“Don’t lie to me!” The woman lashes out and strikes Marcella’s face. I jolt, going to intercept her for hitting Marcella, but Gabe, ever so subtly, shakes his head at me. Fuck! I can’t let her hurt her.
Marcella’s head dips, blood dripping from a cut on hercheek. “I’m not lying. I don’t love him. I fucked him, yes. He fell in love with me, but love isn’t something people like us get.” She lifts her chin. “Is it, Signoria?”
The woman’s lips purse. “Perhaps not. If that’s so, prove it to me. Kill him.”
Marcella goes rigid. “We haven’t interrogated him yet.”
A knowing smile that chills my bones curls up the woman’s lips. “It’s as I thought.” She turns back to me. “Sometimes, Your Highness, a woman has to take matters into her own hands when others fail her.”
Her hand lifts, and in it there’s a small vial with a sprayer on it. She holds it in front of me, and Marcella screams.
“No!”
Before I can make sense of what’s going on, two things happen at once. One, Marcella throws herself at the woman and knocks her to the ground. The second is that Gabe takes aim and shoots, narrowly missing Marcella.
He also misses the woman because Marcella has her on the floor. The bullet whizzes through the air and smashes the wall, splintering sheetrock everywhere.
Marcella is on top of the woman who is clawing and scratching at her, trying to force the spray bottle up into her mouth. Marcella twists the woman’s wrists until she cries out in pain. The bottle is shoved in the woman’s mouth, and she chokes and shrieks, thrashing violently, as Marcella works to spray whatever is in that into her mouth.
She must get enough in because the hand she was scratching at Marcella drops to the floor. Her body seizes, her eyes round as yellow-white foam froths at her mouth. She chokes, gasping and sputtering and writhing around. Marcella falls to the side, panting heavily, but keeping her body above the woman, her eyes pinned on her.
Signoria Batorini is dying, and the girl in the chair is screaming and fighting, desperate to get free.
“Marcella, no! You have to find it. You have to take it now!”
I don’t know what that means. I’m stuck on the woman dying on the floor, but then Marcella collapses, and she starts seizing.
What the fuck is happening?
I drop to the floor and try to pick her up when Gabe stops me, turning her onto her side and pushing me back.
“Is the stuff airborne?” Gabe asks the girl.
“You have to help her!” the girl cries, openly sobbing.
“Is it airborne?” Gabe yells, holding Marcella with one hand while looking like he’s about to get up in the girl’s face.
“No! She must have breathed in the spray. Please help her. She’s going to die,” the girl wails, twisting and trying to get free. “Marcella!”
I look up at her, frantic with panic. “What do I do? Tell me how to help her.”
“There’s an antidote.”
“Where?” I bellow, shoving the woman’s dying body out of the way so I can hold Marcella’s face. “Fuck, she’s not breathing. Holy shit, she’s not breathing.”
Her eyes are open, but they’re fixed, sightless, and her body is spastically jerking, but her lips are blue, and there’s blood trickling out of the side of her mouth onto the plastic. She put her life in danger for me. That’s twice now that she’s saved me. I have to save her.
“It’s in her bag. In Signoria’s bag!”
“I need a medivac at Samil Batorini’s bay house,” Gabe says into his phone. “I have the coordinates. I’ll send them. We need it here immediately. Send ambulances too. A young woman has ingested poison.”
“Where’s her purse?” I shout at the girl.
“Over there.” She wrenches her body, her arms still bound, but she nods her head. “It’s in the other room on the table. Hurry. It won’t take long.”
I get to my feet and sprint into the room where the dead man is on the floor. Frantically, my head swivels about, my eyes searching.
“We’re losing her, Rowan. Hurry!”
