This time, when we get back on our horses, Slava rides up ahead with Alessandro and I’m left with all of my thoughts.
The storm comes fasterthan any of us expected.
The chateau is still not yet in sight, and sky splits open with a crack of thunder that makes the horses rear. Alessandro’s pony whinnies in fear, and Slava is there instantly, one hand on the bridle, voice low and soothing.
“We need to move,” he says, already lifting Alessandro onto his horse. “The chateau is twenty minutes at full gallop. Stay close.”
I try. God, I try.
But my mare is terrified, and I am profoundly not a horse whisperer, and when the first lightning strike illuminates the sky, she bolts.
“Bella!” Slava’s voice, swallowed by thunder.
I’m holding on for dear life as the horse tears across the field, going the wrong direction, every instinct screaming at me to pull the reins but that just makes her run harder. Rain lashes my face. The ground blurs beneath us. I can’t see where we’re going, can only feel the terrifying power of an animal who has decided that any direction away from the thunder is the right one.
A branch catches my shoulder, pain flaring white-hot. I cry out, and my grip slips, and?—
I hit the ground hard.
The impact drives the breath from my lungs. For a long moment, I just lie there in the mud, rain hammering down, trying to remember how to exist. My shoulder screams. My head spins.
Get up, I tell myself.Get up, Bella.
I manage to crawl to my feet, then stumble toward a cluster of trees that offers at least some shelter from the downpour. My clothes are soaked through.
The storm rages around me, and I have no idea where I am. Somewhere out there, Slava is riding back to the chateau with his son.
Will you be my new mama?
I have to save them both, I decide. I won’t let either boy come under harm.
Finding an old rotten trunk, I lean against it and wait, because there’s nothing else I can do. Did Luca ever hesitate before he betrayed Gia? About the family he was going to destroy? Did he care at all?
If he didn’t, then it doesn’t matter.
Because I care. And as long as I care, Iwillfind a solution. That’s what Nico meant when he told me that it’s no longer within his power to control but mine, right?
Right?
Theremustbe a way to save them both.
So, I sit there and think as coldness overtakes me.
By the time thunder cracks overhead again, an idea starts to take shape in my head.
41
SLAVA
“Head inside and stay there,”I tell Alessandro once I drop him off on his feet at the entrance of the chateau. “I’m going back for Bella.”
He nods and rushes in, where several servants are already coming towards him with towels.
The storm has picked up in intensity now, rage and water and wind that has my horse snorting in anger at being forced to be out here. But I don’t care.
The only thing on my mind is whether Bella is alright. Or is she lying in the field, having been thrown from her horse with a broken neck? The image squeezes my chest, and I urge my horse forward in the rain, not sure where to even start looking.
I haven’t felt this panicked in years.
