Chapter 17 NORA
NORA
The private road leading up to the estate is the one place I've started to feel almost normal, which should have told me something was about to go wrong.
Dino, the guard driving me back from my supervised trip into town, has spent the last ten minutes trying to convince me that Italian coffee is objectively superior to English coffee, and I've spent the last ten minutes reminding him that boiling brown water and calling it espresso doesn't make it a personality trait.
Dino taps the steering wheel and glances into the rearview mirror with a snort. "You people put milk in fucking everything. Tea, coffee, probably your soup."
I cross my arms. "We put milk in things that deserve it. Unlike you people, who put opinions in things that don't need them."
He laughs, one hand loose on the wheel, and for a second the road ahead is just gravel and cypress trees leaning in from both sides, gold light coming through the branches like something out of a postcard nobody would believe was also a crime scene waiting to happen.
Then the SUV comes out of the tree line behind us, and there's no time to be think about anything.
It hits our rear bumper hard enough that my head snaps forward and the seatbelt bites into my collarbone. Dino swears in Italian, both hands back on the wheel now, and the second vehicle swings wide to the left like it's trying to box us in against the ditch.
"Get the fuck down!" he bellows, the amusement vanishing in an instant as his knuckles turn white on the wheel.
I don't need to be told twice. I drop sideways across the seat as the back window explodes inward, glass raining across my shoulders in a hundred small stinging bites.
Gunfire, fast and flat, cracks somewhere close, and Dino jerks the wheel hard right.
The car fishtails, tires screaming against gravel, and for one long, sick second I genuinely believe we're going to roll.
We don't. We slam sideways into the ditch instead, hard enough that the airbag punches out of the wheel and catches Dino across the face. He groans, and there's blood, too much blood, running from somewhere along his hairline.
I crawl forward on my knees across the shattered glass, gripping his collar with shaking fingers. "Dino. Look at me before you pass out."
He blinks hard, batting my hand away while wiping blood out of his lashes. "I'm good. I'm completely good, just give me a second to find where my skull went."
"We don't have a second for skull hunting!" I smack the back of his headrest to rattle him awake. "Look in the side mirror, genius!"
"Can you drive?" I check behind us through the missing glass. Tires crunch over the gravel, steady and calm.
He grunts, fumbling at the crumpled ignition column with bloody knuckles. "I said I'm good."
"You're bleeding into your eyes, you idiot!" I shove hard at his shoulder. "Start the car before they blow our heads off!"
"Stop hitting my spine, I'm working on it!" Dino jabs the start button until the engine coughs and roars to life.
Dino coughs out a raw, bloody breath and yanks the shifter into drive.
I spin around, peeking over the headrest through the jagged frame where the rear glass used to be.
Two men step down from the black SUV into the dust, combat boots hitting gravel in sync.
Both keep short black rifles tucked tight against their shoulders, barrels locked dead on our bumper as they walk toward us without breaking stride.
I dig my nails into the upholstery and scream at the top of my lungs. "Drive! I don't care if the fucking car sounds like it's dying, drive!"
Dino floors it. The car screams out of the ditch at an angle that should not be physically possible, throwing me sideways into the door, and another burst of gunfire chews into the trunk behind us. Something metal pings off the frame close enough that I feel the vibration through the seat.
I point frantically ahead, where the private road forks toward open fields on one side and the estate gates on the other. Adrenaline has clearly made me the navigator. "Left! Take the fucking left, it's shorter!"
Dino hauls the wheel around until his forearms bulge. "How do you know that?" he shouts over the whining engine.
I hold onto the roof handles as the car shakes violently. "Because I looked at the map so I could escape, and today is the day!"
"Remind me never to play trivia against you!" Dino mutters under his breath.
He takes the left. The car clips a low stone wall on the turn, sparks flying off the paint, and for one gut-dropping second we're airborne over a dip in the road before the tires slam back down.
I bite down hard enough on my own tongue to taste copper.
Behind us, the SUV is still coming, closing the gap, and I turn to look through the shattered rear window at the two men leaning half out of their vehicle, weapons braced.
I grip the headrest and track the black bumper surging forward in the dust. "They're gaining."
"I noticed, fucking thank you!" Dino jerks the wheel as his chest heaves.
I brace myself against the dashboard. "I'm just saying it out loud in case pointing at things helps!"
"It doesn't!" he roars.
The estate gate appears ahead, iron and stone and, thank God, already swinging open, guards spilling out from either side with rifles raised the second they register the second vehicle.
Dino doesn't slow down until we're through, tires screeching against the courtyard gravel, and the moment we stop moving my whole body decides this is the appropriate time to start shaking uncontrollably.
Behind us, the estate's men open fire on the pursuing SUV, and it reverses hard, tires spitting stone, and peels away back down the road it came from.
Nobody chases it. I find out later that's a deliberate decision, that Adrian doesn't want his men strung out along an open road while whoever sent that car regroups somewhere with better cover.
In the moment, all I understand is that the noise stops, and my ears are ringing, and Dino has slumped back against his seat with blood running into his eyebrow like he's just run a marathon and lost.
I unbuckle my belt with numb, trembling hands. "You're still bleeding."
