Chapter 7 #2
"That's the lesson." I stand up from the cot.
I can't sit still anymore. The nervous energy demands motion.
I pace the short distance between the bed and the stone wall.
"That is what it means to be a Bellanti woman.
You don't leave. If you run, you're a shadow before they even put you in the ground.
They erased her, burned her photos, never spoke her name again.
They treated her like a disease they had successfully eradicated. "
I stop pacing and face him. My chest heaves. Every guard I built up over the years is gone. I'm standing in front of the enemy with nothing left to hide behind.
"Defecting wasn't just a tactical decision for me.
" My voice cracks. "It was a suicide mission.
I packed my bag the way she did. I disabled the same cameras on the east wing.
I walked out of those gates knowing I was walking toward my own execution.
I came to the Costa family because I knew you were the only ones who could outpace my father's reach. "
Fabio moves.
He crosses the room in three strides, and the heat coming off him reaches me a half-second before he stops.
He stops inches from me. He doesn't touch me. He doesn't wrap his arms around me or try to pull me into his chest. He reads the boundary in the set of my shoulders and keeps his hands where I can see them.
"Catalina." His voice is a deep, resonant command.
I keep my eyes trained on the heavy chain at his throat. I can't look at his face. If I look at his eyes, the rest of my composure will shatter. I'll break apart in this damp tunnel and never piece myself back together.
He drops slowly to one knee on the cold stone, low enough that I have to glance down to find his eyes. The position is impossible to avoid. He fills the angle of my vision until I have nowhere else to look.
My eyes lift. They meet his.
There is no pity in his eyes. Pity is useless. Pity doesn't stop bullets. What I see in his eyes is something far more dangerous. It's pure violence, coiled tight behind a control that hasn't snapped yet. It's a rage so profound it alters the temperature in the room.
He's furious for me.
"You're not Maria." He speaks the words slowly, stamping each syllable into the freezing air between us. "You're not a shadow."
My lips part. The air leaves my lungs in a ragged rush.
"They caught her because the man waiting for her had no way to protect her." Fabio's jaw locks tight. "A civilian who didn't know how to guard a door. A civilian who didn't know how to build a fortress."
He finally raises his hands, slow enough to give me every chance to pull away. He cups my face. His palms scorch against the chill of my cheeks. His thumbs brush against my cheekbones, wiping away the remnants of my tears.
"You didn't run to a civilian." The feral growl returns to his voice, vibrating through his chest and into my skin. "You ran to a monster. You ran to the one man who has been waiting his entire adult life for a reason to bring the Bellanti family down."
The contact holds me upright. The terror spinning inside my chest halts. The hold my family's legacy has had on me for twenty-four years finally cracks.
"They'll come for me." I whisper the truth one last time. I need him to accept it without any illusions. "They'll track the signal. They'll find the leak. They'll put a bounty on my head so massive every gun for hire in this city will line up at your door to collect it."
"Good." His thumbs stroke my skin. His eyes burn with a lethal fire. "Let them line up. I'll drop every last one of them between this door and the riverbank. No one is taking you out of this room unless I carry you."
I stare up at him. The audacity of his promise rewires my entire reality.
My aunt tried to escape the machine and died alone in a gas station parking lot. I tried to escape the machine and walked directly into the arms of the one man capable of dismantling it piece by piece.
"Do you understand me?" He tightens his hold on my face until I can feel the steady pressure of his thumbs along my jaw. The contact is grounding. It's the first thing in years that feels real. "You're not going back. You're not dying in a parking lot. You're mine. That's the end of the story."
The possessive claim sparks a fire deep in my belly. It burns away the chill of the tunnel. It eats through the memory of my aunt's bloody locket on the breakfast table.
"I understand." My voice is steady now. The tremor is gone.
"Say it." He demands. He needs to hear the surrender of my fear.
"I'm not going back." I keep my eyes locked on his. "And I'm not dying."
"Damn right." He pulls back just enough to look at my face again. The lethal calm in his eyes shifts into something hotter, something that drops the bottom out of my stomach.
He steps back, dropping his hands from my face. The sudden loss of his heat leaves me shivering, but the emotional anchor remains firmly in place.
"Sit back down by the heater." He gestures toward the cot. "Get warm. I need to finish prepping the directional charges on the outer corridor only. Low yield, shaped inward, nowhere near the river wall."
I nod. I walk back to the cot and sit down, pulling my knees to my chest. The sass, the deflection, every guard I built. It's all piled on the floor between us, useless. I don't need it anymore.
I watch him return to the rusted table. He picks up the tactical shotgun again. His movements are methodical. Calm. The manic energy from earlier has settled into a cold, lethal focus. He's no longer preparing for a hypothetical strike. He's preparing to defend what's his.
I rest my chin on my knees. The tunnel doesn't feel like a holding pen anymore. The heavy steel door doesn't feel like a trap. It feels like a shield.
He reaches into his duffel bag to pull out a box of shells.
As he moves, his elbow knocks against my smaller leather bag sitting on the edge of the table. The bag I packed the way Maria did.
It slides off the rusted metal edge and hits the stone floor with a thud.
The zipper, already half-broken from being yanked open one too many times in the last forty-eight hours, splits open a few inches from the impact. A few items spill out onto the stone. A spare sweater. A hairbrush. A balled pair of wool socks.
Fabio glances down. He doesn't care about my belongings, but he catalogs everything in his line of sight.
He bends down to pick up the bag.
He grabs the strap. His hand freezes.
The quiet in the tunnel changes shape. The hum of the heater is suddenly the only sound in the room.
Fabio doesn't stand back up. He remains crouched, his eyes locked on the spilled contents of my bag. No. Not the contents.
He's looking at the canvas lining stitched into the bottom of the leather.
He drops the strap. He reaches into his boot and pulls out a small tactical knife.
"Fabio?" I sit up straight. The cold dread rushes back into my veins. "What is it?"
He doesn't answer. He flips my bag upside down. He drives the tip of the knife into the bottom seam and slices it open with a single, surgical flick of his wrist.
The sound of tearing canvas rips through the tunnel.
He reaches into the torn seam. His fingers dig into the padding.
When he pulls his hand out, he is holding a small, flat black disc. It's no larger than a coin. A tiny red light blinks on its smooth surface, pulsing in the dim light of the single overhead bulb.
My heart stops.
The air leaves my lungs. The blood drains from my face.
It's a Bellanti-issue micro-tracker.
"They didn't just broadcast a fake signal to see how I'd react," Fabio says. His voice is a terrifyingly calm whisper. The quiet before the storm. "They put a beacon on you."
My mind spins. I didn't put that in there. I checked every seam I knew existed. I tore apart my own room. I went through every piece of clothing I packed.
They knew.
My father knew I was packing a bag. He knew I was planning to run. He let me leave the east wing, let me disable the cameras, let me walk out the gates.
He wanted to see where I was going.
The red light on the disc blinks again. A steady, rhythmic pulse.
A pulse that's been transmitting our coordinates beneath the Chicago River since the signal locked onto this room.
Fabio stands up slowly. The tiny black disc is pinched between his fingers.
The river rushing behind the stone wall is suddenly very close. Very loud.
And underneath it, barely audible over the hum of the space heater, comes a new sound.
The heavy, metallic scrape of the outer tunnel door being breached.