Page 4

‘Silenzio!’ He gave my backside a firm slap—more humiliating than painful—before he dropped me onto my feet.

I tried to resist as he tugged me towards the front of the boat, but all he did was lift me off my feet with one muscular forearm and dump me in the passenger seat. Then he tied the rope attached to my wrists around a stanchion.

I was shivering so hard now my teeth were chattering. He placed his finger against the gag, but when he gave me the familiar command for silence I could hear tension as well as impatience in his voice.

Did he regret scaring me so badly? Somehow, I doubted it, but I clung onto the thought, knowing how helpless I was. He was kidnapping me, so he could get past the patrol boats. Was he planning to use me as a human shield?

My teeth clattered together like castanets as I prayed Vito’s men would look first, before they started shooting. But what if they didn’t see me?

He’d obviously thought of that too, because he grasped my upper arm and lifted me to my feet, then positioned me between him and the boat’s controls.

My breathing became ragged, his muscular body enveloping mine and making me even more aware of my vulnerability.

The boat’s key was in the ignition. The minute he turned it and the engine throbbed to life, lights flashed on in the villa above. The shouts started to get louder. Pops of gunfire from the terraces were followed by hissing sounds as bullets sliced into the water on either side of the boat.

I started to cry, my muffled sobs contained by the gag.

With one arm clasped around my waist, he used his other hand to shift the gears, apparently oblivious to my distress.

He didn’t even flinch as the pops and hisses continued, his body protecting mine, which seemed so strange. The powerful craft lifted into the water and suddenly we were shooting out of the cove, away from the shots above. But as soon as we cleared the headland, I saw another patrol boat, its lights blazing, speeding towards us across the wake.

He steered the boat effortlessly with one hand, the only suggestion of effort his coarse breathing against my hair. The engine noise drowned out the thunder of my heartbeats as my panic and fear began to choke me. More popping sounds, more hissing as the men on the other boat fired. A force punched my back and he slammed against me. He sucked in a breath, but then he shifted back. He was no longer crushing me against the boat’s steering column but holding me up, my knees liquid. My fingers cramped as I clung to the stanchion my hands were tethered to.

He shouted something in Italian, and I caught the word sorella… The word Vito used with affection to describe me. The word I knew meant sister. He fired the gun over our heads. I cowered. But as our boat shot across the open water, the claws around my throat released their death grip because the boat which had been chasing us, carrying the men firing on us, had slowed to a stop.

They were letting us go. They knew I was on board.

The terrified breath crushing my chest released in a rush. But silent tears flooded my eyes. Tears of alarm and apprehension as my mind struggled to engage.

We travelled for an eternity over the choppy water, with him effectively keeping me upright, my legs no longer strong enough to hold me up on my own. Until I spotted lights scattered on the horizon.

Capri. Maybe.

The sprinkle of rain turned into a deluge, the wind picking up to whip at my clammy skin and turn the sea into a cauldron. But I couldn’t feel the cold, the wet. I couldn’t even feel the fear anymore, my whole body weightless now, floating, bouncing with the boat, my heart wedged in my throat, my mind so exhausted I couldn’t feel anything clearly… Except the solid punch of his heartbeat against my shoulder.

At last, we reached a land mass, its cliffs looming over us in the moonlight. He drove the boat into a cove made from a crevice in the rockface. The outline of an uninhabited villa appeared on the cliffs above, the imposing structure obscured by the sheets of rain. He slid the boat into a dock and shoved me into the passenger seat, before climbing out and securing the guide rope.

Fatigue dragged at my mind, my body. Climbing back into the boat, he produced a knife, sliced through the rope attaching me to the stanchion, while leaving my wrists bound. Then he hauled me out of the boat. He was saying something in Italian, the first words he’d spoken to me since we’d boarded the boat on Isla Donna, but I couldn’t make sense of anything above the incessant buzzing in my head, my terrified tears mingling with the rain slicking my face.

He didn’t lift me back onto his shoulder. Instead, he forced me to walk up a never-ending staircase hewn into the rock, leading towards the dark house. I don’t know how I made the climb, with my knees like jelly and my breathing so laboured my lungs felt as if they would explode. He stopped halfway up, to prise open a metal box by the path with the knife and cut through a series of wires.

That was when I realised, while he knew this house, it didn’t belong to him.

He grasped my upper arm, forcing me up those endless steps again, past the dark terraces, the rain hammering us both. A slash of lightning illuminated his face. Unlike before, his face looked gaunt, his eyes no longer calm, no longer impassive, but before I could figure out what that meant, we had arrived on a patio. A large pool lay empty, probably because this was some kind of luxury holiday home and it was months before the season would start.

The villa was not quite as spectacular as Vito’s, but it was still impressive, the arches of its historic frontage covered in wisteria—which would be beautiful when it bloomed in the summertime but was like the dead tangled vines choking Sleeping Beauty’s abandoned castle tonight. He hauled me around the side of the house until we came to a door with glass panels. Pulling off the tight-fitting sweatshirt he’d taken from my dresser, he wrapped it around his fist and punched the glass.

After reaching through the broken panel to open the door, he dragged me into the house, then along a corridor. I floated in and out of consciousness, my feet taking each torturous step on autopilot, the adrenaline rush of our escape giving way to bone-crushing exhaustion. My mind was groggy, my legs barely able to function. We entered a cavernous entrance lobby, the rumble of thunder outside sounded hollow against the marble floors. But as he led me towards a flight of stairs, my knees buckled.

I sagged against him. His grip was the only thing stopping me from hitting the cold floor.

He grunted something. I braced for another slap, but instead he scooped my limp body into his arms and carried me up the stairs. He shoved the first door we came to open, and we entered a bedroom suite.

After dumping me on the bed, he used his knife to slice off my soaked jumper, then the wet dress. I couldn’t even muster the strength to object as he destroyed the beautiful silk designer gown I had been so proud of that afternoon.

I shivered uncontrollably as he knelt by the bed to tug off my wet shoes. I was all but naked now except for my damp underwear.

But I was too tired, too groggy and confused to even care what he intended to do with me. The darkness made it hard to see anything except the glitter of his eyes, reflected in the streaks of lightning that hit the skylight above us.