Page 42

A warning not to ask questions.

I look down at Amanda's face. She will remember something. She has to. When she wakes, she'll have fragments, and they are my only lead to who those men were and how far up this goes. I need her to remember.

But I want her to forget. I wish she didn’t have to relive a single second of tonight.

"Valentino." Elio's voice, smaller now. "Is she⁠—"

"She's breathing. Watch the road."

I run my free hand down her body, checking, hating that I can do this so calmly. No purse. The little clutch she'd carried on her wrist when I picked her up is gone. Her phone went with it.

Her phone, with my number typed into it. With Vittoria's number.

I run through the next moves in my head, cold and orderly, the way it always does when the rest of me is screaming.

Delete her phone history remotely if I can get Dante on it. Get word to Vittoria before she sees a headline or a silence she can't explain. Have Basile’s body handled before he shows up in a ditch with my fingerprints on his body. Especially before Bruno decides if we’re declaring war.

Because I just killed a Don's son with my fists. Somewhere in Sicily, he will wake up tomorrow and realize his son is gone, and he’ll want to know who did it.

And the only living person who can tell me what really happened in that room is asleep on my chest.

I press my lips to the top of her head. The smell of hairspray fills my nostrils and a hint of someone’s cologne. I stiffen with the urge to turn this car around.

"Faster, Elio," I say quietly. "She needs to wake up somewhere safe."

Amanda

The ceiling is wrong.

It's white, cracked too low with a brown waterstain. And it smells like old stone. Nothing like home or the hotel room.

I turn my head left. Wall. A wooden chair with my shoe on it. One shoe. Where's the other⁠—

I turn my head right and the room tilts, sick and slow, like I'm on water. My stomach rises. My mouth tastes like dirty pennies and soured milk.

Then I remember.

Not all of it. Pieces. A room with too many lamps. A hand under my jaw. Wet breath on my ear. The slap.

I try to sit up. My body won't cooperate. My arms go slack, elbows folding wrong, and panic hits all at once, cold up the back of my neck. No. No, no, no. My legs won't work. Nothing works. They drugged me. I'm in a strange room. Somebody could be coming. Somebody could already be here⁠—

A shape moves above me.

A man. Leaning over. Big. Blocking the ceiling. My chest seizes. I try to scream but my throat locks. Air catches. My lips move—no, no, please, no—but no sound comes. My hands scrabble against whatever I'm lying on. I try to crawl backward and go nowhere.

"Shh. It's me." A pause, deliberate. "It's Valentino."

His name cuts through. Pulls me out inch by inch.

I make myself look. Gray at the temples. Dark eyes searching my face. A jaw that looks like it was carved from granite. And hat stillness he carries.

Valentino.

My Valentino.

My breathing slows on its own. I keep my eyes on his because the room spins when I look away. His face stays still.

"How are you feeling?" His voice is barely there. Then the corner of his mouth moves. Another almost a smile.