Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Amanda
Isit on the cold floor with my back against the wall, and I look at her. "Francesca." She waits. "Did you know Elio?"
She nods once. Careful. The split in her lip holds. "Elio Mancini."
"Yes."
"How?"
"He came into a room." Her one eye stays on me.
"Three weeks ago. Maybe four. I was with Aldo at the agency office on Via Savona.
The door opened, and a man walked in. Aldo stood up.
He said, this is Elio, our new colleague from Chicago.
He shook his hand. Poured him a drink. They talked for an hour. "
"About what?"
"Routes. Containers. Names I won't repeat to you while we're locked in this room."
My mouth goes dry. I laugh once because nothing else comes out. "New colleague," I say.
"Yes."
"Francesca." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Old blood drags across my skin. "Elio Mancini was a man I fucked. For months. I ended it because he had a fiancée, and now I'm finding out he was in business with the man who drugged me."
She doesn't move.
"Am I stupid?"
"No."
"Are there other women in this world who don't see past the end of their nose, or is it just me?"
"It's not just you."
"Don't be nice to me right now."
"I'm not."
"Then what the fuck are you doing?"
She waits until I look at her.
"We were raised in a world run by men who do what they want," she says.
"They lie to us and call it love. Use us and call it opportunity.
Trade us and call it business. They don't ask.
They don't tell. Then when we find out, they tell us we should have seen it.
It's not your fault, Amanda. You weren't supposed to know what he worked this hard to hide. "
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
I don't cry.
I can't. Not right now. Not with Valentino somewhere in this building.
I lower my hands.
"Where is he?" Francesca asks.
"Who?"
"Your man."
My chest pulls tight.
"I don't know." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "If he's still alive, he's somewhere in this place."
Francesca says nothing.
For once, the silence helps.
Then noise breaks down the hall.
Male voices. Shouting. More than one. Italian first, then something under it. English, maybe. I can't tell.
Boots hit the floor fast.
Something slams.
Francesca's head lifts.
"Get up."
I'm already moving. I crawl across the floor to her chair.
"Your wrists."
I get behind her. My hands shake so badly I can barely grip the tie. It cuts deep into her skin, her wrist purple below it and swollen. It's a zip tie. I can't remove it without something sharp.
"Francesca, I can't—"
"Ankles first. Those are ropes."
I drop down. She's right. Her ankles are tied to the chair legs with rough brown rope. My fingers find a knot, and I claw at it.
Something crashes past the door. Close enough to shake the floor.
"Hurry," she says.
Her voice is sharp with urgency.
"I'm trying."
Voices shout right outside.
"Down! Get down! Mani in alto! Mani in alto subito!"
A woman screams somewhere down the hall.
A man shouts and cuts off mid-word.
Something heavy hits the floor. Then another. Then another.
The knot won't give. The rope is old and wet with something I don't want to name, and my fingers keep slipping.
"Amanda. Look at me."
I look up.
"Leave it."
"No."
"Leave it. Stand up. Get against the wall. They're coming through this door."
"Francesca—"
"Stand up."
So I do.
I press my back against the wall beside the door, hands flat, breath stuck in my chest.
The handle rattles.
Stops.
Then the door blows inward.
Wood splinters. A boot comes through the gap, then the whole thing folds, and men pour into the room. Four. Five. I can't count them fast enough. Black vests. Helmets. Guns up. White lights cutting across my face, the chair, Francesca, the floor.
"POLIZIA! POLIZIA! On the ground! Get on the ground!"
English.
I don't move.
I can't.
Francesca shouts something in Italian from the chair. One of the men swings his rifle toward her, then lowers it when he sees the ropes.
"Ma'am! On the ground! Hands where I can see them!"
He means me.
"Okay," I whisper. "Okay."
I go down. Knees first, then hands. The stone is cold under my palms.
"Valentino." My mouth is close to the floor. I can't see anything but boots. "Valentino Conti is in this building. Please. You have to find him."
No one answers.
The boots move past me.
More shouting down the hall. More doors breaking. More orders I can't follow.
I keep my hands on the stone and say his name again.
"Valentino."
Like someone in this house might hear me and bring him back.
Valentino
Pain wakes me first.
I'm face-down on a table, and someone is stitching my back.
