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They better hope there are no guards already circling this place, or we’re all done for.
The footsteps grow closer, and suddenly I see Matteo round the corner.
“Are you alone?” I ask as I rush toward him. He looks at the mess in the hall while I reach him. “Are you fucking alone, Teo?”
He nods and his brows furrow.
“What the fuck happened?” he asks. “Dad sent me over here because the cameras are offline. He wanted me to send a blast to the signal, but I needed to be within range. I thought I heard something up here.” He pauses. “What the fuck happened to that door, and why are there two doors to that room?” Matteo looks around. “I’ve never been up here before. It’s—”
“Not now,” I say, grabbing him by the shoulder and pushing him toward the stairwell. “I’m gonna need you on my side for something. Listen up.”
16
NICCOLÒ
Thirty minutes later, Matteo has held Gabriel off, convincing him nothing was out of place and completely cutting off our Wi-Fi so it looks legit. We sent out a text message blast that there’s an outage in our area, and it will be resolved soon. That one was Teo’s idea. Thank fucking Christ for burner phones and the quick ability to send out mass messages through new technology.
“I’ve almost got it, I think,” I say, grunting as I finally break apart the mechanism I’ve been slowly inching away at and throw it to the side, keeping an ear out in case anyone happens to be coming up those stairs. “Fucking finally.”
I take a deep breath, push my finger through the destroyed device still on the door, and push on the bolt until it slides and the door pushes open.
And I’m not fucking prepared for what I see inside…
Two women are huddled together on the floor in the farthest corner of the room.
And one of them is mine.
Evelina sits, cradling Sofia DeSantis in her arms and smoothing her palm over her hair, soothingly shushing her. When her eyes connect with mine, I swear I see them fucking light up.
“Evelina,” I say, crossing the room as quickly as I can, but she holds out her palm, effectively stopping me in my tracks and causing my brain to remember why I’m here. “We don’t have a lot of time. We need to get the two of you out of here.”
I need to process this room, see the damage Gabriel has done to these women, but I am so shocked that Evelina is in here. Hell, I’m shocked either of them are here, right under our fucking noses for the past who knows how long, and I can’t come to grips with the fact that this is my reality right now.
Footsteps echo, and I immediately turn, yanking my gun from my waist as I do so, but it’s Dom.
Not Gabriel.
Just Dom.
“Fucking A, little shit. Don’t point a gun at someone you aren’t ready to fucking kill,” he says.
I called Dom as soon as Teo went to try and smooth things over with Gabriel, knowing I needed him to get the women away from here as soon as I got the door open. The plan unfolding in my mind consisted of the women being as far away as possible by the time Gabriel found out about the broken-down door.
“Well, holy fuc—”
“Sofia, these men are going to get us out of here. They are going to take us to see our family, okay?” Evelina speaks softly and slowly to Sofia.
I never imagined Sofia was alive. Not for one moment did I think Gabriel kept her alive. I just assumed he did something horrific to her body and was planning on never revealing her corpse to Romeo DeSantis…always leaving him wondering about his little girl. I imagined Sofia bloody and bruised and broken…
But she’s anything but.
She looks like a porcelain doll.
Her skin pale but with heavy makeup, rosy cheeks from blush, and perfectly placed lipstick. She’s wearing an old gown, something my mother would’ve worn years ago. It’s almost like a blast from the fucking past.
I swear I remember the dress from when I was a kid. My mother has always had an intricate sense of style, and this gown Sofia’s dolled up in is so similar. From the powder-blue and white color and golden chains dripping from the cinched waist.
Sofia’s hair is perfectly pinned up, as if they’d just done it before bed with a plan of letting it loose in the morning and allowing her curls to go free.
