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No answer. It’s like he disappeared. Probably poking around, looking for the hard liquor. He’s good at finding what he wants when he puts his mind to it.
I grab my glass and swig some wine. Night has fallen, and the house is full of darkness. I usually keep most of the lights off, and I’ve never felt like the inky corners were hiding anything sinister.
Tonight is different. I’m still on high alert from the phone call and Gino’s surprise visit. I flip on the overhead, brighter kitchen lights. That’s when I notice the counter is empty. My Sig Sauer is gone.
He’s here.
Victor has come for me.
CHAPTER 7
lula
I whirl and race to the safety of the front entrance.
I sense rather than hear an explosion of movement behind me, the shadows separating, convalescing, becoming a man. Becoming Victor.
The door looms ahead of me. I’m so close. Five more steps, and I’ll hit the alarm. Then I’ll unlock the front door and escape to safety.
Three more steps. Two. One?—
A strong arm wraps around my front, wrenching me back against my attacker’s giant frame. I struggle but am pinned. My bare feet kick ineffectively.
A deep voice purrs in my ear. “Vera. Or should I say, Lucrezia.”
The bottom falls out of my stomach.
He knows. He knows my real name.
He knows everything.
There’s a story among hunters that the instant prey knows it’s about to die, it surrenders. I mean to fight, but something in me relaxes against my captor. Recognizing the rightness of his embrace.
But no. I need to fight. Before I start thrashing in earnest, something pricks my neck. A needle. I’d slap at it like a stinging insect, but I’m clamped in Victor’s hold. In the next second, darkness rushes over and pulls me under.
I hear a leaky faucet somewhere nearby. Water falling from a great height into an empty sink. In the dead quiet of the room, each drop lands with a sound as loud as a gong. Plink. Plink. Plink.
That’s why it’s called water torture. Grab a prisoner, restrain him, and wear him down.
I blink and blink, but my surroundings are nothing but fuzzy shapes. A bright light overhead. A cold, hard, flat surface underneath me. I go to move, but my ankles and wrists are tethered. I’m splayed like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, all my vulnerable bits exposed.
A shadow falls over me, and I flinch, but there’s nowhere to go. I might as well be a corpse, dead on a slab.
I probably will be one shortly. Right now, my cousin Royal is tearing through the safe house. Will he find Gino? Or Gino’s body? I do feel regret. I didn’t do enough to protect my brother.
Never mind that my brother is a grown man, and I’m in a worse predicament than him. My future promises to be full of blood, bright lights, and lots and lots of pain.
The shadow over me hasn’t moved. It’s a source of warmth, though, and part of me wants to strain closer. “Drink,” Victor rasps and sets something at my lips. A straw. I suck down liquid because my throat is screaming for it. Too late, I realize that he could be drugging me again. But no, if he wanted to drug me, he’d just stick another needle in my neck. There’s a certain cold logic to fatalism. I can guess well enough why I’m here.
I shot Victor, and now he’s kidnapped and taken me somewhere he can make the rest of my life painful and very short.
It makes sense. He who lives by the sword. . . I’ve planned my life around the arc of vengeance, and now here I am, helping someone else complete their own revenge arc.
The water helps clear my vision. Victor stands over me. His white-blond hair is longer now but does nothing to soften the harsh perfection of his sharp features. Only the lush curve of his lips keeps him from looking alien with all of his pointy angles. His lips are soft, too, if I remember correctly. The way they grazed my skin?—
Despite my chilled limbs, warmth curls through me. Then I meet his arctic gaze and freeze again.
He studies me like a scientist would study a beetle pinned to a card. There’s a certain tenderness in the way he wipes a spilled drop of water from the corner of my mouth. But maybe it’s practical instead of kindness. Wouldn’t want your victims to die of something as banal as dehydration when there are plenty of more interesting ways to torture them to death.
