Chapter 43
Chapter Forty Three
Bianca
I wear a path between the window and the bed. The room has been reset to perfection since my little escape. The sheets hanging from the window are gone. Crisp new sheets line the bed. Everything is exactly the way it was before.
Except the window. That doesn’t open even a whisper now. No catch to tease, no spring to find. It wasn’t pretty either. It’s been bolted shut right through the frame. I tested them when I first got back to the room and got nothing for my trouble.
But I don’t care about the window anymore.
All I can hear is the echo of the man’s voice downstairs, and all I can think of is Giovanni. Is he here? Did he walk into the thick of it?
The warehouse hits were obviously a failure. Maybe Gio and company assumed that hitting more than one would draw men away from the house.
But he didn’t bite. It’s more protected than ever. And Giovanni is going to walk right into it.
My stomach flips. I clamp a hand over my mouth and stand very still until the wave of nausea passes. No. Not now. I can’t afford to be leaning over a toilet tonight.
So what now? Do they come charging in and die on the steps? I see it too clearly: Conti men charging the gates, cut down in a wash of bullets. The bile pushes up again, and I swallow it hard, eyes burning.
I need to get out before Giovanni—or one of his family—pays for me in blood. I can’t let that happen. I couldn’t bear it.
I scan the room again, as if something might have changed in the last minute. Door still bolted, window still sealed. If I try to break either of them open, it’ll have guards at my door before the last piece of glass hits the ground.
I can wait until the next time someone opens the door and rush them.
What can I use?
I spot the dinner tray still sitting on the table. I can’t use the tray itself; it’ll clang like a gong and wake up the house. Not that anyone’s sleeping. No, they’re waiting for the man I love to come rescue me so they can kill him.
Panic threatens me, but I push it down.
The carafe sits squat and heavy beside the glass. I curl my fingers around the neck and lift. Solid. If I don’t fumble. I can make this work.
But only if someone comes.
Maybe the woman with the neat bun who’s been bringing food. I could ask for tea.
Guilt pricks at the thought of smashing her over the head with the carafe. But it’s brief. She works for a monster, so I can’t feel too bad.
How do I call her, though? There’s no bell, no phone. I could knock and ask, but I might be ignored. I can’t tell them I’m sick. They might figure out I’m pregnant.
Will I have to wait until morning? I tighten my hold on the carafe as tightly as I do the reins on my fresh panic. I could be stuck in here all night while Gio dies on the front lawn.
As those thoughts occur to me, I hear the slide of the mechanism on the other side of the door. Someone’s coming in.
I press myself against the wall and lift the carafe over my head, breath caged high in my chest.
What if it’s not her? What if it’s more than one person?
What if it’s that man?
Good. I hope it’s that man. Though his men will probably kill me right after.
The door opens on a hush of air, and a shadow spills into the room.
I narrow my eyes in the dark. I tense my muscles to bring the carafe down.
I swing.
A hand closes around my wrist mid-arc; another catches the carafe before it can crack bone or floor. My breath punches out as my body hits the wall of his chest.
“My little hellcat,” he murmurs, amused.
The voice makes all my defenses drop. My arm goes slack. The carafe thumps into his palm. I fold into him without meaning to, fingers in his jacket, face in the warm place where his throat meets his shoulder.
I tip up and find his mouth. The kiss is clumsy, hard, desperate. “You’re here,” I gasp against him. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“You doubted me, mia?” he says against my frantic lips, smile brushing mine. His arm goes around me, keeping me glued to him; the other eases the carafe out of my hand.
“Never,” I say, which is the truth. “But I thought that he…”
My breath sighs out on the words.
“You thought he would get the best of me?” Gio says. “So little faith, mia.”
Mia. The word still sends a jolt through me as hard as it did the first time.
But now’s not the time for that. Then a panicked thought rushes through me.
“My mother!” I say. “They said they would—"
“Shh, shh,” he says, pressing his palm to my lips.
“Is she all right?” I mumble, muffled against his palm.
“Your mother is all right,” he whispers, moving his hand away from my mouth. “I have protection on her.”
The words make me weak with relief. I press my forehead to his shoulder.
“Thank God,” I say. “I was so worried. They had people watching her; they said if I didn’t come quietly, they’d hurt her.”
