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However bad a man he was… He had been through hell in the past months. The thought of the beatings, and how vulnerable he was, made my throat ache with sympathy.

I brushed the damp hair off his forehead. ‘Not so dangerous now, are you, Dante?’ I whispered, knowing he couldn’t understand English.

He closed his eyes. But as I got up off the floor, intending to find more clothes so I could finally make my getaway, he rasped, ‘Grazie, Eva.’

And sympathy surged around my heart.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, after scouring every room, I’d found a sweatshirt and socks to go with my T-shirt and the damp shoes I’d worn the night before.

I made one last check on Dante, to find him sleeping—or possibly unconscious—but the dose of antibiotics seemed to be working already because his brow had cooled.

‘Thank God.’

I didn’t want him to die, if for no other reason than he had taken that bullet—even if it had been unintentional—and he hadn’t assaulted me last night, even though he’d had the chance. Not exactly a high bar, but high enough.

‘Time to get the hell out of here, Evie.’

I ran down the stairs to the door he’d broken open the night before. The storm was still battering the landscape outside.

The wet wind pummelled me as I raced through the cypress trees at the back of the house, along the path towards the steps leading to the dock and the boat. But as I left the shelter of the trees, I stumbled to a stop. A group of men were coming up the steps, armed with assault rifles… For a split second, I thought they might be Vito’s men, but when they lifted their heads in unison and spotted me standing there, frozen in shock, my heart sank to my toes, then slammed into my ribs.

One of them shouted. And they all started running.

I turned—frantic, afraid—but I’d barely made it three feet before the first man had grabbed me.

Unlike the night before—when I’d been too terrified to fight back—I didn’t hesitate to kick and shout this time. But it did no good. The brute simply snarled in Italian, slung me under his arm and hefted me back through the broken door.

I was carted up the stairs as the other men fanned out to search the rooms.

‘Il Capo è qui!’ the first man to reach the landing shouted down.

Within seconds, I was in the room where Dante lay again. My captor shoved me roughly onto the bed, then produced some zip ties. Tears of fear and frustration leaked out as he bound my wrists and ankles, shouting at me roughly when I tried to reason with him.

Why had I stayed? Why had I helped Dante? Why hadn’t I run sooner?

Left trussed up on the bed, I curled in on myself, unable to move as more men appeared. All of them were armed except one, who I realised was a doctor as he crouched beside Dante’s prone body.

I couldn’t see much, my mind spinning, my heart pounding.

I’d had a chance to escape… And I’d blown it.

Idiotically, relief joined my recriminations when Dante was helped to his feet.

He shoved the men away from him, holding his side as he began to growl orders. But when one of them walked over to me and grabbed my hair to drag me off the bed he shouted something at him.

The man released me immediately. And my gaze met Dante’s.

I didn’t have a chance to interpret what I saw in those dark blue eyes before Dante broke eye contact to start commanding his men.

But the henchman who had been manhandling me gentled his touch, and knelt to cut the zip tie on my ankles so I could walk.

Dante was handed clothing. He insisted on putting the sweatpants and sweatshirt on himself. The pallor on his face and the strained muscles in his neck were the only signs of the agony he must be in.

The men surrounding him were reverent, talking in hushed tones, their Italian too fast for me to understand. But their respect for him, their deference towards him as their Capo hovered in the room like a physical force.

Having seen him as a prisoner, and then as an escapee, it occurred to me that I had sensed the power in him even when he was desperate. But it was innate now, as these men—most of them tattooed, many scarred, all of them as rough and dangerous-looking as Dante himself—accepted his gruff commands like obedient children.