Oh, my God.I bite my lip, and feel warmth curling at my edges.
Could that future I spoke of be real? Could we build it, Santo and I, together? Make a dream a reality for each other?
I feel a smile touch my lips. Sabine smiles too, the fear in her expression faltering. It’s the softest I’ve ever seen her look. The most at peace.
And that’s when a horrible, deafening percussion shatters the silence. One of the great arched windows blows inward, shattered glass raining over the parlor. Something hot spatters my face, and I taste rust.
I only glimpse the dark hole in Sabine’s temple before she crumples to the floor.
Chapter 14
Santo
“That went better than expected.” Gio smiles at me as we get into the car. It’s only midmorning, and I’m grateful Fyodor and his closest men were willing to meet me so close to home. I’ll be back to my estate much sooner than I thought I’d be, and with a small reserve of men to guard the castle in addition to my own. “Come on, brother. What did I tell you, hm? I knew he was good for it.”
I nod, but I’m not ready to feel the victory yet. Dario pulls out onto the road, and as soon as the familiar mountains are framed in the windshield, a little relief softens the cold resolve inside of me.
A dozen gleaming black cars peel onto the road behind us. Fyodor’s men, on loan as an act of good faith. We’ll have much more work to do in the coming days, namely mounting a direct attack against Gregorio and cutting his numbers, as well as instilling a sense of doubt in his abilities. But for now, all that’s left is for us to return home.
To Dani.
Gio is on his phone, his face gaunt and shadowed.
“What is it?” I ask.
He pales considerably, his familiar face suddenly bloodless. “Santo…” It’s all he says, not drawing his eyes from the screen in his hand. He scrubs a palm over his face.
“What?” My bones are cinched tight, my blood frozen in my veins.Don’t fucking say it,I order him, the world, silently.Don’t you dare fucking say it.“Gio. What the fuck is going on?”
He lifts his darkened eyes to mine. He doesn’t need to say a word.
Chapter 15
Dani
Istagger back, ears still ringing. My breath is hitched like a stone in my throat, and I can’t breathe. Lightning bites through the gauzy, darkening fog outside, followed by a hard clap of thunder. It sends a jolt of shock through me, seems to rattle me from my terror-clouded reverie.
I should move. I need to move.
Sabine is curled at my feet, blood spreading in a crimson fan beneath her head. She’s so terribly, horribly still, and I stagger back. I can’t seem to catch a breath. Can’t think.
A vein of red light pierces the parlor. It alights on my chest, jittering.I am being hunted,says a shrill voice in the back of my skull.I need to run. I need to live.
I need to survive. If I don’t, it will break Santo. He’ll die fighting. For his brother, for his revenge.
For me.
It’s a bluff, that juddering red crosshair. If they wanted me dead, I’d be on the floor beside Sabine’s rapidly cooling body. I’d be in a pool of blood. I’d have a twin bullet hole seared into my skull.
I do something I shouldn’t. I do what I have to.
I run.
Behind me, glass shatters, a deafening explosion as the windows explode. Gunfire bites into the flagstones, spraying pebbles at my bare feet. But I’m already ducking out of the parlor, already slipping on the cold stone floor. I lose my footing and go down hard, scrabbling. A bullet snaps off the floor just in front of me. If I hadn’t fallen, it would have entered through the back of my skull.
Maybe they’re not bluffing after all.
I hear shouting. Slamming. More glass shattering as bullets rain in from all sides. Someone or something is banging violently against the sealed front doors. They’re here—those men, Santo’s enemies. They’re here, but they’re not inside the castle. Not yet.
