She’s smart. She’s survived this long. She can handle herself.
But she walked into the surveillance perimeter of a family that just tried to blow me up. A family that’s been hunting her as long as she’s been hunting them. A family that looped our security feeds without Marco noticing. They planned for everything. Including her.
I need you to trust me.
I do.
She trusted me. And I put her in a cage, and she flew straight into the fire.
“We’ll find her.” Dante cuts through the spiral. “Whatever it takes.”
I don’t answer. Can’t. My throat locks. My chest won’t open. Every mile a thousand.
Please.The word rises unbidden. Not quite a prayer. More desperate than that.
Please let me find her in time. Please don’t let me lose her the way I lost Mama.
Please.
23
ISABELLA
The world comes back in pieces. Light first. Blurred. Too bright. Cutting through my eyelids like glass. Then sound. Muffled voices. An engine humming. Vibration beneath me that isn’t a motorcycle.
Motorcycle.
I try to move. Can’t. My arms won’t respond. My legs are heavy, distant, like they belong to someone else. My wrists. Tight. Binding.
I’m lying down. Soft surface beneath my spine. Moving. The vibration, the sound of an engine. A vehicle. Van, maybe. My hands are bound in front of me. Zip ties, from the feel of them. Plastic biting into my wrists when I test the give. There isn’t any give.
Don’t let them know you’re awake.
I keep my eyes closed. Keep my breathing even. And the memories come.
The panic room. Red glow of the biometric scanner. Lorenzo’s kiss on my forehead, the press of it branded into my skin. He promised “together.” Then he put me in a box.
Forty minutes of wire and fury, my fingers cramping as I worked the bypass. The lock clicking open. Green light.
The compound quiet. Skeleton crew at the gate. I’d disabled the perimeter cameras from the terminal before I walked out. They never saw me.
Nico’s bike in the garage, keys in the ignition because he’s careless and I notice things.
The coordinates I’d pulled from Marco’s system. Forty minutes by car. Thirty-five if I pushed it.
I pushed it.
Night air biting through my jacket. The road dark and empty ahead of me. Sofia. I was coming.
Then headlights.
Two vehicles out of nowhere. Parked across the road in a V-formation, high beams blazing. I hit the brakes too hard. The bike skidded. The rear tire blew.
The bike bucked beneath me. I was airborne before the world caught up, sky and ground trading places. The impact came a second later. Shoulder first, then hip, then my helmet cracking against gravel as I rolled.
Pain. Everywhere. But I was moving. I was alive.
Get up. Get up. Get up.
