Chapter 39
Gabriella
Now
What seemed like hours passed with no contact from Nico or any of his men.
I hadn’t even noticed the passage of time, not really. I had been too lost in my memories. Too consumed with reliving the past.
Not only had I lost my baby, but I’d also been to blame for all that had followed.
Even though my dad had never attacked Vienna, he’d still taken my information on board.
He’d played with Laura’s mind, ambushing her whenever she was alone.
When she rode away that night, the night she’d died, it had been after yet another taunting phone call from him.
He’d contacted Macbeth, and informed him of the plan to make Dante vice. And though he’d played it cool for a few years, beneath the surface, Macbeth was simmering.
When Rachel came along, my dad had her background checked within days. With one gentle nudge from him, he had Macbeth plotting the demise of the entire club.
It had ended in so much death, poor Bee badly burned, and in the end, both Macbeth and my dad had lost their lives to these foolish schemes.
And it had all been my fault.
Vienna would never forgive me if he knew just how much devastation I’d truly caused.
As the hours passed, it was becoming painfully obvious that we would not be getting any food or water, and that they had no intention of coming down here until they needed something from us.
I felt sick at the thought of what that “something” might be.
“Gabby,” my mum croaked from the pathetic strip of material that counted as a mattress down here.
“What is it?” I asked, crouching down low next to her.
She looked awful. Yes, her face and body bore the evidence of Nico’s latest rampage, but it was more than that. Her eyes were sunken, her lips were dry and cracked beneath the dried blood, her cheeks hollow and gaunt. Her skin looked grey and tired, with new wrinkles I had never seen before.
Her body was thin—far too fucking thin, and it just seemed as though her spirit was fading faster than her body was willing to allow her to give up.
She was becoming a shell of herself.
“You need to get out of here,” she rasped.
“Mum—”
“Gabby, we will both die tonight if you don’t at least try.
If you leave, one of us has a fighting chance.
It’s a mother’s duty to protect her children.
And who knows, maybe with your escape, it might give me one last shot, too.
But that can never happen if you don’t move,” she used the last of her strength to hiss the final word at me, leaning forward to grab hold of my shirt, bringing her face close to mine, imploring me to listen.
And once she was done, she flopped back, all energy spent.
I knew then what I had to do. What was painfully obvious. She was right. I needed to go. I needed to leave whilst I had the chance. We both risked dying down here if I did nothing.
“I’ll be back for you, Mum. I promise.”
“I know you will, baby.”
I rushed towards her, kissing her forehead with a small sob, and went towards the basement door without looking back.
Because I knew that if I looked back, I’d change my mind. We both knew I’d have to be insanely lucky to escape here. Luckier still to not only escape but stage her rescue mission.
But I had to at least try.
The door creaked when I eased it open, and I froze instantly, my hand tightening around the handle as I waited for someone to shout, for boots to start pounding down the hallway, for the attempt to be over before it had even begun.
But nothing came. No voice. No movement.
No sign that anyone had heard me at all.
I took that as a win. Nico would be focused on the outside, the perimeter, anywhere I might escape.
A sick thought came to me then that he might actually be amused if he caught me running around the house. As though I were simply a pawn in his sick game of catch and chase.
I pushed that thought to the side. Let him get some cheap thrill if he saw me scurrying around. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be here too much longer.
Slowly, carefully, I slipped into the corridor and pulled the door back into place behind me, making sure it didn’t latch too loudly. I kept close to the wall as I moved, my steps slow and deliberate, every muscle in my body wound too tight to allow for anything careless.
The storage room was halfway down the corridor on the left. I slipped inside and shut it gently behind me, then stood there for a second, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness.
Once they did, my gaze landed on the glass almost immediately.
A bottle neck, broken cleanly from the rest of it, glinted faintly from beneath a pile of rags, and I crouched down to retrieve it with careful fingers, testing the edge with my thumb just enough to know it would do exactly what I needed.
My stomach turned at the thought, but I pushed it aside and looked around for something solid enough to use.
A broken bottle was the perfect weapon to slice open someone’s jugular. But that wasn’t me. And it would draw too much attention. It was too messy and violent.
There was, however, something else a glass bottle could do. Something I had once seen my dad do to one of his enemies.
I remembered the moment as clear as day, as though it had happened this very night. And, for once in my life, I would be exactly what my dad had intended.
I just needed to get to work.
I wrapped the glass in an old towel to muffle the sound as much as possible, then pressed down and began to grind.
It took longer than I expected. Longer than I wanted.
The first few passes only broke the larger pieces into smaller jagged shards, and I had to keep going, using more pressure, more patience, more control than I really had left in me.
The sound was faint, but to my ears it seemed deafening, every scrape of glass against concrete making me stop and listen for footsteps that never came.
I worked slowly, carefully, until what remained no longer looked like broken glass at all but something closer to coarse sugar, fine enough to disappear if no one was looking for it.
I stared at it for a second longer than I should have.
Because there was no pretending I didn’t know what this would do.
No pretending it was harmless or clever or some kind of victimless trick.
It was cruel, and it was ugly. And if it worked, it would buy me enough time to get out of here.
That was all that mattered.
I found a cracked plastic cup shoved at the back of one of the shelves and tipped the powder into it, making sure not to lose any of it as I stood.
