Flavio’s eyes flicker. Still working an angle, even now. Even here, surrounded, outnumbered, with blood on the floor and nowhere left to go. “Basement. Third door on the left.” He gestures vaguely. “She’s been remarkably stubborn.”
Remarkable. The word lands wrong. Like she’s a novelty. A puzzle he enjoyed before she became inconvenient. Like she wasn’t alone in the dark in this building, cold and afraid and holding herself together with nothing but her own spine.
I should kill him now. End it here. Dante’s been waiting years for this. For the man who poisoned our father slowly and methodically, who sent someone to finish what the poison started, who built his empire on women who never got to go home.
But Isabella is thirty feet away.
The flashbang comes from nowhere. Light and sound and the world turning white, my ears screaming, instincts firing before thought catches up. I hit the ground hard, roll, come up shooting at shadows that might be guards or might be walls. Gunfire everywhere. Shouting. The guards using the chaos the way professionals use chaos. Strategically. Quickly. Covering something.
When my vision clears, Flavio is gone.
A door built into the wall paneling, pre-positioned, frame still swinging. Not improvised. Prepared. He mapped his exit before we breached the first floor, built it into the architecture, anticipated exactly this moment. The flashbang wasn’t desperation.
It was the plan.
Blood on the floor. Trail leading out. He’s wounded. Not dead.
“He can’t have gotten far.” Dante is already tracking the blood, fury cracking through every seam of his control. “I’ll?—”
“Later.”
Dante stops. Looks at me.
“Isabella first.” I hold his gaze. “Flavio bleeds out in a ditch or he doesn’t, and either way she’s thirty feet from here in the dark.”
For a moment I think he’ll argue. Flavio killed our father. Tried to kill him. Made our family pay for years what one man’s conscience cost. This is Dante’s right. His closure. His to take.
He nods. Once.
“Go.” Already moving toward the blood trail, Nico and Marco falling in behind him. “We’ll secure the building and find him. Go find her.”
The corridor is narrow. Emergency lights cutting red through the dark. Third door on the left.
I count as I run.
First door. Just a door, locked, nothing. Keep moving.
Second door. Sounds of the building clearing, gunfire fading to nothing. Keep moving.
Third.
It’s locked. Heavy reinforced steel, frame welded to concrete, a lock designed not to be kicked through. Designed to hold people in.
I kick it anyway. The frame shudders. Holds.
“Isabella!”
Silence.
My throat closes around her name. The silence is the worst thing in the building. Worse than the gunfire. Worse than the smell.
I kick again. Every muscle behind it. Every ounce of the fury and the fear and the three hours of not knowing driving itself into the door frame.
The lock gives.
29
ISABELLA
