Choose death over marriage, her younger self sneered from the depths of her memory. That girl had been a fucking idiot. A romantic, naive fool who hadn't truly understood the soul-crushing depth of pain.
Two missing back teeth and four missing fingernails later, Giana was seriously reconsidering her life choices.
Maybe a forced marriage to some gout-ridden old Sicilian don wouldn't be that bad. At least there would be pillows. And probably decent dental coverage. The dark, absurd thought made her laugh, a rusty, choked sound that scraped her raw throat.
Dark humor is the last refuge of the utterly fucked, she thought.Thanks, trauma.Like I needed more of you in my life.
The cage was positioned near the open doorway of the larger room. Beyond the bars, she could see a sliver of stained concrete floor, a grimy sink in the corner, and the legs of two folding chairs where her guards sat.
She couldn't see their faces from her angle, just their heavy, scuffed tactical boots. They were professional, not street thugs, and spoke in low murmurs, a mix of Italian and a dialect she recognized as distinctly Sicilian. Her captors weren't randomopportunists or Bodrum lowlifes. This was targeted. They wanted her name. Her womb. The dormant Sorrentino fortune, frozen in vaults and shell companies since the massacre.
Most of all, they wanted her compliance and her signature on documents transferring power and legitimizing their claim. They had made that abundantly clear between bouts of dental rearrangement and amateur manicures.
"Signorina Sorrentino," the man with the pliers had crooned, his voice a silken rasp that belied the violence in his hands. "A name like yours… It carries weight. Legacy. It shouldn't be wasted hiding on some Turkish beach, playing with computers. It belongs in Sicily. To family."
Family. The word tasted like copper and bile. Her family was ash and bone because of her father's stupidity in crossing the Colleonis. Thanks to Leo's trigger finger and Gabriella's cold fury, what remained was a name soaked in blood, and it still had painted a target on her back.
She didn't know who they were working for, and it didn't matter. Her mother had been from a Sicilian family, married off to her father, and left the south to rule at his side in Naples. Every crime family knew about the Sorrentino massacre and the money that only she could get to.
She hadn't tried to access the money. Not even once. She thought that if she left it alone, forgot it existed, maybe she wouldn't have to think about all the blood her family had shed over the generations to make it. She had hoped that if she didn't claim it, the other families would accept that she was out.
What an idiot you are. You were never going to escape this fate. Giana closed her eyes, trying to retreat inward from the pain, the cage, the suffocating dread.
The darkness behind her eyelids offered no sanctuary. It was filled with embarrassment that when the chloroform invadedher senses, dragging her down into oblivion, her last coherent thought, tearing through her panic, was of Rodrigo.
Shame flared hot and sharp alongside the physical pain. Shame that in that moment of ultimate vulnerability, her mind hadn't screamed for freedom, or justice, or even just air.
It had screamed for the man who had been her jailer and silent warden. For the predator whose gaze had felt like a physical weight, and whose control she fought against with every fiber of her being.
Rodrigo Colleoni. Her protector. Her monster.
She hated him. Shedid. For the surveillance, the suffocating presence, the way he had looked at her like she was already his. For the potential lover he had scared off, for the vibrator incident, for the handkerchief… God, the handkerchief. There had been many embarrassing moments in the past few years, but that was still the worst.
All her hate was a brittle shield now, cracking under terror and agony because she knew the truth and couldn't hide from it any longer.
Intertwined with all her hate was something terrifyingly real. A memory of ruthless competence, stolen looks full of heat, and of the unnerving, absolute certainty that as long as Rodrigo Colleoni's unseen gaze was on her, nothing truly bad could touch her.
The silence after Rodrigo had set her free hadn't been peace; it had been the terrifying vacuum before the storm that had always been coming for her.
Now, locked in a cage, tasting her own blood, and missing body parts, Giana pictured the fire in his dark eyes, the lethal stillness that preceded violence. She imagined his hands, strong and capable, and shaped in a way her artist eyes had always been drawn to.
He let you go.
Rodrigo was probably back in Italy, running the Colleoni kingdom, drinking expensive wine, and fucking beautiful women. He was probably so relieved that he didn't have to deal with the burden of watching a woman who hated him.
A harsh clang echoed from somewhere beyond the room, and both guards outside her cage stiffened, their murmured conversation cutting off abruptly. One stood, hand going to the holster at his hip. The other remained seated, tilting his head and listening intently.
Giana held her breath, every nerve ending screaming a warning that had nothing to do with her physical injuries. This wasn't the normal comings and goings of her captors.
The standing guard drew his pistol, the sound unnaturally loud in the confined space. The other guard pushed slowly to his feet, pulling his own weapon. They exchanged a tense glance, moving toward the doorway leading out of the holding room, their backs to her cage.
Another shout, closer this time. Angry. Fearful. The unmistakable, meaty thud of a body hitting a wall. Then another. Running footsteps, pounding on concrete, and coming closer.
Giana's heart hammered against her bruised ribs like a frantic bird. Was another faction moving in to take her?
She curled in on herself, ignoring the pain in her ribs, trying to make herself smaller, invisible.
The sharp, percussive cracks of gunfire made her flinch violently. Shouts turned to screams before silence fell again.