He manages a faint, bloody grin as he wheezes. "You're fucking observant. Guess the whole crisis thing is real."
I shove my door open, nearly falling out onto the gravel. "Shut the hell up and let someone look at your head."
Guards are already pulling the door open, someone shouting for a medic, someone else shouting my name, and then Luca is there, and I don't remember him crossing the courtyard, I just remember his hand closing around my arm and pulling me out of the car like I weigh nothing.
"Where are you bleeding?" Luca's voice does not rise, but something hollow and terrifying rattles behind his ribs, his pupils dilated so wide they swallow the brown of his irises completely. "Tell me who touched you. Tell me right now."
"I'm fine." I stumble as my heels scrape through gravel and broken glass. "Luca, let go of my wrist, you're breaking the bone..."
"Don't tell me you're fine!" A jagged, feral hiss rips from his throat, his breath coming in hot, shallow hitches against my hairline as he drags me flush against his ribs. "You don't get to die out here. I didn't give you permission to bleed."
"A car just rammed us into a ditch, Luca! Get a grip!" I shove hard against his chest, but he feels like carved marble, rigid and vibrating with pure, murderous adrenaline.
His hands move over my body in violent, frantic sweeps, checking my ribs, my neck, my hips, tearing at the seam of my jacket to hunt for bullet holes with an intensity that looks less like concern and more like absolute madness.
When he spots glass in my hair, his jaw clicks sideways, a twitch starting under his left eyelid.
"Who ordered the car?" He snaps his fingers an inch from my eyes, his fingers locking into my jaw hard enough to bruise. "Look at me, Nora. Did you recognize anyone? Did anyone get close enough to speak?"
I yank my chin sideways, horrified by the lunatic gleam in his stare. "No, they just shot the shit out of our back window! You're hurting my jaw!"
"They hit us from the trees. Two guys, big guns, knew what they were doing." The words tumble out fast. "They wanted to grab me, not just kill us."
"They came for you," Luca whispers, and the quietness of the words is ten times scarier than any shout. A terrifying, twitchy grin pulls at one corner of his mouth as he stares at the bullet-pocked metal. "They dared to touch you. They thought they could take what's mine from my own road."
I wrap both arms tight around my chest. "Thanks, Captain Obvious."
Dino is helped out of the car by two guards, one hand pressed to his head, still muttering something about how the coffee argument isn't over. I almost laugh.
"I will skin them in front of their mothers," Luca murmurs into my ear, his hand sliding up around the nape of my neck to clamp me against his chest so hard I can barely draw oxygen. "I will tear them apart bone by bone. Every man who sat in that SUV will drown in their own blood before sunrise."
I claw at his forearms to pull back, gasping for air. "Luca, you're acting insane, stop! I need a second, my ears are still ringing!"
"You're covered in glass." His voice drops into a dark, rapid rasp, his eyes darting frantically over my skin like he expects me to dissolve on the spot.
"There's blood on your sleeve. Adrian! Bring me the names of every Bellini crew within fifty miles or I will start putting bullets through our own scouts! "
I dig my heels into the stones to steady myself. "Get off me, I can stand on my own two feet."
"Your legs are giving out." He tightens his grip on my waist.
I shove back against his chest with everything I have left. "It's adrenaline, you asshole, not a breakdown. Don't baby me."
A short puff of air hitches in his throat, his mouth twitching once before his teeth lock tight. His dark eyes flick sideways, cold and calculating. Adrian steps up beside him, pressing a black smartphone against his ear, his jaw clamped like iron.
Luca spins toward Adrian without releasing his grip on my waist. "Burn the road. Lock down every gate. If a single unfamiliar bird flies over that wall, shoot it out of the sky. Kill anyone within five miles."
Adrian taps his phone against his leg. "Fake plates. Same crew from the docks. They were waiting for her car."
"Great," I laugh bitterly. "So I'm on a hit list now."
My breath catches in my throat. I stare past Luca's shoulder at the ditch down the drive, where the skid marks cut two black gouges into the gravel straight toward the trees where that black bumper had been idling.
Not a random vehicle. Not someone mistaking me for another girl on a London sidewalk.
They had sat in the brush, watching the gate, waiting until my driver turned the corner.
"They were waiting for me," I whisper, a cold dread washing through my gut.
Luca dips his head to meet my eyes. "Nora, breathe."
"Stop it." I shove away from his chest, trembling even harder without his hands. "Don't talk to me like I'm made of glass."
Luca catches my elbow before I trip over the gravel. "You're not made of glass."
I smack his arm weakly. "You're lying. You look ready to kill everyone in the city."
Luca does not blink. He stares down at me with the vacant, unhinged focus of a starved hound watching fresh meat, his chest rising and falling in sharp, ragged gasps while his fingers dig like steel claws into my side.
Luca sweeps an arm around my waist, wrenching me completely off my feet against his chest. "You are never leaving this compound again," he growls against my temple. "I will chain you to my bed before I let anyone put another scratch on you."
I open my mouth to fire back something cutting, but the words turn to ash on my tongue as my knees buckle. Luca catches me before I hit the stones, his fingers digging like iron bands into my ribs as the sharp, metallic stench of spilled fuel and burnt gunpowder finally hits the back of my throat.