The kitchen. I'd left it in the kitchen this morning, on the island beside my breakfast plate, and I hadn't gone back for it because I'd been drawing and dreaming and living inside the extraordinary safety of a day without fear, and now the phone was two floors down and whatever had put that guard on the ground was between me and it.
I moved toward the library door.
Three steps. Four. My feet were silent on the hardwood — bare feet, no shoes, because I'd been curled on the window seat all day in leggings and Dante's sweatshirt, soft and domestic and completely, devastatingly unprepared.
The footsteps stopped me.
They came from the staircase. Rising. Steady. The particular rhythm of men ascending — not running, not rushing, not the panicked scramble of intruders afraid of being caught. These steps were measured. Unhurried. The confident tread of people who had already secured the ground floor, already neutralized the guards, already established control over every exit and entry point in the building and were now simply walking through a space they owned.
The sound climbed. First floor to second. Each step deliberate. Each one closer.
I backed away from the door. My spine found the window behind me — cold glass against the thin cotton of Dante's sweatshirt — and I pressed against it, making myself small, the oldest programme running now, the one that predated theMoretti training and the survival instincts and everything I'd learned in twenty-six years of navigating dangerous men.
Go quiet. Go small. Disappear.
My heart was in my throat. I could feel my pulse pounding in my neck, in my ears, in the tips of my numb fingers.
The footsteps reached the landing.
Paused.
Then continued. Down the hall. Toward the library. Toward me.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything except stand with my back against the window and watch the door and listen to the sound of men walking through my sanctuary with the unhurried patience of predators who knew their prey had nowhere left to run.
Dante, I thought. The name like a prayer. Like a hand reaching across miles of city, across whatever conference table or back office he was sitting at, reaching for the man who'd promised — on his knees, in this room, with tears on his face and fire in his eyes — that he would never let anyone hurt me again.
Dante, please.
The door handle turned.
It wasn’t Dante.
Three men came through the library door.
They moved the way water moves through a broken dam. Fluid, inevitable, filling the space with a presence that displaced everything that had been there before.
Dark clothing. No insignia. Faces I'd never seen. Hard, forgettable, the kind of faces that were designed to be forgotten because the men who wore them had built careers on being nobody. They moved with coordinated precision. One left. One right. One center. A formation that spoke of rehearsal, of planning, of having walked through the layout of this house on paper before walking through it in flesh.
The one in the center held my phone.
He didn't raise it. Didn't wave it like a trophy. He simply held it at his side.
I backed toward the window.
My shoulder blades found the cold glass.
My body was doing things my mind hadn't authorized. Hands pressing flat against the glass behind me. Spine curling inward. Chin dropping. Shoulders rounding.
The man on the left looked at me. Looked through me. His eyes were professional — cataloging my position, my body language, my proximity to exits, the same way a carpenter assessed a job site. I was a task. An objective. Something to be acquired and transported.
"Gemma," he said. “You’ll be coming with us, Signora.
I opened my mouth.
To scream. To say Dante's name.
The hand came from behind.
