Chapter Seventeen #2
I shoved them both toward it. Nico first, then Nicky, my hands on their shoulders with more force than courtesy, and the door swung open on hinges that sounded like they’d been oiled by someone who took hinges seriously.
“Stay here. Do not come out. Do not make noise.” My voice came out flat. Even. The tone I used when the part of my brain that made jokes had temporarily shut down and the part that kept people alive was running the show.
I reached into my laptop bag and pulled my switchblade out. I clicked it open with a sound that was satisfying in a way that had nothing to do with the current circumstances and everything to do with the fact that good engineering was good engineering, crisis or no crisis.
I handed Nicky my bag. The strap was warm from my body, the weight familiar in a way that breathing was familiar. “Guard this with your life.”
Nicky looked at the bag. Looked at the switchblade in my hand. Looked at me with an expression that contained several questions he did not have time to ask.
“The switchblade is mine, the bag is yours.” I met his eyes. Held them. “Don’t mix those up.”
I pulled the door shut. The latch caught with a soft, final sound.
I went.
The corridor smelled like smoke and something sharper underneath — the particular tang of things that were not supposed to be burning, burning anyway. I moved fast. Bare feet on marble, switchblade in my right hand, the blade catching what little light made it through the haze.
I was looking for Ari in an actively exploding building.
Where was the enormous man? He should be easy to find. He was enormous. Six-foot-three of scarred dock worker with a denim vest and the gravitational pull of a small planet.
How hard could it be?
The answer, as it turned out, was moderately hard, because the D’Angelo estate was approximately the size of a small airport and currently resembled one that had made several poor decisions about its landing approach.
Something creaked overhead. I did not look up. Looking up was for people who had time to worry about ceilings, and I did not have time. I had a switchblade, bare feet, and a cardiovascular system that was doing overtime.
I rounded a corner and found Luca Sabatino standing in a patch of relatively clear air with his back to the wall and his expression doing something complicated.
The man looked like he was holding the outer edge of his composure by force of will.
His beard was dusted with something pale — plaster, probably — and his eyes were the shade of focused that happened when the person you loved was somewhere in a building that was coming apart and you were calculating how many walls stood between you and them.
I did not waste time on greetings. Greetings were decorative. Information was functional.
“Nico and Nicky are in the closet off the east corridor. Third door. Solid oak. They are fine.” I delivered it fast and precise, the way I delivered everything when the part of my brain that made jokes had temporarily shut down. “East corridor, third door, solid oak, they are fine. Repeat it.”
Luca’s expression did something I did not have a category for. Something moved behind his eyes — relief, calculation, the specific warmth of a man who had just been handed coordinates for something he needed — and then he was gone.
Not running. Moving with the controlled speed of a man who had somewhere to be and had decided that getting there alive was more important than getting there quickly. His footsteps faded down the corridor, boots on marble, and I stood in the haze and thought: good. One problem solved.
I kept moving.
The second explosion hit while I was halfway down the next corridor. The windows rattled. The floor shook. Something in the ceiling made a sound that suggested it had reached a conclusion about its structural integrity and the conclusion was not favorable.
I rounded the corner at a pace that would have qualified as jogging if I’d been wearing shoes, which I was not, because apparently my professional risk assessment had included “pastries on terrace” but not “barefoot evacuation of exploding mafia estate,” and I was going to have a very pointed conversation with my past self about prioritization.
The hand came out of nowhere.
One second the corridor was empty, the next a hand shot out of a doorway to my left and hauled me inside with enough force to knock the air from my lungs in a single, decisive exhalation.
My back hit the wall hard enough to register in my spine.
A palm flattened over my mouth before I could make a sound.
My hand tightened on the switchblade. The grip was familiar — worn handle, something I had carried for longer than I cared to admit.
If this is Ari I am going to be furious about my heart rate.
It was not Ari.
