The word tasted like venom.
I thrashed again, blindly, catching someone’s knee with mine.He swore and punched me—not hard enough to knock me out, but enough to stun me.
My lip split wider.Warm blood trailed down my chin.
I felt something scrape around my wrists, then tighten, imprisoning even my hands.
“Put her in the van,” one of them ordered.
They threw me inside what felt like a cabin.The metal floor hit my ribs hard.
The doors banged shut with a finality that cracked through me like bone.
The engine roared before the van lurched forward.
I was shoved against the wall of the van, wrists bound, face covered, my pulse thundering like war drums.
I breathed through the panic and rage.Through the refusal to break.
Because I didn’t know where they were taking me—but there was one thing I did know with absolute certainty: the thought of whoever was waiting for me made something cold and slick unfurl in my gut, fear spreading through me slow as ink in water.
I was terrified.Truly, deeply terrified.
18
Atlas
Gianni didn’t leave quietly.
The man never did anything quietly.
He stood in the doorway of my office like a man blocking a firing squad, one hand braced on the frame, the other holding his phone like it was evidence in a trial.His suit jacket was unbuttoned, his tie loosened, and his expression said he’d spent the last few hours being ordered around by two people—my brother and his pregnant wife—and had enjoyed neither.
“You’re coming with me,” he said.
“I am not,” I replied, without looking up from the paperwork in front of me.
The ink blurred for a second.Not because my eyes were tired.Because my mind had been somewhere else all night.In an alley in Tuscany.With a girl holding a knife like it belonged to her the way a rosary belonged to a nun.
Gianni moved further inside, making himself comfortable like he owned the building, the city, and my patience.“Just come with me.We’ll be an hour, two tops.We can have a late lunch together on the way back.”
“I have things to get through, Gianni.”
He made a sound like he didn’t believe in my exemplary ability to lie.
I set my pen down slowly.The room was quiet, but not peaceful.
“Why are you still here?”I asked.
He held up his phone, waving it slightly.“I’m leaving.Mikayla’s appointment is in forty minutes and if I’m late, she’ll kill me, and I’m not ready to die today.”
“Go.”
Gianni didn’t move.
He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and watched me the way people watched a storm roll in—half fascinated, half terrified of what it would tear apart first.
“You’re coming with me.”