Dante’s Girl (The Paradise Diaries #1)(61)
Author: Courtney Cole

I look over my shoulder and Vincent isn’t chasing us.

Weird.

And the look on his face is weird, too.  It’s almost happy. And he is messing with the little black thing in his hands.

Everything is in slow motion now.

I turn, screaming for Dante again and this time, his eyes meet mine.  He’s standing on the stern of the Daniella and his beautiful blue eyes meet mine.

And then his boat explodes.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fire is everywhere in the bay.

The Daniella is in pieces.

Mia and I are screaming and everyone around us is running.

Vincent is gone.

And I have to find Dante.

I run toward the water and plow into it, pushing away a piece of fiberglass that is floating next to me.  It’s charred and jagged and I know it’s a piece of Dante’s boat.

I start crying as I plunge into the water and I try to swim but someone is holding onto my foot.

And then they’re pulling my foot.

I turn and find a security guard.  He’s pulling me out of the water and telling me that we have to go.  We have to go right now.

Apparently, Dante had a security detail assigned to me after all.

I argue and struggle because I have to find Dante.

But the security guard won’t let me go.

“Mia!” I scream.  “Find Dante.”

She looks dazed and confused and I know she’s in shock.  And so am I.  And Dante hasn’t emerged from the water.  Neither has his father or Elena.

In my panic to find him, I start fighting against the security guard again. I’m hitting him with my cast and I’m so afraid and hysterical that I don’t feel the pain.

He scoops me up and throws me over his shoulder.

And he carries me away from the water. Away from where Dante must be.  He steps over the shattered remains of the crystal Regatta trophy.  The tiny pieces glimmer in the sun like jewels.

“You don’t understand,” I cry.  “I have to find him. Please.  Please put me down.”

But he doesn’t.

I twist around to look behind us and now I don’t see Mia.  And I still don’t see Dante.  And I can hardly see anything because tears are blurring my vision.

The bay is in shambles.  All of the boats that were lined up for the race have caught fire from the explosion and there is mass panic and chaos as some people evacuate and others try to extinguish the flames.

I squeeze my eyes shut and bang my hands uselessly against the security guard’s back. It doesn’t help.  He acts like I’m not even there.  He just continues to carry me through the crowds and up to the street where a black car is waiting.  He speaks into his earpiece and then deposits me into the backseat of the waiting car.

He looks down at me as he’s fastening me into the seatbelt.  His eyes are kind and through my panic and confusion, I almost feel badly about hitting him so many times.  But he doesn’t seem to mind.  Maybe, in all of the chaos and hysteria, he didn’t even notice.

“It will be alright,” he tells me.  He slaps the top of the car twice and it speeds away.

And they’re taking me away from Dante.

“Please stop,” I beg the driver.  I know from his black suit that he is a member of the security team, too.  “I have to hunt for Dante.  Please.”

“I can’t, miss,” he tells me, without taking his eyes from the road. “I have orders. This is your evacuation plan.”

Evacuation plan?

I have an evacuation plan?

Through my confusion and tears, I stop and try to think.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.  “Back to Giliberti House?”

The driver shakes his head.

“No. This is a Code Red Evacuation.  You are to be taken to a plane immediately. You’ll use the Prime Minister’s private jet and it will fly you to London.  We’ll be at Heathrow in less than four hours.”

“We?” I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Yes, we.  You and I.  I have orders to not leave your side until you are with your father.”

I feel numb.  This can’t be happening.

“How do I have an evacuation plan?” I ask simply.  I can’t think of anything else to ask. This is happening so quickly.

“Everyone close to the Prime Minister has one,” he tells me.

“Where is Dimitri?” I ask. “And Dante?  Did you see them?  Are they okay?”

“I don’t know, miss.” The security guard averts his eyes and I don’t want to think about what that might mean.

I’m getting frantic again.  I stare out the tinted windows of the car and we’re speeding away from the coast, away from the bay, and away from the last place that I’d seen Dante.

“I can’t leave here.  Don’t you understand?” I am practically shouting.  “I can’t leave Dante.”

“You have to,” the security guard tells me. “You don’t have a choice.  It’s not safe here. This is what Dante wants.  He approved this plan of action for you.”

“He wanted you to take me away?”

I am shocked.  And I sit limply as the security guard nods.

“In the case of an assassination attempt, yes.  He approved this plan to remove you from Caberra.”

Assassination.

Attempt.

I am stunned.

Because it happened so quickly, I hadn’t had time to think about it.  Vincent tried to assassinate Dimitri.  And Dante was with his father.  And Nate had to have been in on it.  That’s why Nate and Vincent have been together lately.  That’s the connection.

That’s who Nate had been talking about on the phone that day.

And this was all about Dimitri.

It wasn’t Dante at all.  Dante was collateral damage.

Dante was.

I’m already speaking of him in the past tense.

I gulp.

“Is Dante dead?” I whisper.

The security guard looks at me through the rearview mirror and then looks back at the road.

“I don’t know.”

And then I can’t speak anymore because I am crying.  I try to cry quietly so that I don’t get hysterical again.  I curl into a ball on the seat and I cry until we pull into the airport hangar.

The security guard opens my door and unfastens my seat belt, then helps me from the car.

“I’m Daniel, miss.  And I’ll be by your side until I hand you off to your father.  We’ll call him en route.  I won’t let anything happen to you.”