Chapter Twenty-Five
When the small army of red-dressed Stags had appeared, Ian wanted to scale the stairs, throw Diana over his shoulder, and shoot his way out of the room.
Lacking the certainty they could escape that way, his only option was to escalate the timeline to disrupt the game and make himself the perceived target.
“You maile ladro,” Costa growled before swerving around to face the room. “He is the cheat!”
It was an epic internal battle to resist running upstairs to Diana, but Ian would not surrender Costa’s stare.
With the precision of an expert archer aiming an arrow, he taunted, “Il Corno should have chosen a player who could prevail without resorting to amateur tricks. Someone who could win Il Gioco honorably.”
A war cry broke out.
Titus and Costa signaled their guards.
Ian ducked the first blow aimed at his head and elbowed the next assailant in the kidneys.
He crouched and crab-walked back away from the game table.
He fended off another blow to his ribs before dispatching two frontal attackers with a right hook and a roundhouse kick.
With the next breath, he searched the second floor, but there was no sign of Sunderland or Diana.
His fury carried him through the undulating mob. Halfway across the room, his progress halted when a guardsman knocked him to his knees and seized a strong chokehold on his throat.
“Ian!”
Tears swam in his eyes as he searched the floor above.
Red velvet curtains descended in a crimson wave that made him think of raging bulls and battlefields. It landed on top of the abandoned game table.
The distracted guard eased his grip enough for Ian to stab his fingers in the scum’s eyes.
The man clutched his face in agony. Ian darted away and clawed through the flood of people, shouting Diana’s name.
At the table, the red mass of curtains parted and Diana surfaced, tied up in knots. As she frantically worked to untangle herself from corded curtain ties, the ominous shriek of a barn owl rose above the uproar.
Ian would detest the sound for the rest of his life, which he fought desperately to keep hold of, along with his sanity, as dozens of crimson-dressed women poured into the room.
“No!” He ducked a blow from another guard. “Hold on, Diana, I’m coming!”
The next screech that sounded brought him some modicum of relief. The familiar call of a police whistle pierced the air as a swarm of black uniforms overtook the room.
And then genuine panic descended.
Ian fought through the crowd and elbowed red dresses away. He’d been a bloody fool to believe their madcap plan would work. Everything he’d plotted and fought for was disintegrating.
He had no thought of the emeralds. Or the danger he’d face when any or all three of the famiglie caught up with him.
None of it mattered without Diana.
As he finally approached the game table, two Il Corno enforcers snared him by each shoulder. He writhed against their grip but one of them brandished a blade and shoved it against his throat.
The steel was cool. Sharp. One stray twist of his head would cut him.
He urged his body to go limp.
The goons laughed.
Then, successively, each gasped and fell.
A trickle of blood and a pearl-topped hairpin stuck out of their throats.
Ian whirled around and opened his arms to receive Diana as she leaped from the table.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry we’re trapped.”
He pulled her closer and drew an indulgent breath of her violet scent. There was only enough time for him to scrape his lips against her soft cheek before three police guards surrounded them, brandishing revolvers.
The small furrow of Diana’s brow worried Ian more than his imminent capture; she was calculating the same potential outcomes of an escape attempt that ran through his mind.
Scenario one: Ian could surrender to the police officers, allowing the Stags to extract Diana from the hotel. There was a fifty percent chance he’d make it to a legitimate prison Sunderland could break him out of.
And an equal chance the Crown wasn’t the only one lining the polizia pockets, and they’d kill Ian before he left the Porto Rosso.
Scenario two: He and Diana could take out the three policemen. There was a thirty percent chance of stray gunshots. And a greater chance the gun itself would go astray.
“Ian.”
He glanced down at Diana. She’d lost her feathered mask in the tumble, and her hair hung in knots as it framed her face. Her expression was so open now, he could easily read her fear and affection.
It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
He brushed his lips against hers. “I’ll find you.”
She made an unintelligible protesting noise. He forced himself to shut it out as he slowly sank to his knees.
He never thought Diana would dart for the closest gun.
Gunshots echoed around them.
By the time he registered the noise, he found himself face down on the floor, a sharp boot buried in his neck and his hands bound in cuffs.
