It’s dark when we return to the villa. I watch footage from the streets around the restaurant until well after midnight.
A new day. A different day from when Carina was taken, which feels like a spectacular failure.
I attempt to get some sleep since there’s nothing else to do, but my brain won’t shut off. It spins in answerless circles, trying to review anything I’ve overlooked. I’ve never been so helpless. It’s a paralyzing sensation, as though I’d lost a limb. Confidence that’s normally there is absent.
Once the sun comes up, I go for a run, trying to expel excess energy that’s mainly stores of adrenaline. I shower and pace by the pool, ignoring the anxious glances aimed my way by Salvatore’s men and staff.
Misha finally calls around noon. “I just landed in Chicago,” he tells me over the commotion of voices and honks in the background. “As far as I can tell, all the data being collected by the device is transmitted to the hospital that treated the patient. If I can access their local network, I should be able to tell where the device is located. It’s not available through the cloud to protect privacy—well, to prevent exactly what I was trying to do.”
I don’t care about the details. “How long will it take?”
“Hard to say. I’m en route to Chicago General. I should be able to hack from any device on the network, but it’ll take a minute for me to find one and get set up. An hour? Maybe two?”
“Okay. Keep me updated.”
“Will do, boss.”
The title catches me off guard. We’re not on an assignment where I’m in charge. I’m not hispakhan. Misha is risking a lot. I can’t stomach telling him to think through this decision, in case he changes his course, but I can promise, “I’ll make sure Igor knows this was all my request.”
A pause.
Then, “Igor was the one who put me on a plane to Chicago.”
STAYING ALIVE
Idon’t sleep. The lights are too bright, and I’m too terrified to turn them off and be alone in the dark. I don’t trust that Nico isn’t waiting to strike the second I appear to let my guard down.
I move around what I guess is every few hours, drinking some water straight from the sink’s tap, using a bucket for a bathroom, stretching. I run through the routine of sit-ups, push-ups, crunches, and planks that I’ve become accustomed to doing every morning. I should be conserving energy, not burning calories, but the movement makes me feel stronger. Counting reps in my head offers a few blissful minutes where I can pretend I’m in Serebryanovo’s gym, not Nico Morello’s torture chamber.
I searched the men after dragging them to a corner. One’s phone was saturated with blood. The other’s was still functional but locked. No cell service. The battery died a few hours ago and there’s no clock anywhere. I have no idea what time it is. How long I’ve been in here.
The constant glare of the lights mimics an endless day. I try to trick myself into thinking it hasn’t been long as a tactic to retain some sanity.
Truthfully, I’m not sure I want out of here. Both of Nico’s men were carrying the same type of gun, each containing fifteen rounds. I used six from one magazine, killing them, which means I have twenty-four bullets left. When that door opens—and I know it’s a when, not if—my only option will be to fire until I’m out of ammunition.
Hopefully, I’ll hit Nico, but he knows I’m armed. He’ll send an army in to subdue me first. And then …
I can’t think about what might happen then.
I stand again, cracking my back and rolling my neck. My stomach rumbles, but one glance at the corner where the two bodies lie eradicates any appetite. I wish there were blankets, newspapers,anythingI could use to cover the corpses, but there’s nothing. Maybe this is my penance for being a murderer—having to stare at the grisly proof.
I circle ten laps around the room, then sink back down in the same spot, as far away from the men as possible. I think they’re starting to smell, but maybe that’s my overactive imagination.
My eyes feel gritty and dry. I pulled one all-nighter in college, turned in an assignment at eleven a.m., then slept the rest of the day and the next night. I think I’m well into a second day awake, based on how sluggish and sleep-deprived I feel.
How long until they realized I was missing?
How long until they realize who took me?
I rest my chin on my knees, staring at the steel door. It’s perfectly flat and smooth. So unyielding.
Nico hasn’t spoken to me again. I don’t know what that means. What his objective is. He’s intentionally made a powerful enemy—enemies—and he’s never struck me as suicidal. He must have been monitoring Isabella, ready to act whenever I contacted her. So he could rape me? Kill me? Does he know Lev is in Italy, or was that a miscalculation?
I’m going slowly insane, with nothing but my own thoughts and two dead men for company.
I start humming the overture that starts the symphony’s program, needing some break from the silence.
At first, I think I’m imagining it. That I am actually losing my grip on reality or have fallen asleep.
