Mafia Doll

Chapter 5

“And then what?” I say without looking at her. “What the hell is the point of two crazy girls stealing a truck?”

“Calm down?” Pamela answers without raising her voice. “If we stick to the plan, everything will be fine.”

“I don’t know if you’re trying to convince me or yourself.” With every kilometer, my faith shrinks a little more.

“I’ll leave the car half a kilometer from the spot,” she adds. “We go in on foot. Quiet.”

“That’s not even a plan. Where are you getting all this? Who are the others? If the Zetas cartel doesn’t make us disappear, the other guys will. You’re shredding my nerves.”

“I told you we heard everything at the hotel.”

“And at what price—your coworker was killed, Pamela.”

She shoots me a hard, wounded look that bites my tongue. I shut up. The rest of the ride is filled by the engine—and by my head, rehearsing exits that don’t exist.

She kills the lights near a dead gas station, and the car glides forward slowly. She glances at me: “We go on foot.” I nod. The air outside tastes like old metal. I rub my arms to scare off the cold or the fear—I can’t tell which.

“This way,” she says, tracking shadows with her eyes.

The place smells of spilled oil and iron. Pamela moves like she’s repeating a map learned in secret; meanwhile, I trip on a crack in the ground. There’s hardly any light. Just a thin yellow rectangle across the way, an open warehouse like a slack mouth. In the center, a white van with its headlights pinned on nothing.

“What are you doing?” Pamela hisses, annoyed.

My pulse spikes. I’m about to stand up, but Pamela yanks me back down before the night itself gives us away. Knees to the pavement.

“Quiet,” she breathes against my ear.

I inch a glance. Everything in me screams go.

“Pam…” I whisper.

“Shut the f**k up,” she snaps. “They’ll hear us.”

“No, this stinks. We bail, find another way. I’ll talk to the Boss, whatever it takes, but that truck is a headstone on wheels. Let’s leave. Please.”

“Trust me. Just this once.”

She holds my gaze, fishing for the rope that’s always held us. But there’s a new, icy streak in her eyes I don’t recognize.

She rises. I go after her like I’m being dragged by a magnet. We sprint toward the van.

“We’re toast,” slips out of me. “There’s someone in there!”

“Don’t chicken out,” she says.

She lifts her shirt and, like showing a key, reveals a pistol tucked in her waistband. I can’t process it. By the time I try to speak, the stranger is already in front of us.

“Well, look at that,” he says with a half-smile. “Did the delivery arrive early?”

His dry laugh splits the silence. We don’t scare him. My throat shakes, even more when Pamela aims at him without blinking.

“What’s the trick, sweetheart?” he spits, and still swallows when he sees the barrel.

My gaze ricochets between them. The bottled rage in Pamela tells me she knows him. The way she grips the gun… not a first-timer; her hold is confident.

“How much have you kept from me?” I think, swallowing hard.

“I figured,” he sneers. “All wrapping, no brains.”

The shot Pamela fires bites the barrels behind him, and the echoes boom. I shout her name. She doesn’t even blink.

“I didn’t come to kill you, Marcus,” she says flatly. “I’m here for the load. That’s it.”

My stomach burns. “What is she doing?” runs through me.

“And those guts, b***h—since when?” Marcus tilts his head. “I thought you’d still be crying over Antony. I should’ve finished you that night. Like your little friend.”

I freeze. Pamela swore her coworker went down because of Antony. But the crack of rage that runs across her face at his words tells me something else. Marcus takes advantage and aims at her.

“Out,” Pamela growls, without looking at me.

“W-what?”

“You take the truck,” she says, ice-cold. “You hide it. Far. And you tell no one.”

“Pam, stop…”

“Vanessa, go now! I’ll handle this.”

Marcus swings and lines me up. His eyes relish my shaking. He’s dying to squeeze twice and end the night.

“Let’s see, princess,” he smirks. “Which one gets the first bullet?”

A shot rings out. I curl up, arms over my face.

