CHAPTER 16
FIORELLA
The illusion of the shower evaporated the second his boots hit the concrete.
Angelo shoved a massive, oversized tactical jacket against my chest, the rough fabric scraping over my skin, still damp and hyper-sensitive from the hot water.
I clutched the heavy material like it was a shroud, my brain struggling to process the whiplash.
The man who had just washed the dirt out of my hair with an infuriatingly gentle touch was gone, replaced instantly by the black-clad enforcer who looked at me like I was a crate of unstable munitions.
He didn't even look at my face. His eyes were locked on the heavy steel door, then darted down to the watch on his wrist. He snapped the Velcro on his holsters with a sharp, lethal precision that made my teeth grind.
The smell of burnt ozone from the fried electronics mixed with the cold, metallic scent of gun oil rolling off him.
"Put it on," he ordered, his voice flat.
I shoved my arms into the sleeves, but my hands were shaking so violently I couldn't align the zipper tracks at the bottom.
The metal teeth just clinked uselessly together.
The absolute fucking audacity of my own body betraying me right now pissed me off more than he did.
I fumbled with it for two seconds before Angelo let out a harsh, guttural growl, batted my hands away, and zipped the jacket straight up to my chin in one violent, continuous motion.
"Don't look at me like that," he snapped, his knuckles brushing the bruised skin along my collarbone. "The ghost of the bunker stays here. Out there, you're a target."
I glared at his jawline, refusing to blink. I wondered if the man in the shower was just some oxygen-starved hallucination I fabricated to keep from losing my mind.
"Stay behind my left shoulder," he said, turning his back to me to rack the slide on his rifle. "If you move without my word, I’ll bind you. I’m not fucking around, Fiorella."
The steel door groaned, a horrific metallic screech that echoed in my skull, and then the heavy silence of the Sicilian night rushed into the concrete room.
Angelo clamped his hand around my wrist like a permanent iron ring and hauled me over the threshold.
The transition was a violent physical shock.
I was pushed out of the stagnant, claustrophobic cage of the bunker and thrust into the terrifying expanse of the open mountain.
My bare feet hit the jagged exterior rocks, slicing into my soles instantly, but the physical pain was secondary to the sheer, horrifying size of the sky above us.
It felt like it was going to swallow me whole.
The overwhelming scent of blooming jasmine and rotting pine hit my lungs, cold and sharp.
I stumbled over a discarded brass shell casing half-buried in the dirt right outside the door. My ankle rolled, but before my knees could even touch the gravel, Angelo caught me by the scruff of the heavy jacket, hoisting me upright with zero effort.
"Breathe. The air won't kill you," he muttered, not breaking stride as he dragged me toward the tree line. "Watch your step. The mountain doesn't care about your pedigree."
I swallowed the curse sitting on my tongue, forcing my legs to keep up with his massive strides.
We hit the edge of the woods just as a dark silhouette detached itself from the brush.
I flinched, jerking back against Angelo’s side, but it was just Renato.
He was holding a suppressed rifle tight against his chest, his face lit up in a pale, ghastly blue for a split second by the glow of a tactical tablet.
Renato didn't even look at me. He looked at Angelo and started spitting rapid-fire Sicilian, the words hitting me like physical blows as my brain translated the dialect.
He was confirming the extraction team's orders.
They weren't sweeping the grid to find me.
They had a clearance mandate. Alessio had issued a kill order on both of us to scrub the stain off the Silvestri name.
My own brother didn't want a rescued hostage; he wanted a closed loop.
My knees actually buckled this time. I hit the rough, gnarled bark of a massive oak tree and just leaned my forehead against it, the coarse wood digging into my skin as my stomach violently threatened to empty itself.
Alessio didn't even try to negotiate. He just erased me.
The sick bastard actually signed the warrant. I was already a ghost to them.
"They’re sweeping the valley, Angelo," Renato said, his voice a low vibration in the dark. "No prisoners."
Angelo stood like a stone statue, absorbing the report. Then he turned his head slowly, looking down at me where I was trying to remember how to pull oxygen into my lungs.
"Your brother isn't sending flowers, princess," Angelo said, the words dripping with a twisted, dark satisfaction. "He's sending a clean-up crew."
"Fuck you," I gasped to the bark.
