“Shut it, kid,” Sean snarls, jerking her toward the door. “We’re going for a ride, little ransom. Looks like yourpapà’s in love with a corpse. Let’s see what he’ll trade for the living.”
I want to scream. I want to kick. I want to rip the asshole’s spine from his throat. And I will. I vow in that moment that Sean Murphy will not live to see another dawn.
Peeking through slitted lids, I see Leo trying to rise again. Sean puts a bullet into his head, and it’s all I can do not to scream. “I told you to stay down.”
The door slams. Boots, gravel, and an engine firing again. The cottage holds its breath.
I don’t. I suck in air like I’ve been drowning and run to the window. Pain screams through my shoulder. The black van peels out of the driveway. The room doubles and doubles again. I clutch onto a chair for support. Noreen is…still. I touch her cheek, press my lips to her hair, and taste straw and tea and the end of a chapter. “Thank you,” I breathe, wrecked. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Then I crawl to my phone. My hands shake so hard I almost drop it. I press Matteo’s name, and it connects on the first ring.
“Kitty Cat?” His voice is alive, relieved, the sound a man makes when he sees the house lights from the lane.
“They took her,” I choke out. No preface. No mercy. “Sean. He’s got Livia. Noreen—” The word won’t go through. I swallow glass. “Noreen’s gone. And Leo too. I’m hit. He—he said bait. He wants you.”
Everything on his end goes silent and roaring at once. A breath. A curse. The scrape of tires.
“Where.” It’s not a question so much as a command the world should obey.
“Road toward the main lane. Black van. He turned left, toward the quarry.”
“I’m five minutes out.” His voice is a blade and a prayer. “Lock the door. Press a towel on the wound. Keep breathing.”
“Matteo—”
“I will raze this entire island to the waterline before I let her vanish,” he hisses, quiet as a vow and twice as lethal. “No one hurts what’s mine and lives. I’ve got you. I’ve got her. Stay with me, Cat.”
But I can’t. Because there’s something I have to do first.
The line clicks. Outside, somewhere far too close, a siren starts. I press a dish towel to my shoulder until stars burst, then drag myself across Noreen’s warm, cooling kitchen, and lay my forehead on the stone for exactly one heartbeat.
Then I push myself off the floor. But I don’t lock the door. I yank it open and head toward the main lane.
CHAPTER 50
TEETERING ON THE EDGE
Matteo
The lane is a tunnel of hedges and rain against the backdrop of my manic heartbeat. The car hits the gravel hard enough to fishtail, and the cottage bursts into view. The kitchen window is a shattered frost. The back door hangs crooked. Blood prints the threshold in two distinct shades.
“Cat!” I am inside before the driver throws the car into park. “Cat, where are you?” Brian is yelling behind me, but I can’t stop. Noreen lies by the table beneath a pool of blood, her braid like a rope thrown and missed. Leo is slumped at the jamb, eyes to the ceiling, already past hearing.Dio, no. Fury and pain scorch through me at the sight of my guard, my old friend. I touch each of them once because I need to understand it’s real, then I’m moving again.
“Cat?” I shout at the top of my lungs, my heart a jackhammer to my ribs.Please,Dio, don’t let me lose her again.
Once I’ve cleared the cottage, I race outside and vault down the steps. I’m losing precious seconds to find Livia, but I can’t leave without her. “Cat!”
“Mr. Rossi!” Brian’s shout from outside registers first.
I sprint toward the door.
“Out here.” Her voice floats from down the lane, raw and stubborn. She stands braced against a tree down the road, one hand clamped to a towel soaked through her shoulder, eyes blue fire.
I sprint down the lane and reach her in seconds.
“I tried to follow after them…” She collapses into my arms, her entire body trembling.
“Damn it, Cat. You should’ve stayed in the house.”
