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I turn back toward the bedside table and hone in on the heavy-looking lamp. Its base is a curved marble but could also be ceramic. When I pick it up, it’s cold and solid and heavy.
Perfect.
I unplug it, grab the sheet off the bed, and tie it around the lamp to create a makeshift weapon. There’s a tree within jumping distance of the balcony. If I can get close enough, I can use it to climb down to the ground.
My chest loosens, and I take a deep breath. I will not allow the mafia to turn me into a sex slave.
I will break free or die trying.
Adrenaline courses through my veins and powers my steps. I rush to the balcony doors with the lamp hanging from the sheet that I’ve fashioned into a sling. I glare at the fourth pane of glass on the bottom right.
I swing, and the heavy marble strikes the windowpane, forming a spider-web of cracks. I swing again and again and again until the glass shatters.
Shards fall away, letting in a gust of juniper-scented air. I loosen the sheet, and the lamp drops to the floor with a heavy thud. After laying the large swathe of cotton over the glass, I get on my hands and knees and crawl out onto the balcony.
My heart pounds so hard its reverberations reach my fingertips. Now that I’m outside, the tree doesn’t look as close, but the balcony’s ledge is thick enough for me to balance on to attempt a running leap.
I take a deep breath and force myself up to stand, but all the blood rushes south, making me light-headed, and I’m forced to brace my arms on my knees.
What am I more afraid of, getting trapped, getting trafficked, or breaking my neck? My brain comes up with another alternative: breaking all my bones and getting trafficked anyway.
Fucking hell.
My mind’s eye fills with a younger version of myself running around Jim’s house, checking doors, windows, and screaming in a choking panic. I shake my head to dislodge the memory, but it only becomes more visceral, more vivid.
I double over and hyperventilate, trying to expel the terror.
“Stop this,” I say through clenched teeth. “I’m no longer trapped. I’m free.”
I huff out a furious breath and straighten, powered by a surge of resentment. Resentment at Jim for being an abusive narcissist, resentment at Mom for not paying for daycare and locking a four-year-old in a studio and for sowing the seeds of my phobia, and resentment at myself for letting myself get lured into this mess.
I snatch up the sheet and a large shard of glass, then slice and tear the cotton into multiple strips. One to create a bra top and another to make a loincloth.
The last thing I want while escaping a mafia stronghold is to be naked.
Male laughter rises from the gardens. I peer over the edge of the balcony to find a trio of men staring up at me with broad grins.
One of them waves, while the other cups his hands under his chest to mimic boobs, and the third whistles.
I stagger back, slicing my foot on a pane of glass. So much for my plan to sneak out.
“Damn it!”
Ignoring the pain and the catcalling from below, I wrap the strips of fabric around my crotch and then my chest. Even if these assholes have spotted me, I have to keep moving.
Just as I’m about to cut another piece to wrap around my injured foot, the bedroom door flies open with a loud bang.
I whirl around to find a large man standing in the doorway. He’s muscular but not as jacked as Roman, dressed in a tailored suit, and wearing a pair of glasses.
He looks so similar to Roman that this must be one of his brothers. I’m pretty sure he was at the club last night, but I wasn’t exactly looking at him.
The man strides in, his features hardening. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I back toward the balcony’s edge, my heart hurtling itself against my ribs. In a minute, he’ll knock me out and I’ll wake up in a grimy brothel, already addicted to a cocktail of drugs.
Escape or die trying.
I scramble up the balcony’s stone railing and balance on its ledge, clutching the glass so tightly that my fingers become slick with blood.
