I force my heavy eyelids open. I’m not at the hospital or Matteo’s penthouse. The realization sends ice water flooding through my veins.
“Hello?” My voice comes out as a rasp, barely audible even to my own ears. I try again, louder this time. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
The words bounce off stone walls and come back to me, mocking. I’m sitting on what feels like the world’s most uncomfortable chair, cold metal and creaking with every slight movement.
When I try to stand, cold metal bites into my wrists. Looking down, I immediately clock the handcuffs securing me to a bolt in the middle of a metal table. The table itself is bolted to the floor. Someone really doesn’t want me to go anywhere.
Panic rises like bile in my throat. I yank at the cuffs, but the metal digs deeper into my skin, drawing blood that wells up and trickles down my palms in thin crimson streams. It hurts, but the pain feels distant, secondary to the primal need to escape.
My eyes dart around, taking inventory of my prison. Stone walls glisten with moisture, darkness clinging to the corners where the light can’t reach. The floor is concrete, cracked and stained with… I don’t want to know what.
There’s a metal door with no visible handle on the inside. No windows and the only furniture is the table, the chair I’m occupying and one other at the far end. The room smells like earth and decay, like I’m underground.
Water drips somewhere in the darkness.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Each splash a second ticking by on some cosmic clock counting down to… what?
I look down at myself. I’m still wearing the pink dress from dinner at the Russo estate, though it’s torn at the hem now and smeared with dirt. The splint that was on my wrist is gone, leaving the sprain exposed and throbbing.
Whoever took me wanted the restraints to bite directly into my skin.
“Help!” I scream as loud as my raw throat allows. “Somebody help me!” The effort sends daggers of pain through my vocal cords, but I don’t care.
How long have I been here? Hours? Days?
Memory flashes behind my eyes like lightning—fragments of what happened before I woke up in this nightmare. I was at thehospital with Matteo. And then… I got a call… right. Yes, I went outside to take Adam’s call.
Except it wasn’t Adam on the phone; it was Finn. And then Finn himself appeared in that pickup truck, watching me with eyes that didn’t match his casual stance. The recollection makes me shiver.
I remember throwing the business card on the ground, hoping Matteo would find it. Has he? Is he looking for me right now?
Then there’s the memory of Finn grabbing my throat in the truck, threatening to drug or kill me if I didn’t shut up. I didn’t shut up. Of course I didn’t. I’m Raven fucking Carter. I don’t shut up for anyone. Apparently not even to save myself.
I’d fought, clawed, screamed—and then… the sharp sting of a needle in my neck when we stopped at a red light, his hand clamping over my mouth as darkness swallowed me whole.
“Let me go right fucking now!” I scream, voice breaking on the last word. “Finn! I know it’s you! Show your face, you fucking bastard!”
Silence answers me, broken only by that infuriating drip of water.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I pull at the chains again, ignoring the way they slice into my skin. The pain grounds me, keeps the hysteria at bay. Think, Raven. What would Matteo tell me to do? I have no fucking idea.
“Somebody!” I scream again, frustration mounting. “Anybody!”
My head pounds harder with each shout, but I keep going until my voice gives out completely, reduced to a pathetic croak. Tears of rage and fear burn behind my eyes, but I blink them away. Crying won’t help. Nothing will help except getting the fuck out of here.
The silence stretches, punctuated only by the steady drip-drip-drip of unseen water and my own ragged breathing. And in thatsilence, something clicks in my mind. A memory so clear it feels like I’m back there, kneeling beside Gia’s bleeding body at the Leone Room.
“Who did this?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. “Gia, who hurt you?”
“F…” Her mouth opens, blood bubbling at the corners as she tries to speak. I lean closer, straining to hear the whisper. “Fi… Fin…”
At the time, I thought she was trying to say, “Find them.” But that wasn’t it, was it? She was trying to say a name. Finn.
My blood turns to ice in my veins as the realization crashes over me. Finn Kearney was at the Leone Room that night. Was it Finn who shot Vito while Gia killed Kayla? And shot Matteo when he took the bullet aimed at me?
