Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Amanda
The first thing I register is how dry my mouth is.
The second is rope.
My arms are behind me, tied to the chair hard enough that my shoulders ache before I even try to move. I pull anyway. The rope bites into my wrists and takes skin with it.
My head feels too heavy for my neck. It takes me three tries to lift it, and the room comes together slowly. Stone walls. Concrete floor. One hanging bulb. No windows.
Then him.
An old man sits across from me, maybe ten feet away, his hands folded in his lap. Silver hair, neatly combed. Deep lines around his mouth and eyes. He looks calm. Not pleased. Not angry. Calm.
His eyes look kind.
For a second, that throws me. Nothing about this should look kind. I am tied to a chair in a locked room, and the man watching me can only be Enzo Basile.
Don Enzo Basile.
Aldo Basile's father.
Every instinct tells me to panic. The crash keeps coming back in pieces. Luca warning me away from the seatbelt. Twisted metal. A hand in my hair, dragging me out of the wreck.
There are other men in the room. Two by the door. One at Enzo's right shoulder, younger and lean, hands folded in front of him like he has spent years practicing harmless.
Luca.
He told me to brace. I screamed for him when they pulled me out, and nobody answered.
I don't know if he is alive.
The old man shifts in his chair.
"Buonasera, signorina," he says.
His voice is low. Dry. He keeps speaking in Italian, slow enough to make the meaning feel close and fast enough to keep it out of reach. I catch a few words. One of them is Aldo.
My stomach turns at the name.
I don't let my expression change.
When he finishes, he waits.
"I don't speak Italian," I say.
My voice sounds scraped raw. I hate that he gets to hear me like that. I swallow and try again.
"Fourteen trips to this country, and I never learned."
Nothing.
Not a blink. Either he does not understand English, or he does and wants me to know it does not matter.
The man at his shoulder steps forward. Up close, there is nothing remarkable about him. The kind of face your eyes slide past and forget a minute later.
"Don Basile wishes to speak with you," he says. His English is crisp. "I will translate everything he says and everything you say. Exactly. Choose your words carefully, signorina. He hears all of it."
He steps back.
The bulb hums overhead. Somewhere nearby, water drips against stone.
I look at Enzo Basile. At the soft eyes of the man whose son touched me after he drugged me. The man who put a price on Valentino's head. The man who had my car run off the road and brought me here bleeding.
I am terrified.
My fingers tremble against the rope. Dryness coats my mouth, and the ringing in my ears hasn't faded since the crash. At my temple, blood has begun to crust, pulling tight whenever I move.
But I've been scared before. I know how to hide it.
So I lift my chin.
"Okay," I say to the translator. "Everything?"
"Exactly."
I look back at Enzo Basile. "Then translate this."
The translator waits.
I smile.
"Fuck you all."
Silence.
The translator's jaw tightens. For one beautiful second, I think he might refuse.
Then he leans toward Enzo and translates it.
I don't need to speak Italian to know he said exactly what I told him to.
Enzo does not move.
Then he laughs.
Low. Rough. Real.
The sound crawls over my skin.
He says something to the translator, still amused, and the translator turns back to me without the polite face this time.
"The Don says," he tells me, "he understands now why Valentino Conti killed his son over you.”
Valentino
The phone rings twice before Fabio answers.
"Luca," I say.
"Hospital in Ostia. Skull fracture. Broken ribs. Punctured lung. They cut him out of the car." Fabio takes one breath. "He's alive."
"For how long?"
"I don't know."
I close my eyes.
"He took the worst of it," Fabio says. "The wheel went into his chest when he tried to keep the car from rolling onto Amanda's side. If he hadn't turned it, she would be the one in surgery."
Of course he did.
Luca Farro owns nothing, promises nothing, plans nothing past the job in front of him, and he used his body to keep her alive.
I will owe him for that until one of us dies.
"Stay with him," I say.
"Where are you?"
I look through the windshield.
The Basile estate sits on the hill ahead of me, stone walls lit gold against the dark. Cameras on the corners. Floodlights at the gate. Enough men inside to make Bruno's twelve-hour plan look smart.
I do not have twelve hours.
"Vale," Fabio says, sharper now. "Bruno said to wait. Tell me you're waiting."
"Tell Luca he drives like shit."
"Valentino."
I hang up.
He will understand. Fabio usually does, which has always been inconvenient.
For a few seconds, I sit there with the engine off and my hand in my jacket pocket, fingers closed around the rosary. I do not pray. I have never been good at asking God for clean hands before doing something bloody.
