The impact hits my jaw with a loud thud. My head snaps to the side, the world exploding into a flash of white light. Before I can even gasp, he hits me again—a heavy blow above my ear, and then another to my ribs that knocks the breath from my chest.
He backhands me, splitting my lip. He delivers one final, savage strike to my temple.
The world blurs, and I realize that no one is coming.
There is no beach in Mexico, no rescue from Damiano, and no mercy from this man, whom I thought was my friend.
The darkness rushes in like a tide, heavy and cold.
As the last of the light flickers out, I know it with a terrifying certainty.
This is it.
This is how I die.
Chapter 39
Damiano
After about an hour traversing the goat path, we finally spotted the silver SUV parked in front of an old cabin. Tucked into a natural crevasse near the edge of a cliff, deliberately hidden under a haphazard layer of brush and dead olive branches.
This place is obviously a safehouse.
Julian’s access to this place only proves that he is working for someone other than Mateo.
Andreas’s investigation found he has ties to the Mexican cartel, which points to only two families inLa Famiglia. The Guidicellis, who run a trafficking ring with the cartels, or the Castigliones, whose deceased matriarch,Katarina’s mother, was a cartel-born heiress.
I am crouched in the waist-high grass, the salt-heavy wind blowing against my face. To my right, the cliff drops off into a violent sea. The waves slam into the rocks two hundred feet below with a haunting sound.
Beside me, Andreas has his eye pressed to the glass of his binoculars. Lucian is on the other side of us, surveying the perimeter and leading the other guards. We quietly observe the house for any movement or sounds.
Just one more minute,I tell myself, the words a frantic prayer against my own impulse that is begging to blow up that door and tear that motherfucker into pieces.
Just hang in there, Dolcezza. I’m coming for you.
“He’s in there,” Andreas whispers, his voice hardly audible against the rustling of the leaves of the trees around us. “No sentries, completely alone. He’s that cocky.”
“We wait,” My jaw aches as I drum my fingers on my thigh. My patience has worn thin; all the suppressed violence I hid in the past two years is begging to be unleashed.
I grip the hilt of my knife, the leather worn and familiar.
A door this heavy takes two seconds to breach. Two seconds is enough time for a desperate man to put a bullet through a hostage’s temple. If I move now, I am gambling with her life.
The wind moans and the trees rustle around us, the cabin looking more and more like a haunted house by the second. There is still no movement. I watch a single guttering candle through a narrow slit of a window—the only sign of life inside.
“I can’t see her,” Andreas mutters, still looking through his binoculars. “There’s another room at the back. She might be in there.” He adds before passing the binoculars to me.
Before I can peek at it, a blood-curdling scream tears through the silence.
“STOP! PLEASE! LET ME GO, JULIAN! PLEASE!”
I dash across the open ground, the tall grass hissing against my trousers. My heart is beating like a jackhammer inside my chest as I drive my foot into the center of the door. The ragged wood splinters into shards of timber before slamming loudly against the interior wall.
Then the world slows to a sickening crawl.
My vision narrows until the periphery is nothing but black.
Through the other open door at the back of the room, I see her.
