38
OLIVIA
I never wantedto hear Italian again, and now it poured into my ears, all around me, inescapable. Closing my eyes only exacerbated it, so I opened them and watched the other gunman drag Ethan back to the couch. He’d stopped resisting once the gun was on me.
What was he doing here? I was torn in two at the sight of him. He’d walked right into his death, and for what? Me? I was pissed and overjoyed that he’d come.
There was discussion with Carlo about Gio, and once Carlo retrieved his black rod from where I’d kicked it away, the cold, hard barrel against my temple eased up. Carlo’s heavy footsteps approached and he said something to Vitale.
“Look at me,” Ethan said in English, his face white, and seeing him like that... I couldn’t imagine anything worse. My stomach bottomed out. “It’s okay,” he said. “Help is coming, just hold on.”
“Help is not coming for you,” Carlo said. I remained down, bent over the desk, my bare stomach cold against the lacquered wood as he stood to the side of me. “Tell us what you’ve done to Giovanni.”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” I said.
“Wait, Jesus.Per favore,”Ethan pleaded.
Carlo’s hand closed around the links of my metal handcuffs and he moved to the far end of the desk, stretching my arms out, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when the rod was passed to Vitale like a scepter. Carlo probably couldn’t use the rod on me anymore because he clutched abloody hand to where I’d stabbed his arm.
The other men had their guns aimed at Ethan and their attention on their boss, awaiting his command.
Vitale teased me. Oh, so slowly, he began dragging the thin pole over the skin of my forearms. It rose behind his head, then came thundering down with a magnificent crash. It landed against the desk, just shy of my arms, shaking the desktop, and it almost rattled me apart.
“Tell us what you did to Giovanni.”
“I drugged him,” Ethan said.
Everyone turned to stare at the intense man who was bleeding all over the couch.
Couldn’t he see that his lie was pointless? He’d been tied up, and I’d been the one to bring Gio the wine. The look in Vitale’s eye said he didn’t care who’d done it. Both of us were going to suffer and then die.
He reared back with the rod. An elegant Italian man in a perfectly tailored suit, about to destroy me. He was serious now. He was going to hit me.Oh God, oh God, oh God?—
“No!” Ethan’s voice was filled with panicked agony.
The impact sounded different and was joined with a horrifying crunch of bone, and it took a lifetime for my body to register the pain. I blinked at least once in disbelief before it thundered into my brain and overtook me.
He’d severed my right hand, I was sure of it, even though I looked at my wrist and saw the hand still attached. I couldn’t feel anything beyond the rapidly swelling line on my forearm near my wrist.
I screamed, letting loose a tremendous cry that didn’t sound human, and my eyes slammed shut. Then the nausea came in a wave so strong I was almost powerless against it, and I swallowed back a mouthful of burning bile.
Lying on the desktop, my arms still held out in front of me and pinned down, I began to worry that maybe Vitale had succeeded. I would give or say almost anything to besomewhere else now.
Even on that mountain where I’d been so alone.
Yet I wasn’t alone here. I could still see Ethan with my eyes closed, and now I could hear him speaking to me over my whimpers.
“It’s okay, Olivia, they’re coming. Please hold on.” His soft voice was distracting. Mesmerizing. “You’re going to make it through.”
My eyes blinked open, and through the blurring, unavoidable tears, I could just make him out. Not lying. This was truth.
“I’m here, and they’re coming, I promise you.” The deep voice held me together, kept me going. “Rescue is coming. It’s coming.”
It was what I had repeated over and over on the mountain after the grenade exploded and I was lying face down in the frozen dirt, my back on fire.Rescue is coming.
And like then, there was the rumble of hope in the distance. The same sound that had signaled I was going to make it. As it grew louder, I considered weeping with joy. Helicopters.
More than one.
