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Cringing, she starts to sway from foot to foot, her movements forced and clumsy. At the same time, I’m aware of Semenov creeping closer as the worst kind of intuition kicks in.
“Come on, you can do better than that.”
She’s spinning on the spot like a sparrow with a broken wing now, biting her lip so hard there’s a trickle of blood on her chin.
This is how it feels to watch doves fly, knowing the hunter’s rifle is trained on them.
O’Sullivan gives her a slow, sarcastic clap, and I feel the ground start to shift. I know what’s coming, but I can’t tear my eyes away.I can’t fucking help her.
“I think we’ve had enough dancing, don’t you, Semenov? Why don’t you show Ada what happens to little birds who fly their cages too soon?”
“My pleasure.”
It happens so fast, I barely see the swing, but I hear the sickening crunch as the metal bat connects with her legs, shattering both of her kneecaps.
She crumples to the ground so gracefully, her dress spread out all around her as the basement descends into a blur of noise and violence.
I try to reach her, but Semenov turns on me next, driving the baseball bat into my shoulder and sending me reeling. After that, the blows rain down as O’Sullivan’s men take turns to kick the living shit out of me.
I’m anesthetised to it all. The only thing I see is her body lying motionless on the ground a couple of metres away.The only agony I feel is hers.
When O’Sullivan’s men pause to catch their breath, I start crawling toward her, an inch at a time, because my legs don’t seem to work anymore, ignoring the laughing and jeering coming from above me.
She lifts her head as I draw closer. Messy dark hair frames a face that’s white with pain and shock. “It hurts, Frankie,” she whispers, sucking in ragged breaths in between each word. “Oh god, it hurts so much…”
That’s when I know I’ll do whatever it takes to find my way back to her.Whatever Zaccaria demands of me.Because one day,one day, I need to be holding her heart in my hands again and fixing all her shattered parts.
“Ada, listen to me.” I clench my teeth to get a handle on my own pain as I cover her fingers with mine. “I will find you. Whether it takes me one year, or twenty…”
“I can’t dance anymore. I can’t dance—”
I squeeze her hand a little tighter. “Then I’ll dance for the both of us. I’ll take my fucking gun, and I’ll spin the chambers until everyone who tried to keep us apart is dead. Just don’t die too, Ada. Promise me. Promise me like I promised you in the library last week when I said I’d come back. No matter how bad it gets.”
Someone’s pulling on the back of my jacket, yanking me away from her, but our hands hold fast until the last second, stretched out and taut, before they’re finally ripped apart.
“Promise me,” I hiss, as I’m pulled further and further away.
“I promise,” she whimpers.
“I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you, and I’ll never stop. You hear me?”
She starts to cry as I’m kicked onto my back again, and then I’m roaring out my next words at the top of my lungs, letting the whole basement hear my truth:
“No regrets, Ada. No fucking regrets!”
The last thing I hear before they knock me out cold is her soft voice echoing them back to me.
CHAPTER 13
FRANKIE
Fourteen years later…
They say a good man has a long walk to freedom. He endures it with dignity and turns a prison sentence into a lesson in faith and forgiveness.
A villain counts ninety-seven paces from his cell to the front gates and turns a five-month stretch into a window of self-serving opportunity.
I’m holding a crumpled pack of cigarettes in one hand as I wait for the final security clearance checks to kick in, with hard purpose resting somewhere in the other. Red lights on the barbed wire fences flash above me and distant alarms clang. It’s the usual fanfare that announces the departure of any jailbird fromLa Bastille,the most notorious prison in South-West France.
