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“Simms,” Oliver supplied.

“Have him check on Simms. No matter how long we are away, remain inside until I return.” Gabriel’s eyes clung to Violet’s for a long moment before she grabbed Zach by the hand and pulled him towards home.

“Keene, gather men to fan out around the estate and woods between here and the village. Have them pay close attention to any buildings or old hunting lodges. Anywhere they might have taken Sofia. Oliver, go to the stables and have them ready horses for us. Can you shoot?”

Oliver nodded.

“Good. I’ll see that Violet and Zachariah are safely back indoors, retrieve pistols, and meet you both at the stables. We’ll ride to the village first and see if anyone has seen her. If they accosted Sofia, it’s likely they did so on the road between the public house and the estate. We’ll find her.” Gabriel inserted himself into the path of Christopher’s pacing.

“Christopher.”

He stopped shy of running into Gabriel. “You must know how it hurt me to keep this from you. I wanted to be sure. To know more. But we’ll find her. We’ll bring her home and then we’ll talk.”

“This is not her home. It doesn’t even feel like my home.” Gabriel flinched, but Christopher’s despair was too all-consuming to care about the pain he’d inflicted. Turning, he fled at full speed towards the servants’ entrance.

Twenty-Five

Sofia opened her eyes to a pair of dirty boots inches from her nose, then gasped when an intense burning sliced through her shoulder as she jerked away. Reaching for her wound, she discovered that the bleeding had slowed but not stopped.

“You’re going to pay for what you did with that stick, little bird. Simms here says I can’t have any fun with you until the bleeding stops, but maybe something to whet my appetite …” He squatted down, and she noticed the knife in his hands only a moment before he used it, slicing cleanly down several inches of her bodice. She scrambled to hold the scraps together, but he clutched at a handful of her hair, forcing her to raise her face and meet his eyes.

“Not so tough now with your tits hanging out.” He licked his lips and Sofia swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

“Looks like I nicked your pretty skin.” He pressed his thumb into the thin slice he’d made across one breast. He was too close for any blow to be effective, so she squirmed and batted him away. Simms dropped a length of dirty cloth into his lap.

“Now play nice like, or I’ll have to tie you back up again.” He peeled away a portion of her bodice and sleeve and Sofia hissed at the pain, funnelling all her energy into remaining conscious and keeping her breasts covered. He wrapped her wounded shoulder tightly, then leered. “You’ll be better in no time.”

The moment Tom stood and turned his back, Sofia sucked in a breath, then squeezed the area surrounding her wound to ensure the bleeding continued. She had no idea how she was going to get herself out of this, but keeping that bastard’s hands off her would be a good start. If blood loss was enough to keep him at bay, she could work with that. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, and the men took no notice of her activity as they sat down at a table and dealt from a deck of cards. The room was dank and oppressively cramped despite containing only a straw-stuffed mattress on the floor where she sat, four chairs, and a table.

Sofia wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it must have been late afternoon at least. Oliver or Christopher would have noticed her missing. Her stomach pitched at the thought of Christopher. He would know by now. Everyone would. Oliver wouldn’t keep quiet when her life was in danger. The boulder that had begun its haphazard descent months ago was finally careening toward the bottom, crushing everything in its path. Eventually, it would stop, so far down the canyon that even sunlight could not reach it.

Sofia tried to focus on what the men around her were saying to learn what she could, but the chaos in her head was loud and every time she squeezed her shoulder a new wave of dizziness set upon her.

They were going to send a ransom note. She’d heard that much. And one of her captors, a balding man with an angular face, wanted to return to his wife before she grew suspicious, so they were still near the village. Sofia must have lost consciousness then because when she awoke, the stub of a tallow candle had been lit and the sun was low in the sky. The front door had opened and closed several times and only four men remained. She glanced down to assess her bandaging and was relieved to see bright red blood still oozing through. Her stomach growled then, and Tom turned at the sound.

“I guess we needs to get her some food.” He thrust a tin cup with water into her hand, then licked his lips as she gulped from it. His eyes flicked towards her shoulder. “She’s still bleeding. Why hasn’t that stopped? She’s no good to us dead, and I’m gettin’ tired of waiting for my bit o’ fun.” He dropped the crusty end of a bread loaf into her lap.

“How should I know,” Simms replied. “I’m not a sawbones. It’s only her shoulder …”

Sofia wanted to cover her ears, but instead she focused on getting the food into her mouth and keeping it in her stomach. She needed to stay conscious. Someone would come … and then everything would be terrible in an entirely different way.

Another wave of dizziness rushed over her. For a moment, she wanted to give up and allow the horror of this place and these people to unfold as they would. To just happen to her. But she had endured the past with only pride and stubbornness to fuel her, without a single soul on her side. I’m not alone anymore. Even if Gabriel and Christopher loathed her, they would fight for her. She wouldn’t quit while she waited for them to find her. She wouldn’t give them another reason to despair. She had done enough damage already.

“Slow down, Keene! I know you’re frustrated but if we ride hell for leather we’ll miss something,” Gabriel said, reining in his horse.

Christopher didn’t want to slow down. He wanted his body to move at the same tumultuous speed as his tormented heart. He wanted to move so fast that conversation was impossible because nothing that emerged from his mouth in his current mood would be productive.

No one had seen Sofia in town—or at least no one would admit to seeing her—and they had combed the woods surrounding the town and found not a trace. The sun was setting rapidly, and Gabriel had convinced them to search the road once more before Oliver returned to the estate by himself to check in with the other search parties.

She was out here somewhere. Alone. Smothering her fear beneath brittle layers of Tuscan pride. She wouldn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing her tremble, he knew, but she had to be terrified. He was terrified. Too terrified to even be properly mad at her anymore, and that made him angrier still. He wished he could recapture even a fraction of his initial rage. Rage would be easier to bear. But the burning sensation of betrayal he’d felt earlier had cooled, congealing into a knot of fear that sat like a boulder in the pit of his stomach.

“Stop! Look over there.” Christopher gestured to the side of the road. The weeds were flat there, as if a skirmish had taken place. He leapt down from his saddle and followed the path down a deer trail through the thicket. Blood—bloody hell, a lot of blood—stained the ground. He dropped to his knees, running his hands across bloodstained moss. Most of it had dried or been absorbed into the plants, but it was still damp in places. Recent. It’s not Sofia’s blood, it’s someone else’s. That demand flipped and turned and cycled through his mind, over and over. Please be someone else’s blood.

Christopher searched the surrounding area, only distantly aware of Gabriel’s approach. Still some distance behind them, in the clearing by the road, Oliver swore in Italian. They whirled in unison to see him bolt back toward where they’d left the horses.

“Him! He’s one of them!” Oliver shouted. Christopher and Gabriel caught up to Oliver just in time to watch him hoist a bald, spindly man up by his collar, pinning him to a tree. “Where is she?” he snarled.

Eyes wide, the man held up his hands. “I don’t know what yer talking about. Where’s who?”