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I looked at her for a few long seconds, seeing the eagerness in her eyes. She clearly loved her sister as much as I cared about my own siblings. “Our sources tell us that she was shot in the shoulder, but the bullet missed the major arteries and was a through and through. They’ve patched her up, but she’s still in the hospital due to the amount of blood she lost. As I thought, they had a doctor on standby at the church. It was just bad luck that she got caught in the crossfire.”
Juliana exhaled a ragged breath. “But she’ll be okay?”
“She’s not critical. She should be okay, barring any complications.”
“And what about her shoulder? Will it heal fully?”
“They don’t seem worried about it. They are happy with her progress so far.” I saw her eyes fill with tears, which slowly trickled down her cheeks. I picked up her empty plate and headed toward the door. “There’s water on the tray if you want it.”
I closed the door and turned the lock behind me, firmly shutting her inside her prison.
JULIANA
I felt relief, knowing that Jessica was going to be okay.
I still wished that I could see her with my own eyes and speak to her myself. But knowing that she was not in any critical danger lifted a large amount of tension from my shoulders.
After a few minutes, I went over to the tray to see what else there was. There was a fruit salad with pineapple, pear, and strawberries, so I tucked in and ate it all, my appetite coming back to me. There was also a carafe filled with water and sliced lemon and I poured some into a glass and drank it, enjoying its coolness and the sharp zest of the lemon.
After lunch, I didn’t know if it was the exhaustion from yesterday catching up with me, but I lay down on the bed and took a nap.
When I woke up, the late afternoon sun was filtering into the bedroom. I walked over to the windows and feeling the warmth of the sun shining through the glass, I wondered how long I would be kept in this room. Perhaps forever. Or maybe until he was bored of me and decided to kill me.
The Fratellanza were not known to show any mercy to women if they were deemed to be enemies or traitors. And I was part of the Società, so I was definitely considered to be an enemy.
My thoughts turned toward tonight. Would my captor show me mercy again tonight, as he did last night? If he wasn’t going to touch me, he wouldn’t have been interested in whether I was on birth control.
I felt panic starting to swirl in my stomach again, now that it was heading toward evening. How much longer would I be alone in this room until he came to me? Suddenly the thought of being isolated and alone in this room became more appealing when compared to the thought of being here with him.
I couldn’t just wait for him to do whatever he had planned for me. I started looking around the room, opening all the drawers and closets, trying to find anything that I could use as a weapon or that could help me escape.
Even if I could get out of this room, I would still need to make it past anyone else in the house and the guards at the estate perimeter. But I couldn’t think about that now. I had to focus on one step at a time.
I had no luck in the bedroom. The drawers and closets held nothing apart from Marco’s clothes. And, of course, many of these clothes were in black, the color of choice for the Mafia. Black hid the blood most easily.
After my search in the bedroom came up fruitless, I moved into the adjoining bathroom and looked through the drawers in the vanities there. There wasn’t so much as a razor blade in the bathroom. He must have already thought to remove anything that I could use.
My eye caught the fork on the lunch tray. It wasn’t much but it was all I had, and I couldn’t just sit back and let him do whatever he wanted to me.
I put the fork in the pocket of my jeans. I really hoped that there weren’t any cameras in the bathroom or bedroom, I thought to myself, as I looked around trying to see if I could spot any. I couldn’t see anything, but then the best cameras were the ones that were hidden, tricking the person being watched into a false sense of privacy.
My nerves were all over the place. I told myself that it was the adrenaline and that was a good thing. But it was making my body feel like it had electricity going through it and making me jumpy.
I was no expert on how to stab someone. On TV crime shows, they often seemed to aim for the kidney area when stabbing someone. I wasn’t exactly sure where the kidneys were in relation to the rest of the abdomen. Damn, I should have paid more attention to the nuns in our biology lessons.
I decided that I would just aim in the general direction and hope for the best. I just needed enough time to get out of this room and then hopefully out of the house.
In the evening Marco came in with my dinner finally. It seemed as if I had been waiting hours for Marco to arrive. But now that he was here, I wished for a bit more time before I had to put my plan into action.
Dinner actually smelled good, and I silently berated myself for not eating more today. I would need all the energy I could get.
“Good, I see you finished the rest of your lunch.” I watched him set down my tray, shivering as I noticed his dark hair and shadowy eyes. Everything about his body screamed danger to me.
I wasn’t sure if he was going to come nearer to me, so I decided to walk toward him on the pretext of checking what was for dinner. “I was hungry. I must have gotten my appetite back. Dinner smells good, what is it?”
My voice sounded unnaturally high to me. I stood next to him, trying not to act nervous, as he uncovered the plate to reveal a pasta dish.
Fear made me hesitate.