“Vanessa, to the truck!” Pamela roars.

My ear burns; a hot thread runs down my jaw. “Blood. He grazed me,” I think. Another centimeter and I wouldn’t be telling it.

“Vanessa!”

I snap back. A few meters away, Marcus clutches his bleeding hand, groaning. Pamela shot the gun out of his grip.

“You’re leaving,” she grits, grabbing my elbow and dragging me to the van. “That bastard can still put a hole in you. Got it? Move!”

“Come with me,” I beg. “Please.”

“No. He’s not walking away from this,” she says. “You take the load. I’ll catch up.”

The cowardly part of me decides to believe. I bolt to the cab, yank it open, and climb in. The wheel’s too big; the pedals too far.

“I don’t know how to drive this,” I mutter.

Another burst of gunfire erupts. I clamp my trembling palms over my ears, shrink into the seat. I cry without meaning to.

Hard knocks on the window snap me back. Pamela gestures: “Go. Now.”

I wish I were brave. That I could jump out and help. All I can do is obey. I hold her gaze for a heartbeat and tuck her promise into my chest.

“I start the engine,” I tell myself. I slam it into reverse as best I can. I swerve as the shots ping off the bodywork. I bounce out of the industrial zone; I drive badly, but fast. The headlights cut a tunnel, and I slip through it. A horn explodes; I yank the wheel and miss a red sedan I never saw coming.

The engine roars. So do I, on the inside.

Each kilometer stretches the thread between us.

“I’m leaving her behind,” I think. “Pamela.” And I hate myself for it while I keep my hands locked on the wheel.

How did I end up in this situation, stealing from the cartel? I’m sick with worry that I’ve abandoned Pamela. Everything will be fine, I repeat to myself as the black asphalt stretches like an endless ribbon and the headlights bite only a thin strip of night. My hands are sweating, choking the wheel as if my staying here depended on it. Tears come and go, blurred. It’s almost four. Tonight emptied me out. It tore something from me I don’t know how to name.

I blink and, for a second, the darkness swallows everything. When my vision comes back, I can make out the yellow sign: CURVE 35 km/h. I’m doing sixty. “Reasonable” for a straightaway. For this curve—with this weight—no. I lift my foot, hesitate an instant before braking—that instant is enough. The truck shoves, heavy, stubborn. The wheel vibrates, the steering goes light, the tires bite the gravel at the edge.

Don’t slam the brakes, look where you want to go… breathe…

Too late. The guardrail bites into my side with a metallic screech and the world jerks hard. The cargo box jumps, the trailer rams the back end; I feel the whip from shoulder to gut. I try to feather the brake, but the grade pitches like a trap and the road snakes downhill with malice. I lose the line; the weight takes it from me, not my will.

In two heartbeats, chaos: dull blows, the engine bellowing hot air, the cab shaken like someone’s tossing it for sport. My seatbelt cuts my chest against the seat—grateful and furious at once—and the airbag explodes over me with a white slap that knocks the breath out of me.

Relative silence. My ears ring. It smells like dust, burned foam, metal shocked hot. I think the truck has fallen into a river; the cab is twisted, and my left arm burns with a stabbing pain that rises and falls like a wave. Stars dance in front of me, though there’s no sky.

Am I alive?

Tears run without permission. Not just from the pain: from the late certainty that it was the speed I chose that brought me here. For Pamela, whom I left behind as if the future could wait for us; by now, if I don’t run, she could be dead while I’m sprawled on some unknown road.

I want out. I want out now. My right hand—shaky, not quite mine—gropes for the seatbelt buckle and misses. My eyelids weigh like lead; every attempt to keep them open is a fight with water up to my neck.

My chest rises a little, falls even less. The buckle finally yields with a timid click. I can’t feel my legs; I can feel fear. Old and new fear, the kind that trembles from the inside. I lower my forehead to the wheel because the world is tilting, and I cling to the plastic as if it were a handrail.