Chapter 6
I find Inez at the bottom of the stairs with blood spreading across her sleeve.
She is pressed against the tunnel wall, one hand clamped over her upper arm and the other holding the pistol I gave her last winter. A man stands between us and the outer passage, his face hidden behind a black mask.
He turns when he hears me.
The tunnel gives me one clear choice: run back toward the fire or shoot and tell every attacker exactly where we are.
Inez looks at the narrow passage behind me. “Go.”
No.
She carried the storage card past Roman’s guards and returned through a burning estate because I touched the key beneath my collar.
I will not become another person who leaves her behind.
The masked man raises his weapon. I fire first.
The shot deafens me. Stone breaks beside his head, and he dives behind the bend. I drag Inez behind the stair wall before he fires back.
Inez looks at the broken stone beside his head. “You missed.”
“I noticed.” My hands shake as I check her arm. The bullet passed through, but blood keeps pushing between her fingers. “Can you move?”
“If you stop asking.”
Even now, she is trying to make me smile. It almost works.
The attacker’s shadow crosses the far wall. I know he expects me to protect the tunnel opening, so I aim lower, toward the strip of floor his body must cross.
His boot appears.
I fire twice.
He falls, loses his weapon, and crawls toward the outer door. I could finish him. Part of me wants to because Roman locked me in a fire, Vivienne sent my rescue away, and this man is close enough to punish.
I lower the gun.
“Move.”
Inez leans against me as we pass him. A brass casing lies near his hand, marked with a thin black ring around its base. I have seen hundreds of De Luca and Bellini rounds; neither family marks ammunition this way.
I pick it up.
The outer door opens behind cypress trees. Cold air hits my burned throat, and for several seconds I can only breathe.
Then I hear Roman shouting.
He is fifty yards away near the eastern drive, one arm around Vivienne while guards form a wall around them. Smoke hides half the house. Men run in every direction, carrying the wounded and calling names.
No one calls mine.
I wait anyway.
Roman turns toward the burning east wing. I still hope he is looking for me, and I hate that I do.
Vivienne catches his coat and says something. He bends to hear her, then leads her toward an armored car.
He never looks toward the tunnel.
I have spent years making excuses for Roman. I cannot make one for this.
Inez sags against my shoulder. Her blood is warm through my sleeve.
She chose me when my husband did not.
That is enough to make the next decision simple.
I take her away from the estate.
We reach the service road before a De Luca vehicle passes. Its lights sweep the trees, but no one looks for two women in the ditch.
My father’s compound is less than four miles west. Salvatore failed me at the table, but Inez needs a doctor, and Bellini blood still has to mean something there.
At least, I need to believe it does.
By the time we reach the gates, Inez can no longer stand. I hold her upright and strike the metal with the butt of my gun.
The guards recognize me. Their weapons lower, but the gates remain closed.
Behind them, the lights in my father’s house come on one room at a time.