Theo Romano crowded me against the plaster. Expensive cologne — something woody and overspent — and bright eyes that carried the quality of careful, patient attention that read as warmth until you were close enough to see what lived underneath.
A man who had decided chaos was an opportunity.
His breath was warm against my face. His palm pressed hard over my mouth, fingers digging into my cheek.
“Hello, Zephyr.” His voice was low. Deliberate. “I’ve been waiting for a moment alone with you. And look, the universe provides.”
I went very quiet. Very cold. The kind of cold that lived in the neighborhood of something primal and had been there longer than I was willing to admit.
Theo’s free hand found my hip. His thumb traced a small circle through the fabric of my shirt, and the gesture was so deliberate, so specific, that my skin registered it as a threat.
“I’ve watched you.” His mouth was close to my ear.
His voice dropped lower, each line worse than the last, a detailed inventory of what he wanted to do to me delivered with the calm of someone who had been thinking about it for a very long time.
“Every time you stand next to him. Every time you touch him. I’ve thought about what those hands would feel like on me instead.
What you would sound like. What you would do if I —”
I could feel his arousal pressed against me. Hard. Deliberate. The pressure of a man who had decided that proximity was consent and consent was a formality he could dispense with.
My free hand worked at the palm over my mouth. Fingernails finding purchase against his skin, buying fractions of an inch. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
My other hand was locked around the switchblade with the grip of someone who had used it before and had no philosophical objections to using it again. The blade was open. Warm from my hand. Waiting.
Theo tightened his hold. His fingers dug harder into my cheek. His hips pressed forward. His breath came faster against my ear, and the sound of it was the sound of a man who had decided that this was happening.
I stopped trying to peel his hand away.
I drove the blade into his thigh with everything I had instead.
The sound he made was gratifying. A scream, high and ragged, the noise of a man who had not seen that coming and was now revising several previously held assumptions about how his afternoon would proceed.
His hand left my mouth. His body folded. He hit the floor hard, one hand clutching his leg, blood already darkening the fabric of his tailored trousers with the efficient spread of something that had found a path and was taking it.
I stepped back. Assessed the angle. The blade had gone in clean — deep enough to matter, not deep enough to hit anything arterial. I was not trying to kill him today. Today was about communication, and the communication had been received with what I considered appropriate volume.
Theo was making sounds on the floor. Wet, ragged sounds. His hand pressed to the wound, blood seeping between his fingers, and his eyes found mine with the hatred of a man who had just discovered that the person he considered prey had teeth.
I looked at him for one beat, two. I considered wrapping the wound. I genuinely did not want to. I finally concluded that Theo had hands and at least one of them still worked, and first aid was a courtesy I was not inclined to extend.
I kicked him in the face.
Not hard. Precise. The movement of someone who had learned to fight in streets without rules and had developed opinions about which parts of the human face responded most effectively to applied force.
My bare foot connected with his jaw — a short, sharp impact — and Theo’s head snapped back against the floor with a sound that suggested several things had been rearranged and not all of them would be returning to their original configuration.
He went still.
I stood over him for a moment. His breathing was ragged.
Blood on his lip. Blood on his thigh. The switchblade was still in my hand, warm and wet, and I wiped it clean on the leg of his trousers because his trousers had probably cost more than my monthly rent and I considered this a form of taxation.
I stepped over him and pout of the room. I turned and closed the door, then turned back.
Directly into Ari’s chest.
Ari’s hands were on my arms before my brain had fully registered that the chest I’d walked into was his chest, which said something about my situational awareness that I was not going to examine too closely because examining things required coherence and coherence was several exits behind me.
His black eyes moved across my face. Fast. Precise.
The inventory of a man who was running a damage assessment and did not like the initial findings.
His hands checked my arms, my shoulders, my face — thumb brushing my cheek where Theo’s palm had been, fingers tracing the line of my jaw with the specific attention of someone cataloguing bruises that hadn’t formed yet.
“I’m fine,” I said. My voice came out steadier than it had any right to.
“You’re bleeding.”