in full tackle gear feel like his bare ass was in a stiff breeze.

Not what Trez was looking for.

“…God, oh, God, oh, God…”

FFS, if she could only spice it up with a couple JCs or something.

“OHGODOHGOD—”

Reaching between them, he decided to put himself out of his misery. Tickling her clit, he pitched her over that edge just in time for his erection to completely deflate and all but fall out of her.

Setting her back down on her feet, he immediately had to catch her, because her knees buckled.

“Oh … God … you’re amazing … you’re…”

Uh-huh, thanks, honey. The only thing he cared about was how long it would take to get her clothes back on. “You, too, baby.”

Trez leaned to the side and picked up her—was it that bra thing she thought was a shirt? Or her thong? Or—

“Oh, I don’t need my leggings yet … do I?”

These were for her legs? he thought as he held the black strip up. Hard to imagine it covering more than a hand or maybe one of those serving-bowl-size breasts.

Who had taken the pseudo-stockings off? Not him, he didn’t think, but he couldn’t remember, and not because he was drunk. This whole session, just like the last however many years of his love life, was not just utterly, but rather, purposely, forgettable.

Then why did he insist on pulling this shit again and again—

Right, no reason to channel iAm. His brother was more than capable of running through that rhetorical Every. Single. Fucking. Time. they were together.

“Daddy, I love you,” the girl said as she gripped his biceps and hung off him like he was a stripper pole. “I love this.”

“Me, too.”

“You love me, right?”

“Always.” He eyed the door and wished he’d scheduled a preemptive knock. “Lemme have your number, ’kay? ’Cause I gotta go back to work.”

Cue the pouting—and didn’t that make him want to bare his fangs and chew his way out of the bathroom wall.

“We could do it again,” she drawled, getting up on her tiptoes to try to nuzzle against his neck.

Girlie, I could hardly get through it once, he thought. A repeat is not anatomically possible.

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeease, daddy…” More nuzzling. Then she eased back. “Please?”