I loop the end of my makeshift rope around the leg of the bed and pull, testing my weight. It doesn’t budge, but I don’t know how long I have until it does.
I go back to the window and time another rotation. Thirty-eight seconds. I can make thirty-eight seconds if I don’t hesitate. I check the drop again. Manageable if I don’t slip. The hedge will take some of the fall. Or it won’t. Either way, I’m not staying.
I tuck the plastic tube into my pocket—never know when I’ll need it again. I coil the rope at my feet to wait, and kneel in front of the sill out of sight.
One more count. Past the fountain. Out of sight along the hedge.
Thirty-eight, then gone. I push the window open as far as it’ll go, toss my makeshift rope out, and send up a little prayer before pushing myself out after it.
No time for second guesses now. No time to let fear rule.
The sheet bites my palms as I feed myself out. I hook my elbows over the sill, find the first knot with my right hand, then the next with my left. My shoulder protests; I ignore it. One breath. Two. I slide, knot to knot.
Halfway down, the line jerks—fabric shifting around the bed leg above. I stop breathing. Wait. The knot holds. I go again, faster now, knees scraping stone, palms burning. About five feet up, I lose my grip and fall the rest of the way into the hedge. But I walk away with just a scratch on my calf.
I fold into the leaves and go still, praying that none of the guards look up to see my window wide open, bed sheets hanging out of it. At least until I’m away from here.
Footsteps pad past on the flagstones. Twenty-one… twenty-two… his shadow crosses the fountain’s glow and disappears. I push out of the shrub on my hands and knees and get low against the wall.
The courtyard smells like wet soil and chlorine. I move along the hedge, palms to dirt, keeping the wall at my back. There—an opening where the gardeners cut a narrow path through the shrubs. It tracks the perimeter toward the far side, where the hedge thickens again near a darker rectangle: a service gate, narrow and iron, set into the wall.
But I have no idea how I’m going to get through it. The plan was to climb over it, but it’s looking pretty imposing—and slippery—now that I’m closer to it.
I edge around the building more, keeping to the rough brick wall and behind the hedges.
I slow to a crawl, belly close to the earth, and ease around the corner. Voices seep out of a window left a hand’s width open above me. I freeze, press into the hedge, and still my breath.
Tremors work their way through me. I can’t be discovered now. Not when I’m so close.
“What if he doesn’t come?” A man’s voice drifts out the window.
“He’ll come.” My muscles clench in fear. It’s the man from this morning. I’ll never forget his voice. “He has a soft spot for these Marcellis.”
“Isn’t he collecting a debt from them?” The first man again.
“Yes, and putting it right back into them.” I hear the clatter of plates. A cup being set down onto a saucer, maybe? Of course, he’d be drinking tea or coffee, civilized man that he is. I almost roll my eyes before remembering that he wants to kill me.
“With that debt,” he continues, “he’s cleaned up the neighborhood around Regalia. They’ve been protected, even there, on the outskirts of Russo territory, for years. He had a soft spot for that Sabina and her daughter, Francesca. And now it seems he has one for the granddaughter.” A pause. “He’ll come.”
Silence spills over me, heavy and thick.
Protecting us? What does that mean?
He’s been using the money my mother’s paid on the debt to clean up the neighborhood? Kept Regalia clean from mob business.
I think all of that is why everyone in the neighborhood thought it was safe to come to the restaurant and not be concerned about the mobsters frequenting the place.
Keeping us all safe with the same ledger he used to bind me to him.
My throat tightens. Tears threaten to blind me.
My feelings sweep through me, leaving me weak. Feelings of love that stop me short.
Am I in love with him?
That can’t be right. I’ve only known him for a few weeks. I don’t even know anything about him.
But I do, don’t I?
