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You bloody fool.
“Buenasera, signorina,”the man with the gun said, his full lips quirking in the faintest hint of a smile as he spoke. “It looks like you’ve won a front-row seat to my little show.”
Don’t cower. Don’t show fear.
“Not exactly the show I was hoping for,” I said dryly, drawing on the Ice Queen like never before. I needed to be cool and calm—unflappable. Raven—the nurse from the hospital—sprung to mind. I don’t think the gunman had even made her blink.
Don’t blink.
He laughed. The sound was loud enough for me to hear, but short and cold. “Maybe not, but the man deserved—”
“And you’re what? Saint Francis of Assisi?” I spat, feeling the Ice Queen’s coldness in my veins, making me blissfully numb. Numb to Owen Thompson sitting in the dining chair, his head flopped forward and blood seeping from a jagged hole in the back of his head.
The blond man’s brow furrowed, then he barked another short, cold laugh. “The patron saint of peacemakers?” He shook his head. “I am not that,signorina.”
It hit me like a tidal wave.
His lips had formed the word “signorina”more than once—an Italian word, not that I knew many of them.
He was Italian. He wore an expensive suit, tied people up and murdered them in their homes. And he didn’t seem the least bit perturbed that I’d stabbed him in the back in the middle of his “show”. It was possible he was a nutter, but I had a terrible feeling this man could have walked right out ofThe Godfather. Organized crime. Organized and destructive and bred from the vilest evil.
The ice wall started to crack inside me. I could feel the fissures forming as my heart raced faster and my cold hands shook.
“Just leave,” I said. I could feel the trembling in my own voice, knowing the demand was pointless.
He chuckled, shaking his head slowly. “Oh, sweetheart, if only it were that simple. But I have a reputation to uphold, and witnesses tend to be rather inconvenient. So, you see, we have a problem.”
I glared back at him. I knew exactly what kind of problem he was referring to—the “walking, talking, could identify him in court” kind of problem.
And from where I was standing—in Elio’s dining room with a cold-blooded killer—there seemed to be only one solution to his “problem”.
My hands shook harder, and my heart pounded against my ribs while my mind screamed at the only option left. I felt like one of my patients, struggling to hold on when the body had all but given up.
Please, don’t kill me,was on the tip of my tongue. But I wasn’t going to beg. I’d begged once before. My mother had begged. My father had begged. And they’d laughed at us.
I wouldn’t give this tosser the satisfaction now.
If the only thing I could do was go down swinging, then that was exactly what I was going to do.
I drew my arm back. All it would take was one quick move, and I could slash his throat. Even if he managed to fire a shot, I’d take him down with me.
But his eyes slanted to the left.
Too late for me to spin around. Too late to confront whatever new horror approached from behind.
A hand gripped my wrist. Another one wrapped around me, trapping me against a solid wall at my back.
I yanked and jerked. I stomped and kicked.
But the hand gripped my wrist harder, so hard it forced my hand to let go of the knife.
My only weapon was gone. It dropped to the floor. I imagined its clatter against the hard, unyielding marble.
I kept it up, though, flailing and fighting, savage and wild like my mother.
They were talking, their voices raised enough I could make out the indistinct sound. To me? To each other? I couldn’t tell.
The arm around my ribs gripped tighter, making it harder to breathe, crushing my strength, my fight.