"Alessio signed the warrant himself. You're a loose end now."
He grabbed my shoulder and hauled me away from the tree, dragging me to the edge of the ridge that overlooked the massive, sweeping valley below.
He stood right behind me, his chest pressing into my back through the jacket, forcing me to look down.
Sweeping beams of intense white flashlights cut through the distant tree lines.
Dozens of them. A methodical, crawling grid of executioners.
Angelo wasn't offering comfort. He was using my family’s psychopathic cruelty to lock the cage around my head.
It was a siege on my sanity. He reached out, and before I could jerk my face away, his rough thumb wiped a stray tear of pure anger off my cheek.
The gesture felt more like a threat than anything human.
"Look at them," he whispered, his hot breath grazing my ear. "That’s what Silvestri love looks like. You have no home to go back to, Fiorella. I’m the only thing in these woods that isn’t trying to put a bullet in your head."
I hated him. I hated him for being right, and I hated him for being the only person left on earth who still required me to be breathing.
We descended into the dense Mediterranean scrub on a steep incline.
The brush was thick, dragging and snagging on the torn silk slip I was wearing under the jacket.
Angelo kept his heavy hand clamped right on the back of my neck.
He was steering me like a goddamn dog on a choke chain.
Every time my feet dragged or I slipped on the loose mud, his fingers tightened, a sharp, physical reminder of who owned my movements.
A thick cluster of dry brambles whipped back as Angelo pushed through them, and a massive thorn tore a long, burning gash straight across my bare thigh. I let out a sharp gasp.
Instantly, Angelo whirled around, slamming his palm flat over my mouth and shoving me backward until I was pinned against a boulder.
"Keep your mouth shut or I’ll gag you with your own silk," he hissed, his eyes burning with a feral intensity. He dropped his hand, ignoring the blood beading on my leg. "Move. Now."
We hit a secondary ridge, the ground flattening out slightly.
Renato threw his fist up, signaling a hard halt.
He pointed toward the opposite cliff face.
Angelo immediately released his grip on my neck.
He stepped away, bracing his rifle against the trunk of a dead pine tree, his eye pressing hard into the thermal optic.
He and Renato started trading hushed, clipped tactical coordinates.
For the first time since he ripped me out of my house, Angelo's attention was fully, one-hundred-percent divided. The threat of the snipers across the ravine had finally created a crack in his impenetrable control.
I stood there in the shadows, perfectly still. I slowly inched my right foot backward, testing the dry leaves underneath the mud, waiting for the crunch. Nothing. Angelo didn't move. He was completely funneled into the scope.
"Three o'clock. Two shooters," Angelo muttered, his finger hovering near the trigger guard. "Wait for the signal." He didn't even look back at me. "Don't move, Fiorella."
He actually thought I was broken. He thought I was too fucking terrified of the dark and my brother’s hit squads to leave his side. He thought I needed him.
I looked to my left. A narrow, overgrown goat path dropped sharply into a hidden ravine.
It was nearly vertical, entirely treacherous, but it led down, away from the snipers' line of sight, and more importantly, it led away from the man currently ignoring me.
If I stayed, I was just his blood debt. If I ran, I was a target, but I was a free target.
I gripped the edges of the tactical jacket, pulling it tight against my body to keep the loose fabric from catching on the branches. I took one final, shaking breath, locking down the absolute panic screaming in my head.
"No more debts," I whispered to the dark. "Bastardo."
I bolted.
I flung myself over the edge of the embankment and onto the goat path.
My feet slid out from under me almost immediately on the wet rock.
I didn't try to stop. I let gravity take me, rolling and sliding through the dirt.
Dry thorns and jagged roots tore at my arms, ripping the silk slip underneath the jacket to absolute shreds.
The adrenaline hit my bloodstream like an injection of battery acid, completely shielding me from the impact of the rocks against my ribs.
I lost my left shoe in a deep patch of mud halfway down. I didn't even pause to look back. I just kept going, running half-barefoot over the sharp stones, my breath ripping out of my throat in harsh, incoherent gasps.
"Go. Go. Go," I chanted to myself, the words syncing with the thud of my one boot and my bare heel on the dirt.
Then I heard it.
"FIORELLA! PUTTANA!"