“We have a problem.” His voice is tight, urgent in a way that makes my spine straighten. “Someone’s trying to breach the south gate.”
5
EMMA
I’m going to die of boredom before my father can rescue me.
I’ve already memorized every inch of this prison masquerading as a luxury bedroom.
I know there are exactly forty-seven floorboards between the bed and the door.
I know the third window from the left has a small crack in the bottom corner of the glass.
I know that if I stand in the exact center of the room and spin in a circle with my eyes closed, I’ll get dizzy after exactly twelve rotations.
I know all of this because I have absolutely nothing else to do.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I can’t escape from this room.
Yet.
I’ve tested every possible weakness and come up empty, and continuing to throw myself at the problem is just wasting energy I might need later.
So for now, I wait. I plan.
I try not to think about my mother and whether she’s okay, whether my father is looking for me, or if Tony is relieved or embarrassed that his bride got stolen at the altar.
Mostly I try not to think about the fact that I’m a prisoner of a man who hates my family enough to start a war.
“This is fine,” I say aloud to the empty room. “Everything is totally fine. I’m just locked in a cage by a psychopath with a revenge fetish. Perfectly normal Tuesday.”
It’s actually Thursday.
I think.
The days are starting to blur together.
Giving in, I wander over to the bookshelf that I noticed when Leo so rudely dumped me in here.
I’d purposely avoided it, not wanting to distract myself with anything provided by Leo.
But the desperation clawing at my insides, tearing apart my mind, finally has me on my knees.
I’m giving in—just a little.
And I hate myself for it.
I scan the titles and immediately wrinkle my nose.
“Seriously?” I pull out a book and read the spine. “Dante’s Inferno. How appropriately on the nose.” I shove it back and grab another, grimacing. “Machiavelli. Naturally. Because whatkidnapped woman doesn’t want to readThe Princein her spare time?”
I keep going, getting progressively more annoyed with each title.
Calvino. Eco. Moravia.
All Italian authors, of course, because God forbid Leo Santoro provide me with anything that isn’t a love letter to his heritage.
There are a few contemporary Italian novels I don’t recognize, some poetry by Ungaretti that I vaguely remember from a college literature course, and?—