As he fought to get a glimpse of Diana, he could only see whirling waves of scarlet silk.
The throbbing pain in her arm woke Diana from a stupor.
She found herself on a narrow bed and struggled into a seated position. With one finger, she probed the screaming wound in her arm. Thankfully, there were no signs of a bullet lodged in it.
It took a concerted effort to stagger to her feet and examine her surroundings.
The small room was a nun’s cell, designed to avoid anything that would distract from reflection and prayer, including a window.
The only adornment was an ebony crucifix hanging on the whitewashed wall.
Unfortunately, not a viable weapon: the thing was fixed with metal screws and she would have struggled to rip it off the wall with two good arms.
She rattled her head to clear her fogged-in brain and recalled the chaos of Il Gioco.
When Ian had bowed down on the ground before the police, it had sent her into a blind panic.
She’d swiped the revolver from the unsuspecting policeman, but someone had knocked the gun out of her hand.
There’d been a burning pain before a Stag enforcer smothered her mouth and nose with a cloth, and she’d blacked out.
A church clock tower somewhere nearby chimed five bells. She wished to hell she knew how long she’d been out, and if it was day or evening. Her dress was in tatters and the scent coming from her was far from fresh; she could have been lying there for days.
Two sets of footsteps sounded from the hallway outside. Diana sank down onto the bed and held her spine in a position so straight it would have made every single one of her governesses proud. She attempted to wrestle her hair into a plait, but the burning in her injured arm stopped her.
She shook out the rest of her knotted locks and dabbed at the sticky film of blood and dirt on her cheek, spreading it across her face.
Then she tore at the unraveling neckline of her gown to expose her corset cover, and the remnants of the leather harness, which had shredded in her dive from the balcony.
When that door opened, they would find her utterly decomposed. A proper mess. Nothing her mother wanted in a daughter.
Diana suddenly felt as powerful as an warrior.
As Widow strode into the room with Birdie, it was impossible to tell if it was her dishevelment that stunned Widow, or if her mother’s disapproving frown was related to the fact that her own daughter had tried to entrap her.
Her mother’s scrutiny made Diana want to laugh and also smash something to pieces.
She ached for one caustic word. One sneer, to justify the vitriol she was ready to unleash.
“The polizia want you for questioning,” Widow said without preamble.
“I’m not the only one.” The ice in Diana’s voice echoed her mother’s tone. “Although you’ve outdone me, Mama. Authorities in three countries are eager to speak with you.”
When Birdie placed a hand on her pistol, her mother shook her head once and gestured for Diana’s former crew hand to step outside.
The absence of an audience didn’t soften her mother’s glare. “I’m disappointed.”
Diana’s laugh was sharp. “Good.”
Widow struck her face before she could blink; it stung nearly as much as the bullet wound.
“Grow up, Diana. After all this time, you cannot still cling to some notion that you can have everything you want.”
“I want to help people. To trust the only family I have left. But you’ve twisted the mission I dedicated my life to into something destructive and violent.”
“Don’t be such a naive fool. The only way to rid the earth of dangerous men is to do it in the language they speak. With brutality and bloodshed.”
Her perfunctory rationalization of harm made Diana fight off a tremble.
“Family is an outdated notion.” Widow dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “You should open your mind to a different structure, one of comrades. Soldiers in a battle against the chains that bind us.”
“Chains like love?”
Her mother’s lip curled. “If you want to talk about manipulation, look no further than my father and yours. Had I been born a man, I would have inherited my father’s estate and made it flourish. Your father stole my fortune to build his.”
“Did you care for him at all?”
It was not a question her mother had expected. Diana took some satisfaction in the time it took Widow to respond.
“Your father was the best of a set of terrible options. At least he wasn’t a drunkard or a philanderer. His obsession was building an empire.”
“You could have been a partner to him.”
“Not to Harry Rives. He never trusted me. When you were born, I wept that you were a girl and would never be able to rise to his heights.”
The idea of her mother being the first person in her life to put limitations on her because of her sex made Diana furious.
It also obliterated any regret she had about betraying her.
She mustered all her strength to keep her voice steady as she replied, “You miscalculated.”