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It’s rainingwhen I get outside. The code worked, despite my shaking fingers and uncertainty, but the numbers I thought I saw Caterina type in were the right ones. And now I’m out on the Manhattan street, cold rain soaking through my thin t-shirt as I wave down a cab.
My wrist catches the light as I do, and I realize I’m still wearing Luca’s bracelet. I don’t know why. A part of me is tempted to take it off and throw it into the gutter, but I don’t.I might need to sell it later,I tell myself, but even I know that’s not the whole reason.
I just can’t look at it too closely after everything that’s happened.
It’s late, but Father Donahue answers the door when I pound on it, leaning against it exhaustedly. I’m soaked through now, and when he opens the cathedral door and sees me there, drenched with rain and with red-rimmed eyes, a strange expression crosses his face.
“Sofia?” I can hear the concern in his voice. “Is everything okay? I mean—it must not be, for you to be here like this. What’s happened?”
I look up at his kind, worried expression and promptly burst into tears. And then, after a few minutes, I explain everything.
Well, noteverything. I definitely don’t go into explicit detail. But I tell him about my fights with Luca, about how he rushed home to me after the intruder nearly killed me, about our dates, about how I thought things were getting better. About how I realized that my feelings for him were growing. And then I explain about the baby—how I’m almost certain that I’m pregnant, and the contract that means I absolutely should not be.
“And you think Luca will force you to honor this contract?” Father Donahue frowns deeply. “What he is insisting on is a grave sin. But it won’t be you who bears the burden of it if he insists on it.”
“I don’t want that. I want my baby.” As I say the words out loud, I feel more assured than ever that that’s true. “But I don’t think Luca will give in on this. I don’t know why it’s so terrible for us to have children. But even that reason doesn’t matter so much as the fact that I can’t trust him not to force me into terminating the pregnancy.”
“You said things had changed between you, though. Softened.”
“Until yesterday.” I take a deep, shaky breath. “He came home, and he was—different. I think he’d hurt some people. Tortured someone, maybe, to try to get information. He was cold and cruel to me. I’d gone to the hospital with Caterina, even though he’d asked me not to leave while he was gone. But he was so angry. It was like how things used to be, at first. I was terrified of him all over again. He’s not—” I shake my head, trying not to cry again. “He’s not the man that I thought he was.”
“Perhaps.” Father Donahue looks thoughtful. “Perhaps not.”
“I need a way out.” I look at him desperately. “I need a way to escape with my baby. Some way that he’ll never find us. You promised you would help if I ever needed you—”
“I did. And I’ll keep that vow,” Father Donahue looks at me carefully, his face serious. “If you’re certain.”
“I am.”
“Well, it will take a little time to set things up. But I can get you new papers, a fake ID, the things you would need to start over. You can stay in the rectory until—”
There’s a cracking sound. I reel backward, startled as his eyes bulge in his head, a trickle of blood running from his mouth as he lurches forward in his seat, cracking his forehead on the pew in front of him.
Standing behind him is a man all in black, with a mask over his face. Just like the intruder in the apartment—except this man is holding a crowbar.
One that he just used to knock Father Donahue out cold.
I start to scream, but a gloved hand comes from behind me and clamps over my mouth. I’d been so focused, so intent on my plans for escape that I’d never even seen them sneaking up in the shadows. My eyes blur with tears as I look at Father Donahue slumped in the pew, and my blood runs cold. Did they kill him? Oh my god, what if he’s dead? I’ll never forgive myself—
Deep down, I know they’re here because of me. I don’t know why, but I know they came for me, that they would never have been here otherwise. Father Donahue is unconscious, bleeding, maybe dead because of me.
It’s my fault. All of it. My fault.
I try to scream, to bite, gnashing my teeth at the gloved hand over my mouth, kicking wildly as the strong arms holding me haul me backward over the pew and out into the aisle. I try to fight, but I’m nowhere near as strong as the man holding me.
The hand loosens for just a second as if my kidnapper is trying to grab something, and I seize the opportunity. “Help me!” I shriek, squirming madly in his grasp, but it’s useless. He presses his hand harder over my mouth, yanking my hair back with his other hand so that my face is tilted up.
“Shut up, bitch,” he snarls, and to my shock, the voice isn’t Russian. There’s no thick accent like I expected, and my heart starts to race as I realize what itdidsound like.
The accent was faint, that of someone who has spent most of their life in the States.
But it was an accent I’m familiar with—I’ve spent my whole life around it.
Italian,I think frantically as a wet cloth covers my mouth and nose, forcing me to breathe in the sickly scent of whatever is soaking it.Why the fuck would they be Italian?
And then, as my vision starts to blur,I’m being drugged. Oh god, I’m being kidnapped, and they’re drugging me, I can’t get away—
The last thought that goes through my head as I slump in my captor’s arms is fear—fear for myself, but mostly fear for my baby.
My baby, who only moments ago I was trying so desperately to save.
I try one last, desperate attempt to wrestle free, but it’s far too late. The drug is already taking hold, and my vision goes dark as I cling to that last thought, that I have to survive this somehow.
For my baby, if no one else.
