Dante pulls off the mask, exposing a facial structure that shunts me back five years. “Because you said it yourself. He lies, cheats, and steals to get what he needs.”
“I-I gave birth.” My stammer can’t be helped. I’m on the edge of a very steep cliff, seconds from free-falling.
“You did,” he agrees with me. “You just didn’t give birth to a little boy.” He knows his following words will hurt me, but he can’t keep the truth from me a moment longer. “Gabriele isn’t your child, Lucia. Camille is.”
Shock engulfs me so furiously I sway.
It barely lasts a second since terror immediately follows it.
“Where is Camille?” I shout, my naturally engrained maternal instincts breaking through the confusion. “They didn’t drag you into the open for no reason. They wanted you distracted.” Because they know what took me weeks to work out. He would give it all away for me.
Dante’s pupils expand to saucers, but he maintains calm. “They’ll never reach her at the compound. She’s safe there. You need to be on a list to enter…” His words trail off as fear jolts him back two places. “It’s Monday.” I’m lost until he adds, “They’re on the list. I placed them on the fucking list.”
Without another word spoken between us, we sprint for the surveillance van I spotted during our commute.
Dante barks out orders before his feet even land inside the van. “Call head of security. Now.”
Terror clutches my throat when Nico replies, “I’ve already tried to reach out. Three times. No answer. Whoever the mole is has infiltrated our security system and shut down comms. Anyone in the compound is a sitting fucking duck. We can’t issue them a single warning.”
That’s all Giovanni needs to hear to floor the gas. He races out of the wharf area at a speed far too fast to be safe, but no one cites an objection.
As Giovanni takes the weaving streets of Carlisle like a race car driver, Nico brings up real-time satellite imagery of the compound. I don’t breathe when he zooms in so fast it takes the pixelation a minute to clear.
My lungs finally answer the screaming demands of my head when everything looks how it should be. There are no burned buildings, no deceased guards. Even the main gates are closed and guarded by two men with machine guns strapped to their chests.
I try to tell Dante that this is a good sign, that Camille is safe, but my gut won’t let me. It’s been twisted up in knots for the past hour, and no number of false reassurances will loosen its clutch.
“Go through the groves,” I instruct Giovanni when his excess speed has us arriving at the compound in a record-breaking time. “They could be watching the gates, waiting for us to arrive.”
I stop there, but Dante speaks the words I refuse to say. “Because there’s no show without an audience.”
Giovanni tears the surveillance van through two rows of lemon trees, uncaring that he’s doing irreversible damage. When he pulls up to the back stairs of the Caruso manor, Dante and I sprint out the sliding side door and race for the wing of Camille’s room while Giovanni and Matteo clear the main living rooms.
A man in the foyer falters my steps when he tracks our race up the stairwell. I swear I’ve seen him before, but for the most part, my speed remains unchecked. Wondering why I remember his kind eyes can wait until after Camille is safely located.
My ribs, which I suspect are fractured from the bullet, scream withevery step, but I don’t stop. My protective instincts have always been on point with Camille, but now they’re blinding.
By the time we reach the landing of Camille’s room, my lungs feel like they’re lined with sandpaper. Every breath scrapes painfully against the bruised ribs I’ll wear for eternity if they guarantee Camille comes out of this alive.
As we step inside Camille’s playroom, a heavy silence shrouds us. It hints that something is terribly wrong.It’s quiet. Too quiet. Silence doesn’t belong in a place meant for play, laughter, and a little girl twirling in the pink leotard she chose to wear this morning. It was covered in sequins similar to a stripper’s bikini.
“Dante…” I nudge my head to a man lying slumped near a large toy box. He’s unconscious but breathing, and his head is contorted at an unnatural angle. The nanny assigned to Camille this morning when I called in sick is lying next to him.
I don’t breathe when Dante checks for a pulse.
His jaw clicks with a fury so uncontrolled it vibrates through the air when he fails to find one.
In sync, our heads jackknife to the right when a child’s frightened whimper booms through the silence. The hidden entry door to Camille’s bedroom is slightly ajar, and I see frantic, jerky movements through the gap.
Dante nudges the door open far enough for us to slip into Camille’s room without drawing attention, and my heart launches into my throat. Anna, my stepsister, is at the side of Camille’s princess bed, wearing an immaculate dress and the brittle, polished smile we perfected in our tweens. She’s rambling obsessively to herself, and with the gun used to kill the nanny, she continuously scratches at her arms as if they’re covered with bugs.
Despite her limbs trembling like a leaf caught in a wind tunnel, Camille’s headshake is strong when Anna asks if she’s sure she doesn’t want some juice.
“It’s yummy. I-I swear. It’s just like the special juice Nonna gave your mother all the time when she was a child.”
Carmela never gave Anna “special” juice. I was the only one forced to swallow the ghastly-tasting orange slop whenever we had a big family event. It made me so ill, I spent days in bed instead of the hours my stepmother wanted to hide me from the hierarchies of my father’s family.
Camille continuously shakes her head while her eyes float toward the main door of her room, seeking the assistance of the adults she knows will always protect her.
