A traitor, a leak… someone feeding information to an enemy they knew would be bold enough to take the bait and storm Dante’s villa without forethought. Whoever gave them the information had also sold them the floor plans of this place. How else would they have known this is Luca’s room?
My grip tightens around him instinctively.
The taller man exhales sharply, glancing toward the open window. “We’ve got less than thirty seconds. We need to gonow.”
His flashlight sweeps over the room again. Its beam drags across the dresser and the fallen bedding to where the shards of broken porcelain litter the floor like scattered teeth. The light lingers for half a second too long on the empty bed again, coming back around before stopping right on the closet doors.
Every muscle in my body locks up all at once.
No. No, no, no.
Dust motes drift through the slats of the door, floating lazily and all but mocking me as the terror unfolds inches away.
“Check it,” the other man says quietly.
The light grows brighter as boots approach, bleeding through the cracks in blinding streaks. I squeeze my eyes shut for a split second, pressing my forehead into Luca’s hair. My mind races uselessly, realizing there’s nowhere else left to go. I have no way out of this. If they open the doors, it’s over. There’s no hiding us. No protecting him.
Luca lets out a tiny, broken sound against my hand, a whimper he can’t quite stop. Panic surges so violently through me that bileburns the back of my throat. The closet door is ripped open in one brutal motion.
Light pours over us, harsh and blinding, and hands seize me without warning. Fingers dig into my arms, yanking me forward with ruthless force. I barely have time to scream before Luca is torn from my chest, my hands splaying uselessly in the air as I reach for him.
“Mama!” he shrieks, his small body thrashing as he’s held by the shorter of the two men in a bear hold.
“No! Please!” I scream, clawing at the man holding onto me. My nails scrape uselessly against his tactical vest as I fight with everything I have, kicking and twisting as I try again to reach for my son.
The man above me curses under his breath and then I’m thrown hard onto the floor. The impact knocks the air from my lungs as I’m forced flat on my stomach, my cheek pressed painfully against the stone. A gun is shoved against my temple, the barrel biting into my skin. I freeze instantly, terror locking every muscle in place once again.
“Don’t move,” he snarls from above me. “Or he dies.”
Luca is wailing now, completely inconsolable. His cries shatter the quiet as the other man drags him away from where I am.
“Mama! Mama!” he sobs.
Something inside me shatters completely.
“Please,” I beg, my voice shaking as tears flood my eyes. “Please… just take me. Take me instead and leave him. He’s just a baby. He doesn’t understand. Please?—”
The gun presses hard against my temple. “Shut up.”
The shorter man lifts a hand to his ear, speaking into his comms with detached calmness. “We’ve got them.”
There’s a pause. Then confirmation crackles back.
Rough hands haul me up again. My legs barely cooperate, shaking so badly, I almost collapse a second time as I’m dragged forward. I stumble, feet dragging uselessly against the floor as every instinct screams to resist even though I already know it won’t matter.
The open window looms ahead. The breeze whips my hair back from my face, cooling the tears streaking down my cheeks in a way that feels cruelly gentle. Beyond the sill, the drop is dizzying. It’s dark and endless, the ground far below swallowed by night. One wrong move and there would be nothing left of us but broken bodies laid out over jagged stone.
Somewhere in the distance, a new sound cuts through the chaos.
Helicopter blades.
The rhythmic chopping grows louder by the second, vibrating through the air and straight down to my bones. My stomach drops with a sickening certainty as understanding clicks into place. This isn’t a rushed extraction or an impulsive move. This was all incredibly planned. It has to be with how organized these men, and their retreat, seem.
I know with absolute certainty that once we’re shoved through that window and dragged into that helicopter, we will not survive. Whatever waits for Luca and me beyond these walls isn’t captivity or some ransom to get whatever they want out of Dante.
It’s death.
The clarity of it settles over me, stealing what little strength I have left. My resistance falters, grief crashing in so hard, it nearly drops me to my knees. A sob tears free from my chest, raw and broken.
