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Aria saton the thin mattress with her back against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. The wall had become her only friend, the one thing she could count on. Even the bed wasn’t a sure thing — they’d taken that the first week when she’d refused to eat, throwing the food they gave her against the wall until they’d dragged the mattress out amid a flurry of Greek words she could only assume wereexpletives.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in the dingy room. She’d lost track after the first two weeks, the tiny window facing a windowless stucco wall. She’d tried screaming when she first arrived, but it had only earned her a stiff backhand across the face and a cut lip that burned when she eventually changed tactics, eating and drinking whatever they brought her in exchange for themattress.
In the beginning she’d told herself she would need her strength to escape, but as the days and nights wore on, she’d begun to wonder if she would ever have the opportunity. They took her out of the room under guard twice a day — once in the morning and once in the evening — to shower and use the bathroom. At first, she’d been sure she could find a weakness in their protocol, but the hall was narrow and nondescript, part of the bathroom wall boarded up with nails and plywood over what she could only assume was a window. There were no sharp objects in the bathroom, nothing heavy she could use to hit one of the guards over the head. Even the back of the toilet tank had been removed. The guards themselves were silent and impassive, with only a handful of expressions and English phrasesbetweenthem.
The only break in the routine had been a couple weeks earlier. She’d heard the guards singing drunkenly in the other room and the smell of frying meat and cooking bread had made her stomach rumble. They’d brought her chicken soup with a hint of lemon, cabbage stuffed with tender pork, fried cheese pastries, and a spice cake topped with dicedwalnuts.
She thought it might have beenChristmas.
She’d catalogued every detail in the hopes that one would save her, but gradually she’d come to understand that there was only one hopeforher.
Damian.
He would come for her. Sheknewit.
She didn’t allow herself to wonder if he was alive, if the bullet that had dropped him on the terrace had killed him. Instead she remembered his expression when she’d been taken by the black-clad men in Capri, remembered the way rage had transformed his face, twisting it into something frightening and foreign even after he’dbeenshot.
His fury had become her saving grace, the memory she returned to when she started to feel that her time in the tiny room with the thin mattress would last an eternity, when she began to think she’d died somewhere along the way and had been sent to a monotonous kind ofpurgatory.
She’d been afraid when she’d been taken, when the man who had her in his grip had pulled her over the side of the terrace in Capri, rappelling down the side of the cliff to a waiting boat. And yet it wasn’t until they’d put her in the boat, until they were leaving the island behind them, that she realized she wasn’t afraid forherlife.
She was afraid ofleavinghim.
Of leavingDamian.
The next few hours was a chaotic series of memory: the water stretching in every direction as the boat sped across its moonlit expanse, the gruff men speaking Greek in short, guttural bursts, the snap of the zip-tie they put around her wrists, the glint of the needle they’d used to inject her with something that made her sleep. The last thing she remembered was a tingling that spread through her body, the cold expanse of plastic as she slumped to the floor of the boat, the relief of impendingunconsciousness.
She’d woken up in the tiny room with the mattress and realized the nightmare had only just begun. It continued as hour after hour unspooled, her fear over her own future surpassed only by her fear overDamian’sfate.
She’d replayed the scene on the terrace so many times she knew it by heart, had tried to pinpoint the place where Damian had been hit, had tried to use it as a way to gauge his chances ofsurvival.
Finally she’d given up, deciding his survival was based not on where he’d been hit but on his own will to live — and that was unsurpassable. She knew it from the fury that had spread over his face as the men took her from him, the way he’d reached out to her as she’d disappeared below the terracewalls.
He would come for her. She would beready.
There was a clattering outside her door and she scooted closer to the wall, trying to mold her body to the cool plaster as the doorknob turned. A moment later, a beefy man entered the room, his familiar face blank as he carried a tray ladenwithfood.
She tried not to look grateful. Sometimes they brought her cold fast food. Other times — like today — they brought her trays of feta and olives, bread and fish. There was no rhyme or reason to it. She ate whatever they brought, determined to be strong and ready when Damian came for her, but she preferred the fresh food over thefastfood.
She didn’t bother trying to make small talk with the man as he set the tray on the end of the bed. She’d learned there was no point. The four guards who were regularly charged with feeding her and escorting her to the bathroom were equally reserved, speaking to her only when necessary and always in heavily accented English. They were immune to her attempts at making friends of them, although they also showed no interest inhurtingher.
It wassomething.
Still, she’d given up trying to win them over. Her energy was better spentelsewhere.
“Eat,” he said. “Thenyouwash.”
She refused to look at him — and she sure as hell wasn’t going tothankhim.
She waited for him to leave, listening for the sound of the door locking, to reach for the food. She tore off a piece of bread, dipping it in the oil that had collected under the cheese and olives, and thought aboutPrimo.
He’d been ever-present in her thoughts, second only to Damian, since her kidnapping. She’d been sure from the beginning that he hadn’t had anything to do with her kidnapping. She’d known it from the way she’d been taken, the brute force with which the men had tossed her into the boat, the way they’d drugged her. She’d become even more sure when she woke up in the dingy room. She and Primo had their differences, but he would never allow someone to treat herthisway.
To keep her caged like ananimal.
Then, about three weeks after they’d brought her to the tiny room, the door had been unlocked and Malcolm Gatti hadwalkedin.
