Massimo.
The fog in my head had cleared. I’d left it behind in the night, finally escaping it.
I pushed out of bed. Lucy hovered beside me.
“What did you dream about?”
“I—they weren’t dreams. I remembered,” I got out. Panic clutched my chest in an unbreakable grip. The night before filled my mind. Going to Pavol’s office. Being injected. The fire. Being outside and confused. Massimo in the snow, looking for Tatiana. Massimo going back into the burning building. They’d given me something again, and it had made me confused, but it had worn off. How long had it lasted? A day?
“You need to breathe. You’re hyperventilating. Calm down and tell me everything.”
I nodded, taking the glass of cool water she passed me and sinking into a chair.
“It’s a long story,” I warned her.
She shrugged. “I’ve got time. Tell me.”
So I did.
After,Lucy sat for a moment, stunned by the convoluted tale, before twisting for her phone.
“I need to find Massimo. I don’t know what happened after he went back into the building. He could have been hurt. He could have...”
No, he couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible. I refused to even consider it.
“Okay, right. We need to find him. And as for the doctor you ran away from, he sounds just as dangerous as the other men who were in charge. He needs to be caught.”
“Yeah, but how? Without Massimo, I can’t even dream of being a match for Blackwood.”
“We need to talk to my brother-in-law.”
“Who’s your brother-in-law?”
“He’s someone who can... protect people and deal with problems,” she said somewhat evasively. “He’s the reason I have Nina outside.”
“He must be someone important. A politician?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. He doesn’t have a conventional job. Anyway, we need to talk to him, or at least the woman I told you about earlier. My IT guy.”
“Okay. Let’s speak to her... maybe she can find Massimo.”
Lucy nodded and dialed on her phone, putting it on speaker and setting it on the table between us.
It rang and rang. Just when I thought no one was going to answer, a voice came over the line.
“You’re lucky I barely sleep, kid,” a woman said.
A deep, rumbling male voice spoke in the background.
“I’m sorry, it’s an emergency,” Lucy said quickly.
I could hear when the woman on the other side of the call snapped to attention.
“What’s going on?” she asked with intention.
Lucy took a deep breath. “This is going to sound crazy, but I met this girl last night. She was running away from someone—someone dangerous. She was staying at this place in Torino, a hospital of some kind.”
“Hallow Hall,” I leaned forward and said toward the phone. “It’s a Church-run, kind of, home for unwed mothers and the elderly, some psychiatric care.”