Ears are ringing.
I groan, blinking my eyes open.
My breath stutters.
My arms are pulled over my head, my feet barely skimming the floor.
Izzy meets my eyes through the metal bars in front of me. I’m caged in. She’s no longer gagged, but tears are pouring from her eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she whimpers, and the miserable sound guts me.
I shake my head, despite the lingering pain as I do. “I’ll always come for you,Cuore mio.”
“He’ll kill us both.”
“Not if we kill him first.”
She laughs humorlessly, exaggerating as she roams her eyes around the space. “How do you plan to do that?”
The odds aren’t exactly in our favor right now. Both of us are locked in cages. I’m strung up; she’s tied down. Marcus is nowhere to be seen.
My nose wrinkles as I breathe in, the scent of mildew thickin the air.
I can't stop my eyes from focusing on the dried blood running down her legs. "Did he touch you?"
She shakes her head. "No. Not in the way you think."
Then why—
“The baby?” I ask her, dread and hope curdling in my stomach.
She sucks in a breath, confusion in her face, before she shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“They’ll be okay,” I tell her—or perhaps myself, I’m not sure.
“How did you know?”
I grin—sheepishly—despite everything. “I found your gift.”
The door clangs open, the low metal groan filling the still air.
Marcus steps inside.
“Oh good! You’re awake,” he croons, striding closer with the confidence of a man who thinks he’s won.
“What’s your plan here, Marcus? You know my papa will find me and then you’re a dead man,” I hiss at him.
He shakes his head, the clattering of keys against metal echoing around us as he unlocks the door to my cell. “Not if I’m long gone before he finds you.”
Silver glints from his right hand.
Izzy notices it at the same moment I do.
“Marcus!” she cries, pulling his attention onto her. “Leave him alone, it’s me you want.”
He laughs, low and maniacal. “True, but what better way to make you suffer than to watch him hurt?”
Before I can blink, he brings his hand up, red splashing across my chest as he slashes an uneven line. It cuts right through my tattoo—the one I got of Izzy’s name at eighteen. It’s not a coincidence.
