That and the cretin at my feet needs to know who he’s dealing with. A truth that hits him when he sees my exposed chest and back. The elaborate ink that wraps across my spine, shoulder blades, ribs. The infamous markings of mybratva’smost feared assassin.
“Vaffanculo!No, no. You can’t be?—”
“In the flesh.” I’ve freed my knife from its sheath. Tap it against his head, between bloodshot, terrified eyes. “And it’s time you and I have a little chat.”
I drag the tip of my knife down Rocco’s nose, chin, flabby neck, to just above the open wound on his chest.
“W-why?C-che cazzo!What d-d-do you want?!”
I use my knife to deepen that cut. To slip the edge of the blade beneath his skin. To peel it back like flesh from an overripe peach. To slowly, so very carefully, skin him alive.
I clamp my hand over Rocco’s mouth to muffle the screams. He asked a question; he needs to hear the answer. “You took someone from me. Now you have to tell me how I can get her back.”
It’s almostdawn when I get back to my apartment building. I managed to wash off most of Rocco’s blood and skin at Cosenza’s blown-out warehouse, but some is stubbornly stuck to my pants and under my nails. My brother says that’s why I should wear gloves, but then I’d lose feel for the work.
Extracting information is a precise skill. So is stripping someone down to muscle while keeping them alive. Which Rocco still is, despite how much he begged me to finish him off. As much as I would love to remove him from this planet, I’m not done with him yet.
I park my motorcycle in the underground garage and send a message to Cosenza confirming his captive is still breathing, that he needs a doctor, and that I need more time with him. Before he passed out from the pain, Rocco only gave me enough information to confirm what I’d already guessed about Rina’s disappearance.
He still has questions to answer, like the name of the bastard he sold her to.
Those unanswered questions—my waking nightmares—are whipping through my head as I take the elevator to my floor. The bloodletting should’ve calmed the animal clawing inside me. Instead, I feel like I’m no closer to finding Rina than when I infiltrated Pagano’s organization months ago. No closer to knowing what hell he and his partners put her through.
I’m deep in my own head when I open the apartment door. The hall is dark, just as I left it. The rooms beyond still, quiet. But the smell is different. I tense, forgetting for a split-second why the air is scented with coconut and lime.
Then I remember. It’s her shampoo.
Marya’s.
She’s what’s different. A beating heart in a place I’ve keep cold and solitary for as long as I can remember.
Neither of us want her here. But somehow, the fact that she is sets me off kilter, unusually eager to wash away the evidence of tonight.
I toss my jacket onto a hook, already on my way to the kitchen when I hear the sound. The slightest squeak. The shifting of weight. The rush of air as something comes down and cracks me across the head.
The thud of my skull hitting the floor.
Then nothing.
7
SERA
The Russian drops to my feet with a thud that shakes the floor. The metal umbrella stand falls from my grip, my body sagging as my adrenaline levels free fall.Merda. I can’t escape if I’m too weak to walk the few feet to the front door.
The plan seemed simple enough when I came up with it. Get out of bed. Knock the Russian out. Run away.
It took me ages to handle step one, half my body non-functional from lack of use, the other half still battered and bruised and painful to move. By the time I removed the IV, went through the shock of realizing I also had to remove a catheter, and put on the clothes my captor so helpfully left by the bed, I was out of breath. Walking to the bedroom door had me seeing stars.
I had to lean on the door frame for several minutes before I could gather the strength to move into the main part of the apartment. It didn’t help that the whole place was dark. My eyesight has improved since that first day, but darkness is still a real problem, shadows blurring into one giant mass, crowding out any wisps of ambient light.
I was stuck against the wall, trying to figure out how to get my bearings, when I realized the apartment was silent. By some amazing stroke of luck, the Russian wasn’t home. That gave me the spike of energy I needed to navigate through the unfamiliar space. To force my brain to figure out how to pull off step two of my impromptu plan.
The fact that he wasn’t home felt like a sign. As did the fact that I’m more lucid than I’ve felt in ages. I don’t even know why I woke up. Or what day it is. Or how long I’ve been here. All I know is I opened my eyes, stuck in that bed, and knew I had to get out.
Which brings me to the final step in my plan: run away.
Turns out I’ve left the hardest part for last, especially since whatever magical combo of adrenaline, willpower, and emergency energy I’ve been running on dried up right after the door opened unexpectedly, I grabbed the first thing I could reach, and I knocked the Russian out.