Amanda is behind those walls.
Enzo has her tied to a chair, or worse. Every minute I spend sitting here is another minute his men have access to her.
Bruno wanted twelve hours.
Enzo needs one bad mood.
I get out of the car.
The gravel crunches under my shoes. Good. Let them hear me. Stealth was never going to get me through that gate. Enzo wants Valentino Conti, son-killer, bounty, blood debt. So I give him exactly what he wants.
Fifty meters out, I draw my gun.
The cameras catch me raising it.
I fire once into the sky.
The shot cracks across the hill. Somewhere inside the estate, a dog starts barking.
I lift both hands. The gun hangs loose from one finger.
Seven seconds.
The gate opens.
Two men come through with rifles up, shouting in Sicilian. Young. Nervous. One of them keeps his finger too tight on the trigger.
"Easy," I say, and toss the gun into the gravel. "I'm Valentino Conti. Your boss has been looking for me."
The younger one goes pale.
The other does not react. Older. Smarter. He gestures with the rifle.
Forward.
I walk.
My hands stay raised. My pulse stays even. There is no calm in it. Calm is for men who believe they might walk out again. This is simpler than calm.
She lives. That is the whole plan.
Enzo wants the man who killed his son. He wants my blood, not hers. A vendetta is ugly, but it has rules old men like Enzo still respect when it suits them.
Tonight, I suit him.
The young one grabs my wrists and yanks them behind my back. The zip tie bites deep. He pats me down badly but thoroughly enough to find the knife at my ankle and the blade at my back.
"Clean," he says.
Not even close.
The older man steps in front of me. Gray in his beard. Hard eyes. He studies my face like he wants to remember the moment before anyone ruins it.
"Take me to Don Enzo," I say.
He turns toward the house.
The young one shoves me forward through the gate, past the cameras, into the light.
The gate closes behind me.
Forgive me, Amanda.
I promised I would come back to you.
I never promised how much of me would be left.
Amanda
Enzo sits across from me with his hands on his knees. He hasn't spoken since he asked about Valentino, and I didn't answer.
The translator stands by the door, eyes on the floor. He wasn't doing that before.
My head hurts. Dried blood cracks at the corner of my mouth, and I taste it every time I breathe. My hair sticks to one cheek. I want to push it away. I can't. That helpless little want puts tears in my eyes before the pain does.
I think about Vittoria. Aria. The kitchen at Vittoria's house when we were sixteen, when Aria made hot chocolate at three in the morning because none of us could sleep.
A door opens behind me.
Fast footsteps cross the room. One man. He stops in front of Enzo, bends close, and speaks quietly into his ear. The Italian comes too fast for me, but I catch one word.
Cancello.
Gate.
Maybe.
My Italian is restaurant Italian. This isn't that.
Enzo listens without moving. Not his mouth. Not his hands. Only his eyes shift to me for one second before returning to the man.
He says one word. "Sì."
The man straightens, and Enzo stands slowly, one hand on his knee. He buttons his jacket. Smooths the front.
My chest loosens with a sick kind of certainty.
"Wait," I say.
He doesn't look at me.
"Wait. What did he say?"
The translator says nothing.
The door opens again behind me, and boots cross the tile. Two men. Maybe three.
Then I know.
Before I see him, I know.
"No."
It comes out too small.
They bring Valentino in with his hands tied behind his back, his shirt still clean, his jaw set. His eyes find mine the second he crosses the threshold.
"No," I say again, louder this time. "Valentino, no. What are you doing?"
He keeps walking.
Two men hold his arms, but they aren't dragging him. They don't have to. He walks like he chose this, because he did.
He looks at me the whole way. There's no mystery in his face, no hidden message. Just the terrible certainty that he knows exactly what's about to happen and has already accepted it.
His mouth lifts at one corner.
Soft. For me.
Goodbye.
"No."
I'm crying before I know it. My face is wet, and my throat makes a sound I don't recognize. Too raw to be a word.
"Valentino, no."
The tears blur him. I blink, and he's only a shape moving toward Enzo. I blink again, and his back is to me.
I throw myself forward. The rope catches, and the chair tips onto its front legs, stopping hard enough to jar my teeth.
"Please."
I look at Enzo because Valentino won't turn around.
"Please don't kill him."
My voice breaks. I hear it happen. I don't care.
"Please. I'll do anything. Whatever you want."
Enzo doesn't look at me.
"Look at me."
The translator stays silent.
No one moves.
No one gives me the mercy of pretending I matter.