The needle pulls. Thread follows. Every pass drags fire from my shoulder blade down toward my hip, and the last thing I remember comes back in pieces.
The rope.
Enzo.
Stone under my feet.
Amanda.
I push up on my forearms, and the room tilts.
"Resti fermo." A hand presses my shoulder down. Gentle. Professional. Useless. "Signore, resti fermo, per favore."
I turn my head as far as I can. White walls. A monitor beeping beside me. Clear fluid dripping from a bag into a line taped to my hand.
A hospital.
What the fuck?
The last thing I remember is the rope and the dark coming up fast. Either I'm dead and hell has terrible lighting, or someone pulled me out of Enzo Basile's house before he finished the job.
Neither tells me where Amanda is.
I push again.
Pain slams through me hard enough to make my vision white out, and a doctor steps into my line of sight before I get far. Young. Glasses. Tired in the way men get tired after arguing with idiots who keep trying to bleed on their floor.
"Deve restare fermo," he says, palms raised. "Le stiamo riducendo la schiena. Quaranta punti, forse di più. Se si muove, ricominciamo da capo."
Forty stitches. Maybe more.
Enzo meant it, then.
"Where is she?" My voice sounds like gravel.
The doctor opens his mouth, but another man steps in front of him.
"Mr. Conti." American. Suit. Badge. "Special Agent Dern, FBI."
Perfect.
I get beaten unconscious with a rope and wake up to federal law enforcement. Some men get angels.
"We came in with the Italians tonight," Dern says. "Warrant service on Enzo Basile. We found him, several of his men, two women tied up in separate rooms, and you."
Two women.
Amanda.
Who is the other one?
"Where is she?"
Dern ignores that. "I need to know why you were there. All three of you."
The needle pulls through my back again. I breathe through my nose and keep still because the doctor is the only useful man in the room right now.
"Agent Dern," I say, lifting my head as far as the doctor's hand allows. "It's nice to meet you. Truly. But there's a man sewing my back shut, and I would hate to make his job harder. Leave me alone for an hour."
Dern doesn't smile.
"Sooner or later, Mr. Conti, you'll answer my questions."
"Probably." I try for a dry look, but I'm in no condition to pull it off. "Lawyers love answering questions."
He turns for the door.
"The women," I say.
The act drops out of my voice before I can stop it.
"The blonde one. Is she okay?"
Dern pauses with his hand on the frame. He looks back at me long enough to understand who I'm really asking about.
Then he leaves without answering.
Of course he does.
The doctor keeps working. I put my forehead against the table and breathe through the antiseptic, the pain, the pull of thread through torn skin.
Soft shoes cross the floor.
A nurse leans near my head. Fifties, kind eyes, strong hands. The kind of woman who has rolled grown men onto beds for half her life and never once acted impressed by them.
"I heard you ask," she says.
I turn my head toward her. My neck punishes me for it.
"The blonde woman," I say. "Please."
"Next room." She tips her chin toward the wall. "She came in with you. Scrapes, a bump on the head, nothing serious. She's okay."
I close my eyes.
The nurse pats the mattress near my hand, careful of the IV. "She asked about you too. Thirty times before they made her sit."
Then she's gone, and the doctor keeps stitching.
Amanda is alive.
One room over.
Breathing. Asking about me. Refusing to sit down until someone made her.
So completely Amanda that my eyes sting against the table.
My fingers curl against the sheet, reaching for beads that aren't there. The rosary is gone. In Basile's house. In an evidence bag. Somewhere I can't reach. My father carried it through worse nights than this one, and right now I'd trade damn near anything to feel the worn beads in my hand again.
I walked into that house to die.
That was the trade. My blood for hers. Enzo's grief wanted the right man, and I gave him one.
I made peace with it at the gate.
Men like me don't get rescued from rooms like that. We are the ones who pull people out. When our turn comes, no one comes through the door.
Tonight, someone did.
I press my forehead harder into the table.
I don't have the rosary. I don't have the words. The prayer comes anyway, rough and wordless, pulled out of the part of me that still remembers how to ask.
Twenty-two years, I prayed like a man making payments on a debt.
I never asked God to save me.
He did it anyway.
The needle pulls through again. Stitch by stitch, someone puts me back together.