I crawled to her, iron scraping stone, chains screaming protest. I wrapped my arms around her trembling frame despite the filth, despite the stench, despite the guards still watching from the doorway with bored amusement. She clutched me like a lifeline, fingers digging into my back as if letting go would mean falling apart entirely.
She buried her face in my shoulder and sobbed.
Not pretty cries. Not quiet ones. Broken, animal sounds torn from somewhere deep in her chest—sounds that echoed off the stone and refused to die.
“Ricci will come,” she whispered between gasps, voice shredded. “He has to. He promised.”
Her breath hitched violently. “On our wedding night... he swore he’d never let anything happen to me. Never. He’ll find me, Penelope. He’ll burn this place down. I know he will.”
She clung to the words like scripture, repeating them over and over as if belief itself could bend reality.
“He won’t abandon me here forever,” she said again, weaker now. “He won’t.”
I stroked her matted hair, fingers tangling in damp strands, murmuring comforts I didn’t believe but needed her to hear.
“Shh, Bianca. Hold on. Just a little longer. We’ll get out. All of us. I swear.”
She lifted her head then.
Her eyes were swollen nearly shut, rimmed red and raw. Dried urine streaked her cheeks. Still, there was something achingly human in the way she searched my face.
“You believe that?” she asked.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I have to,” I said quietly. “We all do.”
For a moment—just one—her lips curved. Not a smile. More like the memory of one. Shattered, fragile.
“When I get out,” she whispered, voice trembling with exhausted hope, “I’ll tell him everything. And then we’ll leave this world behind. Just us. No more monsters.”
I held her tighter, whispering strength I didn’t feel, promises I wasn’t sure could exist.
Then the guards came for me.
They dragged me away for my own session, boots scraping, laughter echoing. I glanced back once—just once.
Bianca was still curled on the floor, rocking gently, whispering Ricci’s name like a prayer carved into bone.
Now Ricci was dead.
Executed for trying to save her.
And she would never know.
The present slammed back into place like a door locking shut.
Tears burned behind my eyes. I blinked hard, forcing them back. I would not break here. Not in front of Giovanni. Not again.
“Bianca was the only one who didn’t make it out,” I whispered, my voice barely holding together. “When we escaped—the tunnel—she was caught. The Kompania brothers took her.”
I swallowed hard. “God knows what they’re doing to her right now.”
Giovanni’s jaw tightened, muscle jumping beneath his skin.
He turned his face away, gaze drifting toward the lake glittering in the distance—beautiful, indifferent.
Giovanni finally met my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Penelope,” he said, and for once there was no performance in it. No polish. Just exhaustion. “I really am. But this isn’t the world we thought we controlled anymore. The Orlovs won without firing a single bullet.”