CHAPTER 20
FIORELLA P.O.V.
My lungs felt like they were packed with broken glass.
We tore through the undergrowth, the terrain pitching upward into a steep, unforgiving incline that shredded the soles of my feet.
The damp earth gave way under my heels, and I tripped hard over a gnarled, mossy root.
Before I could even gasp, Angelo caught me by the waist, his fingers digging brutally into my ribs to steady me.
He didn’t stop moving. His grip was a bruising anchor, hauling me forward when my legs wanted to quit.
My silk slip was completely wrecked, torn to shit and caked in a heavy layer of dark mud, my bare arms scratched raw by the briars we kept plowing through.
"Move, Fiorella. Don't look back," Angelo grunted, his breath a low, even growl in the dark. He moved with the silent, terrifying efficiency of a predator totally in his element.
Behind us, down in the valley we’d just crawled out of, the rhythmic thwack of heavy boots against the forest floor echoed through the trees.
Over that, the distant, frantic baying of hounds cut through the cold air.
They were tracking us. And I wasn't stupid enough to think my brother sent a search party to gently bring me home.
"They're coming for us, aren't they?" I choked out, stumbling as he dragged me up another embankment. "Not to save me."
"Cazzo, keep your head down!" Angelo hissed, yanking me flat against the side of a massive, moss-slicked boulder.
He used his entire body weight to pin me to the stone, his palm immediately slamming over my mouth to seal it shut.
I could feel the solid wall of his heat pressing against my back, his chest rising and falling against my spine in a tight, controlled rhythm.
Below us, the flashlights of the search party swept across the canopy, turning the low-hanging mountain mist into eerie, blinding white columns that sliced through the darkness.
The physical proximity was a dangerous, buzzing friction.
I was terrified of the men hunting us, but the man physically crushing me against the rock felt like the actual epicenter of the storm.
I could smell the heavy scent of his tobacco mixed with gun oil and the sharp metallic tang of his sweat.
The cold moisture of the moss seeped through the ruined silk at my back, chilling my skin while his front burned me alive.
I felt the rough texture of his calloused thumb slide up to trace the sharp line of my jaw, a completely unhinged gesture of possession while he kept me silenced. The glare of a flashlight passed inches from my face, so bright it burned through my closed eyelids.
"Breathe through your nose. Slowly," he whispered directly into my ear, his lips grazing the cartilage.
I nodded slightly against his hand. I wondered for a split second if I should scream, if I should flag down my brother's men and take my chances.
But the thought of Angelo being caught, of him being gunned down in the dirt, caused a sharper, more violent pang of fear in my chest than the thought of my own death.
The absolute absurdity of my brain right now.
I was down so bad for the man who kidnapped me that I was actively hiding from my own rescue party.
"If you make a sound, I'll have to kill them all, and we don't have the bullets," he murmured, his voice entirely deadpan.
He pulled back, grabbing my arm again, and shoved me toward a narrow crevice beneath the sprawling, exposed roots of a fallen oak tree.
He practically threw me into the dirt, thrusting the heavy, leather-bound ledger—the undeniable proof of the Silvestri family's entire money-laundering empire—hard into my chest. I scrambled backward into the hollow, clutching the book like a makeshift shield.
Angelo crouched low at the opening, his eyes scanning the pitch-black woods like a feral wolf mapping out a kill zone. He adjusted my grip on the ledger, his large hands momentarily covering mine, pressing my fingers into the expensive old leather to ground me.
"Stay here. Do not move until I come back for you," he ordered, his tone leaving zero room for debate.
Panic spiked hot and fast in my throat. He was preparing to leave me. The sudden prospect of being left alone in this absolute void was infinitely more terrifying than the hunt itself. "What if you don't? What if they find me?"
He leaned in, his face inches from mine, the moonlight catching the hard, unyielding lines of his jaw. "Then you use the knife I gave you, or you die a Silvestri. Choose."
He disappeared into the brush without another sound.
I pressed my spine desperately into the rotting wood at the back of the root hollow.
The gritty feel of the soil dug under my fingernails, and the heavy, rich smell of the ledger's leather mixed with the overpowering stench of decay and wet bark.
Every single rustle of a leaf sounded like a heavy boot.
