Chapter Nineteen #2
“If I knew, I would not be having this conversation with you in my kitchen.” He stripped off the gloves.
“Matteo has a bounty on Dario. Alive. He has a separate order out for the girl. Unharmed. At any cost. That second order is quieter. More dangerous. The kind of order that gets people killed for asking the wrong questions.”
I stared at him. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because my daughter opened the door to you. Because if Matteo finds out she helped and I did nothing, it will not end well for either of us. And because you look like you are about to fall over.”
He stood. “You have maybe four hours before someone tracks the phone she gave you. Use them. Or don’t. But do not come back here.”
I stood too. My feet throbbed.
“Thank you,” I said. He did not answer. He only watched me walk to the door. I left before he could change his mind.
The burner phone felt like a live thing in my pocket. I headed north on foot until I could risk a rideshare paid in cash. The driver did not look at me twice. I kept the high neck of the sweater pulled up and my eyes on the dark window.
Every part of me hurt. The cuts on my feet. The deep, stubborn ache between my legs that flared when I shifted wrong. Exhaustion sat behind my eyes like a weight.
Camilla.
I turned the doctor’s words over in my head. I should have felt something like hope. I felt nothing but the same cold clarity that had settled in my chest the moment I walked out of the penthouse.
I used the phone carefully. Two short calls to numbers I remembered from the old days at the club. Girls who had gotten out. Girls who owed me enough to answer at this hour.
One of them gave me a secondary location. A short-term safe house Dario had used before when he needed to disappear for a few days. Near the airstrip. Easy to miss if you did not know what to look for.
I paid the driver to drop me three blocks away and walked the rest.
The sky was starting to lighten by the time I reached the street. Industrial. Quiet. The kind of place that looked abandoned until you noticed the cameras and the reinforced doors.
I waited in the shadow of a loading dock until my legs threatened to give out. Then I moved closer.
The car was empty. The building was dark. No movement. No sound. I checked the windows I could reach. Nothing. I circled the back. A side door hung slightly open, the lock forced sometime in the last few hours. I went in.
The place smelled like dust and old cigarette smoke. A mattress on the floor. A half-empty bottle of water. A child’s jacket tossed in the corner. Pink, with a unicorn. I recognized it, because I bought it for my little sister.
Dario had been here. Camilla had been here. And they were gone.
I sat down on the edge of the mattress because my legs would no longer hold me.
My wrapped feet throbbed in time with my pulse.
Somewhere outside, the city was waking up.
Somewhere, Matteo was hunting. Somewhere, my sister was breathing, being moved, being used as leverage by a man who had sold everything else that belonged to me.
I pressed the pink unicorn jacket to my face and breathed in the faint scent of her. Then I stood up again.
I hesitated, knowing Matteo would come after me. After a long moment, I carefully folded Camilla’s jacket on the mattress. I hoped Matteo would find it and keep digging. Then my chances of finding her would double.
I walked back out into the gray morning with the burner phone in my pocket and no new direction, only the knowledge that the trail had gone cold again and that the four hours the doctor had given me were half gone.
I did not know where I was going next. I only knew I could not stop.
Not while Camilla was out there. Not while the man who had bought me was somewhere in the same city, burning through every resource he had to find us both.
The street outside was starting to wake. Delivery trucks. A man walking a dog. Normal people living normal mornings.
I walked until the industrial blocks turned into quieter side streets. My bandaged feet burned with every step. I found a narrow alley between two closed shops and sank down onto an overturned crate because my legs finally refused to carry me any farther.
I sat there with my head tipped back against the brick and let the morning light find me. For the first time since I walked out of the penthouse, the anger thinned enough for something else to slip through.
I missed Matteo Ventura.
The thought landed so hard I almost laughed.
It was stupid. Dangerous.
True.
I missed the weight of his hand on the back of my neck when he was pretending this was only for show.
I missed the way he looked at me when he thought I was not watching, like the crack under his ribs was spreading and he did not know how to stop it.
I missed the low sound he made when he pushed into me the first time after the auction, half curse and half prayer.
I even missed the cream. The quiet orders.
I hated myself for it.
And still.
I pressed the heel of my hand hard against my sternum, right over the place that felt hollow. I could almost feel the ghost of his fingers there instead.
“You absolute bastard,” I whispered to the empty alley.
A car passed at the end of the street. I flinched, then forced myself still.
The burner phone stayed silent in my pocket.
No new leads. No replies from the last two numbers I had tried.
The four hours the doctor had given me were almost gone.
Somewhere in the city Matteo was tearing through every contact he had.
Somewhere Dario was moving Camilla farther out of reach.
And I was sitting in an alley missing the man who had bought me.
I wanted to go back.
Not to the soft clothes and the scheduled claiming.
I wanted to go back to the version of my husband that had whispered he would find my little sister.
The version that had looked wrecked when I put the knife to my own throat.
The version that had said “please” like the word cost him something vital.
I wanted him to find me.
The thought terrified me more than the empty safe house had.
I stood up before I could sink any deeper into it. My feet screamed. My body felt used up and too aware at the same time. I shoved the jacket back into my pocket and started walking again, nowhere in particular, just forward.