"You've tried to escape twice now, princess." His voice is almost gentle. "I'm really going to have to punish you for that."
He signals his men without looking at them. Two of them move toward me. That's when I see the knife.
It is in the pocket of the man on my left, the handle protruding just slightly above the fabric, and I don't think. I move. I grab it and I spin and every piece of rage and humiliation and exhaustion and fear that has been accumulating for six days comes up through my arm and out through my hand and I drive the blade into his chest and I scream as I do it.
Everything stops. I look at my hand and I look at him.
The knife is in his chest. He is looking down at it with an expression I have never seen on his face before, something that has no control in it at all, something unguarded and almost wondering. Then he looks up at me.
He smiles.
It is small and strange and completely unhurried. He lifts one hand and strokes my chin with his thumb, very lightly, and his eyes stay on mine. Then his legs go and he drops.
The knife falls from my hand when he does. I don't know when I let go of it. I sink to my knees on the ground in front of him and my hands are shaking and I can't look away from his face and something is happening in my chest that has no business being there, something that has nothing to do with escape plans or strategy or survival.
"Why didn't you get out of the way?" I hear myself ask.
My voice comes out broken.
"Why didn't you get out of the way?"
Chapter Seven
Luca
Iwake up like I've been pulled from water.
One moment nothing, the next everything, and I jackknife upright and the wound screams and I grab the bandaging at my chest through reflex and Renzo is there, standing at the foot of the bed, his face carrying an expression I have not seen on him in a long time.
"Where is she?"
Renzo holds my gaze. "She's dead."
The room goes very quiet.
I am off the bed before the pain has time to register. I cross to him and I punch his jaw and he takes it, which tells me something. I pull his gun from his holster and I have it cocked and level at his forehead and my hand is completely steady and the rage moving through my chest is not steady at all.
Renzo looks at me down the barrel.
"Eleven years," he says quietly. "You've laid hands on me only once in eleven years."
My jaw tightens.
The memory surfaces, nine years ago. A back room in a building that doesn't exist anymore, Renzo with his eyes blown wide and wrong and a dealer at his elbow, and the rage I had felt had been cold.
Renzo was an addict, we both couldn't afford proper rehabilitation for him and his addiction was making him steal from our then-struggling ammunition business. He was getting beaten up for his debts and he stole anything and everything in sight for a piece of crack. I did what I could with what I had. I had broken both his legs without raising my voice. It had been brutal and cold-hearted and I have never pretended otherwise. I had spent three years and more money than I will account for putting those legs right again. Surgeons, rehabilitation, the best of everything, because Renzo had saved my life before I ever saved his and I had vowed, after the legs, never to touch him again.
I have kept that vow until approximately forty seconds ago.
"We don't kill women," I say. My voice is low. "We don't kill children. That is not what we are."
"The girl stabbed you," Renzo replies, in the tone of someone presenting evidence to a jury. "You have a freshly stitched wound in your chest. You are the Don of Las Vegas. Do you understand what happens to this territory, to our people, to every family that operates under our protection, if you die?" He takes one step forward into the barrel. "Do you understand how many factions want you gone? How long the line is? You die and everything we have built comes apart and the people who pull it apart will not be gentle about it."
The silence stretches. I punch my fist through the wall.
The plaster gives and the pain from the wound detonates up through my torso and I stand there breathing through it with my hand still on the wall and my eyes closed.
Renzo exhales.
