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Aria tookher time getting ready. She made two pots of coffee for the guards, followed by breakfast. She took a shower, changed into stretchy black jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a jacket she could remove if it impeded her movement. Slipping the new phone Damian had given her into the jeans, she pulled on thick socks and flat boots. The boots were too nice for the day she had planned, but they were the best she could do given her shopping trip with Damian in Paris, which hadn’t exactly beenpractical.
When she was done dressing, she spent a couple hours reading on the sofa in the study, letting the guards glance into the room on their patrol. She made them platters of sandwiches for lunch and then told Rocco, the guard on duty inside the house, that she was going down to the firing range before takinganap.
With any luck the explanation would buy her a few hours. Checking on her in the study was one thing; she was betting none of them would be too eager to peek into the private master suite on the second floor of thehouse.
She opened the door to the basement and made her way past the gym to the firing range. She plucked the 9mm Luger from the row of weapons carefully shelved next to the range. She’d tried a lot of different weapons in the last week but the 9mm was her favorite. It was light and thin, easy for her small hands to manage. She’d used it almost exclusively in her target practice over the last couple days, reloading the magazine and firing over and over again until the weapon felt like an extension ofherhand.
She slid it into her jeans and added a couple seven-round magazines, then headed for the wood door leading to the tunnel Damian hadmentioned.
She hesitated at the door, wondering if the tunnel would be dirty or wet. Damian hadn’t made mention of it being used sinceProhibition.
Still, part of her wan’t surprised when she opened the door and found a modern light switch on the wall, or when the light illuminated a surprisingly wide and clean pathway intothedark.
Damian may not have used the tunnel recently, but he’d obviously kept it clean and in good order in case the needarose.
She stepped into the tunnel with more confidence and shut the door behind her, the smell of damp stone and dirt a strangely comforting accompaniment to the sound of her footsteps as she beganwalking.
The lights mounted on the walls of the tunnel seemed to stretch into infinity. She had to focus on her breathing to stop the dread that seeped into her bones as the door disappeared behind her. She focused on the unexpected sense of spaciousness afforded by the high ceiling and concentrated on breathing inandout.
The smell disappeared as she became more accustomed to it, her footsteps growing faster as her confidence increased. She checked her phone and was surprised to realize she’d only been walking for ten minutes. She had the sense of falling through a wormhole, of the world above ceasing to exist, of time morphing into something slow andliquid.
She was beginning to wonder if it was a trick, if the tunnel really did stretch to infinity, when she turned a corner and saw the lights stop upahead.
She looked back to make sure the lights behind her were still lit in case she found a locked door at the other end. They were, and she continued forward more slowly, hesitating as she came closer to the dark place upahead.
She came not to a wooden door like the one she’d left behind in the basement of the house, but to a narrow metal staircase leadingupward.
Grabbing the railing, she started climbing. There was no light from above, nothing to indicate the steps actually led anywhere. When she reached the top, she lay her palm flat against the wall and felt the soft, cool patina of worn wood under herfingertips.
After a few seconds of feeling around, she found an old-fashioned latch andpushed.
The light on the other side was dim and shadowed. She hesitated on the threshold, letting her eyes take in the layout of the old carriage house. It wasn’t as clean as the tunnels. In fact, it was a mess, fallen beams littering the place, making her second-guess the merit of making her way through it to thegrounds.
She thought about Malcolm and the way he’d hit her in Athens, the way he’d leered at her when promising the punishment he would enact on her later. She thought of Anastos and the fact that he’d lent his men, his operation, to keeping her prisoner just to satisfy Primo’s sick desire forrevenge.
Most of all she thought of Primo, who cared nothing for her beyond the pride of owning her, of making sure she didn’t escape the prison of hismadness.
Damian was going to dealwiththem.
He was probably going to kill them allhimself.
She knew it intellectually, but the part of her that was still being pulled over the terrace on Capri, the part of her that was still back in the apartment in Greece, needed to knowforsure.
She wasn’t going to interfere. She would let Damian do what he neededtodo.
But she needed to know. Needed to see it forherself.
This was the way. Her onlywayout.
She stepped carefully onto the floor of the carriage house and closed the door behind her. Making her way across the expansive room meant traversing a minefield of rotted floorboards and debris, fallen beams and mouse droppings. She had no idea how she and Damian would eventually make use of the carriage house, but she vowed to make cleaning it up a priority when this wasallover.
The winter light got brighter as she approached the old-fashioned garage door hanging on rusted hinges. She hesitated, peering out of the gap between them, looking for theguards.
They were nowhere in sight, a detail she’d counted on when she realized Damian was making smart use of the guards by stationing them not around the perimeter of the massive property, but around the perimeter of the house and itsmanicuredlawn.
Anyone who made their way through the woods would still have to cross the lawn to get to the house. It made sense to concentrate their firepower there. The guards would easily spot anyone heading to the house from any direction across thewidelawn.
