Light stabs straight through my skull. A single bulb sways overhead, yellow and merciless, flickering like it’s laughing at me. The room stutters into place in jagged frames—concretefloor blackened with age, walls stained with ghosts, steel beams ribbing the ceiling, shadows piled thick in every corner.
Basement.Warehouse.Dungeon.
The chair is bolted to the floor. Cold metal leaches through denim into my bones. My ankles are loose, but my legs are dead and buzzing, blood crawling back through them in painful pins and needles.
I shift.
The cuffs drag against the chair back.
“Easy there, princess.”
The voice hits from straight ahead.
I blink again. Force my vision to sharpen.
He’s lounging like this is a barstool instead of a holding cell. Legs spread. Elbows on his knees. Hands loose and lazy—like there’s nothing in this world capable of arcing far enough to hurt him.
Smiling.
Not warm.
Predatory.
Like something that tasted blood once and decided it was a hobby.
My memory snaps his face into place before the rest of me catches up.
Carlo Vescari.
Knife hand.
Second to the man who spilled my father across marble.
My throat locks. My stomach flips. The room tilts once—hard—and then my heart freezes into something jagged and bright.
Of course it’s him.
“Carlo,” I rasp. “You’re aging like milk.”
His grin widens.
“There she is,” he murmurs. “Giovanni’s favorite little secret.”
The words crawl over me.
I swallow down the echo of Santino’s hands. His mouth. The way my name sounded when it left him — like prayer and sin in the same breath.
That Pia can rot.
She’s a liability.
I straighten in the chair and lift my chin.
“Then kill me,” I say. “Finish the job your boss started.”
His laugh is so loud, it ricochets off the walls.
“Oh no,” he says brightly. “Not today, Bella. Today, you’re bait.”
