A war cry broke out.
Titus and Costa signaled their guards.
Ian ducked the first blow aimed at his head and elbowed the next assailant in the kidneys. He crouched and crab-walked back away from the game table. He fended off another blow to his ribs before dispatching two frontal attackers with a right hook and a roundhouse kick. With the next breath, he searched the second floor, but there was no sign of Sunderland or Diana.
His fury carried him through the undulating mob. Halfway across the room, his progress halted when a guardsman knocked him to his knees and seized a strong chokehold on his throat.
“Ian!”
Tears swam in his eyes as he searched the floor above.
Red velvet curtains descended in a crimson wave that made him think of raging bulls and battlefields. It landed on top of the abandoned game table.
The distracted guard eased his grip enough for Ian to stab his fingers in the scum’s eyes.
The man clutched his face in agony. Ian darted away and clawed through the flood of people, shouting Diana’s name.
At the table, the red mass of curtains parted and Diana surfaced, tied up in knots. As she frantically worked to untangle herself from corded curtain ties, the ominous shriek of a barn owl rose above the uproar.
Ian would detest the sound for the rest of his life, which he fought desperately to keep hold of, along with his sanity, as dozens of crimson-dressed women poured into the room.
“No!” He ducked a blow from another guard. “Hold on, Diana, I’m coming!”
The next screech that sounded brought him some modicum of relief. The familiar call of a police whistle pierced the air as a swarm of black uniforms overtook the room.
And then genuine panic descended.
Ian fought through the crowd and elbowed red dresses away. He’d been a bloody fool to believe their madcap plan would work. Everything he’d plotted and fought for was disintegrating.
He had no thought of the emeralds. Or the danger he’d face when any or all three of thefamigliecaught up with him.
None of it mattered without Diana.
As he finally approached the game table, two Il Corno enforcers snared him by each shoulder. He writhed against their grip but one of them brandished a blade and shoved it against his throat.
The steel was cool. Sharp. One stray twist of his head would cut him.
He urged his body to go limp.
The goons laughed.
Then, successively, each gasped and fell.
A trickle of blood and a pearl-topped hairpin stuck out of their throats.
Ian whirled around and opened his arms to receive Diana as she leaped from the table.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry we’re trapped.”
He pulled her closer and drew an indulgent breath of her violet scent. There was only enough time for him to scrape his lips against her soft cheek before three police guards surrounded them, brandishing revolvers.
The small furrow of Diana’s brow worried Ian more than his imminent capture; she was calculating the same potential outcomes of an escape attempt that ran through his mind.
Scenario one: Ian could surrender to the police officers, allowing the Stags to extract Diana from the hotel. There was a fifty percent chance he’d make it to a legitimate prison Sunderland could break him out of.
And an equal chance the Crown wasn’t the only one lining thepoliziapockets, and they’d kill Ian before he left the Porto Rosso.