I counted my breaths just to keep myself from spiraling into a full-blown panic attack, but the silence of the woods was a heavy, suffocating blanket.
A beetle scuttled over my bare foot, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper to keep from shrieking.
I picked frantically at a loose thread on my silk slip, pulling it, wrapping it around my finger, letting the repetitive motion anchor my brain.
I was sitting in the mud like a stray fucking dog.
The pristine mafia princess aesthetic was dead and buried.
The transition from being his collateral debt to being his actual partner in this mess wasn't just a mental shift anymore; it was a physical necessity for my survival.
I couldn't function without knowing where he was.
Please, Angelo... come back, I thought, my fingers trembling so hard the ledger rattled against my sternum. I stared out into the dark, my heart hammering against my ribs. I'm not going back. I can't.
A heavy boot snapped a dry branch just outside the hollow.
A lone scout broke through the dense foliage, a mountain of a man moving with a heavy, arrogant swagger.
The blinding strobe of his high-powered flashlight danced over the gnarled roots, illuminating the very edge of the dirt where my toes were dug in.
The humming vibration of his radio static buzzed in the quiet air, followed by the sickeningly familiar smell of cheap, burnt cigarettes.
He stopped, his boots clicking as he shifted his immense weight.
If he took three more steps, the beam would catch the shimmer of my torn dress.
I held my breath until my chest actively ached, biting down on my lip so hard my teeth ground together to keep them from chattering.
"Come out, little bird. I know you're nearby," the man called out.
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. I recognized that thick, gravelly voice. It was Silvio. The absolute psychopath who taught my older brother how to properly break a man’s joints during interrogations.
"Don't make me hunt you like a pig," Silvio sneered, un-slinging the heavy assault rifle from his shoulder. He used the black steel barrel to lazily prod the shadows beneath the roots, stepping closer.
He was inches from my face when the canopy above us violently exploded.
Angelo dropped from the branches like a fucking gargoyle, his entire body weight slamming directly onto Silvio’s shoulders and driving the massive scout face-first into the earth.
The wet, meaty thump of their bodies hitting the mud vibrated through the floor of my hollow.
The metallic clatter of the rifle bouncing off a rock rang out as the flashlight rolled away from them, casting long, swinging, psychotic shadows across the trees like a strobe light at a funeral.
The fight was silent, desperate, and completely savage. Silvio was significantly larger than Angelo, and the element of surprise only bought Angelo two seconds before Silvio’s brute-force training kicked in.
"Ferraro! You dead bastard!" Silvio roared, bucking upward.
"Quiet, stronzo. You’re waking the woods," Angelo gritted out, scrambling to lock his arm around Silvio’s thick neck.
But Angelo’s shoulder—the one that had been bleeding for the last ten miles—gave out.
His grip slipped. Silvio capitalized immediately, maneuvering his massive bulk to slam Angelo backward against the trunk of the oak.
Silvio drove a heavy knee straight into Angelo’s gut with a sickening thud.
The impact knocked Angelo’s combat knife loose from his grip.
It spun through the air, hitting the dirt and sliding right to the edge of my hollow.
Angelo was losing. For the first time since he dragged me out of my family’s estate, he looked entirely human, completely vulnerable, and dangerously close to getting slaughtered. Angelo’s breath hitched in genuine pain, a sharp sound that tore right through the center of my chest.
My hand shot out of the shadows and brushed the hilt of the knife. The cross-hatched grip was cold against my feverish skin.
"Look at you..." Silvio laughed, a wet, ugly sound as he used his weight to crush Angelo against the bark. "Alessio's going to pay me triple for your head."
"Not today, you piece of shit," Angelo spat, spitting blood onto Silvio's jacket as he struggled uselessly against the pin.
Silvio pinned Angelo’s wrists to the ground, his bulk making the earth literally groan beneath them.
With a sadistic grin stretching across his ugly face, Silvio drew a jagged, serrated hunting knife from his belt.
The moonlight glinted off the edge as he raised it, aiming dead center for Angelo's throat.
This was it. The absolute limit. I could stay in this hole, play the victim, let Silvio kill Angelo, and get dragged back to my brother's golden cage. Or I could cross the line and never, ever come back.