My hands were steady, which felt strange considering how violently everything inside me seemed to be moving.
But perhaps that was what survival really was in the end.
Not the absence of fear, but the ability to keep functioning whilst it hollowed you out.
When I stepped back into the corridor, I rounded a few corners and came across the guard I knew would be waiting at the top of the stairs.
He was slouched in a chair outside the basement door, one leg stretched out in front of him, his cut hanging open and his head tilted down toward the phone in his hand.
A half-empty bottle of water sat on the floor by his boots, and for a second, I simply looked at him, taking in how ordinary he seemed.
Not monstrous. Not visibly cruel. Just a man doing a job that happened to involve keeping women locked in a basement.
That, somehow, made it worse.
He glanced up when he noticed me, his expression shifting into irritation almost immediately. “What the fuck are you doing out?”
“I’m thirsty,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and flat, the way years of survival had taught me to. Not challenging. Not pleading. Firm enough to be noticed, but meek enough not to seem a threat.
His eyes narrowed. “And?”
I held up the cup slightly. “Can I have some water?”
He let out a sigh like I were inconveniencing him personally, then reached down for the bottle at his feet. “You always need something, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
He unscrewed the cap and tipped the bottle toward the cup in my hands, and I watched the water rise slowly, watched the fine glass cloud for the briefest second before dissolving into it completely.
He didn’t notice. He didn’t even look. He was too busy trying to return to whatever had been on his screen.
“Happy now?” he muttered.
I lowered my eyes and nodded, letting my fingers curl tighter around the cup. “Thanks.”
Then, before I could lose my nerve, I tilted it slightly toward him.
He frowned. “What? Woman, you better hurry up and drink it before I lose the shred of patience I’ve got left and backhand you down the stairs back into the basement.”
An idea came to me.
“Is this a trick?” I asked, deliberately forcing a pleading tone into my voice.
“How the fuck can it be a trick? I’ve given you what you asked for.”
“Exactly. Not only was I able to leave the room down there, but I was able to creep around, come up here, and you’re willing to indulge me by giving me water? I’m sure that’s disobeying a direct order from Nico. And…” I let my words trail away as I pretended to smother a sob.
“Oh, for fuck's sake. It’s not poisoned if that’s what you’re thinking.
” His words were spat at me, but one look at my face had him softening briefly.
“Look. It’s not poisoned, Gabby. I’ve known you since you were a child.
I offered to be the guard out here out of respect for your old man.
You know what it’s like here. I’m loyal to my president, but that doesn’t erase years of history.
Watch me,” he said, pulling the cup from my hands and downing it in one gulp.
I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed the contaminated water, and then unscrewed his bottle to fill it back up for me.
“No poison, princess. Get a drink, and then go back to the basement before we’re both punished.”
I had to force myself not to visibly react as I accepted the cup and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I sipped at the water, not wanting to risk there being any glass residue left, and then looked at him with a nod.
He jerked his chin toward the basement door. “Get back down there. Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.”
I nodded again, and did as I was told, stepping back into the basement with the cup still in my hand and pulling the door closed quietly behind me. Only once it had shut properly did I let out the breath I had been holding.
My mum looked up at me from the mattress, her eyes searching my face. “What did you do?”
“Bought us some time,” I said, crouching down beside her and setting the cup aside.
She studied me for a moment, then nodded once, as though whatever she saw in my expression was explanation enough.
After that, there was nothing left to do but wait.
And waiting, it turned out, was worse than doing.
Every second dragged. Every sound from the other side of the door became impossible to ignore.
The scrape of his chair. The occasional shift of his boots against the floorboards above us.
I found myself listening to him breathe, listening for any change, any sign that what I had done was beginning to work.
At first, there was nothing.
Then came the cough.
It was small. Barely anything at all. Just a rough clearing of the throat that could have meant nothing if I hadn’t been listening for it.
I lifted my head.
Another cough followed a minute later, sharper this time, and then the scrape of the chair legs against the floor as he shifted in it.
Mum’s fingers found mine in the dark.
I squeezed back without taking my attention from the door.
The silence that followed seemed to stretch on forever, so long that I started to wonder if I had got it wrong, if I hadn’t given him enough, if I had risked everything for nothing at all.
And then I heard him spit.
A wet, ugly sound, followed by a muttered curse.
My whole body went still.
There was a pause, then the chair scraped again, more violently this time, followed by footsteps moving away from the door and then back again like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.
Another cough.
This time followed by a choking sound that made my stomach turn over.
The door crashed open, and we heard a vicious snarl. “You little bitch. What the fuck did you do?”
His heavy boots were on the stairs.
I looked at my mum.
She looked at me.
Neither of us said a word, but our eyes went wide with fright. I shuffled forward, protecting her with my body, waiting for him.
And then, the crash. The heavy thump of his body hitting the concrete stairs, followed by his grunts and groans as he tumbled down them until… Silence.
I crept to the door, peeking out from the small gap to see him at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes glassy and lifeless.
Now the escape began for real.
I nodded at my mum and slipped through the door. I stepped over the guard, muttering an apology he’d never hear.
I didn’t feel guilty. Not really.
Because this still wasn’t the most unforgivable thing I had ever done to survive.