“I want to hear everything, Bibi,” he says, “but we don’t have the time right now. We have to move. Are you fit to walk?”
I nod. “They didn’t hurt me.” I think of my bruised ribs. Now wouldn’t be the best time to mention them, I’m thinking.
“Good,” he says, pressing his lips to my forehead. He steps back, and his eyes land on the carafe still in his hand. “You thought to brain me with a carafe?” he asks, amused.
I shrug. “Someone, at least.”
I feel the rumble of laughter in his chest. “You’re trouble.” He sets it down, then grows serious and shoots me an intense look. “Follow me, don’t stray, and stay quiet.”
I nod.
He cracks the door and listens. Silence greets us except for some voices from a floor below floating up to us. No footsteps close.
“Now,” he mouths.
Giovanni slips a gun out from under his jacket and leads with it.
My breath hitches. I know who he is, but knowing and seeing are two different things. I have a feeling I’m about to learn a lot more about him.
We slip into the corridor. His hand closes around mine, and he puts my knuckles to the back of his belt in a silent order.
We move along the wall where the sconces leave slivers of shadow between their pools of light.
The runner softens our steps. I make myself roll my feet the way I’ve seen him do it.
We don’t walk toward the main landing, the foyer bright as day. The direction of the men’s voices, even their laughter, feels wrong in this house.
Instead, we walk to the back of the hall, into the dark.
Gio doesn’t so much as hesitate. He pivots us down the narrower service stairs tucked behind a door the color of the wall.
We take the steps sideways, fast and careful. Halfway down, voices lift from the second-floor hall to our left: “…sweep the north side again… check the windows…”
Gio stops on a dime, his hand flattening against my waist to still me. We wait while the voices fade, then drop the last six steps and slip through another door into a short passage that smells like polish and old stone.
A kitchen flashes by at the end of the hall. A man in shirtsleeves turns with a tray. Gio reverses us in one smooth pull, presses me into a narrow recess, and brings his palm lightly over my mouth. I feel his heart under my cheek, strong and steady, and try to match my breathing to it.
The man crosses the mouth of the passage without looking in. The tray clinks, the sound chasing him around the corner. We go again.
We hit the back corridor. Here, the lights are fewer; the carpet gives way to stone. Gio pauses at a closed door. A murmured conversation threads through: “—east hedge—two men—rotate—” He shakes his head once and moves us past to a door farther down.
Gio’s hand closes on the knob that will lead us outside. Then he freezes. I don’t hear anything at first, then a faint scrape, the kind a boot makes when it checks its footing.
The door swings in an inch from the other side.
Gio moves before the hinge can whisper. He meets the man in the gap, drives him backward into the dark with one forearm across the throat and the other hand clamping his mouth.
The pistol in the guard’s grip never clears his hip—Gio wrenches the wrist, strips the gun, shoves it to his own waistband in the same breath.
The man thrashes once, twice. Gio shifts, knee pinning a thigh, shoulder grinding the breath out of him. No sound but a muffled choke and the dull thud of impact. It lasts seconds. Then the weight under Gio slackens.
He eases the body down, checks for anything else on him, comes up with a spare magazine, and slides it into his pocket. His chest barely moves. Not a drop of sweat on him.
I stare at the man’s slack face, the way his arm lies wrong. My mouth is dry. I don’t know if he’s breathing. I don’t think he is.
I don’t think he ever will again.
Gio looks at me. The focus in his eyes is hard and absolute. For me. This is a man who would do anything for her. It should scare me.
It doesn’t.
“Stay with me,” he breathes.
I nod, because my voice won’t work. He takes my hand, places it on his belt again, and we move.
The door opens to the cool night air. He doesn’t push it wide, just enough for us to slide through sideways and ease it back into its frame.
The cold makes the sweat along my spine chill. We’re on a shallow stoop along the house’s flank, tucked between a downspout and a bank of shrubs. The fountain’s hush reaches us from the courtyard. Lights bleed across the lawn in long ovals. Men cut through them and vanish.
Gio crouches, shoulders narrower than they look in a suit, and scans the lawn with a patience that makes my throat tighten.
He studies the rhythm of the moving shadows, the way I do a simmer—waiting for the exact second where the surface breaks.
He points with two fingers: hedge, then hedgerow gap, then the darker line where the wall runs to the service gate. I nod. I can make that.