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Nadia: There was a shootout at the Zebra Club, and someone fucking burned it down!
My blood runs cold.What is she talking about?Opening Google, I quickly begin to search. It’s not long before the first news article pops up. Reading it sends my pulse racing:
A deadly shoot-out took place outside of a bustling nightclub in the Amalfi Coast in midday, with several casualties...
I stop breathing. I have to sit on the bed before I collapse.
I tuck my phone back into my pocket, and just like that, I’m thinking about Konstantin again. I’ve tried not to think about him since I left Italy. Only a minor fantasy here or there as the plane took off. A dream or five before I landed.
But with this news, grim as it is, I’m pinwheeling back through the intoxicating memory of my time with him.
Is he still there?
He must still be.Ishe okay?
It doesn’t matter. I need to get a grip and get back to why I came here.
The front door to Olivia’s apartment suddenly squeaks opens. It startles me so hard I bite my tongue.
Who’s there?
I peer out from the bedroom just enough to get a glimpse of a man standing in the living room close the front door behind him.
His face is all rectangles. Long black hair is pulled back into a ponytail that enhances the grooves of his cheekbones and chin cleft. With his polished leather jacket and his hands behind his back, he reminds me of a snake searching for its next meal.
The hair on the back of my neck rises and my heart pounds like a drum. Slowly, I begin backing away into the bedroom.
Every part of my body is screaming at me to hide.
But where?
The only place Icanhide is under the bed, and this stranger is already turning his unblinking gaze towards me.
There’s no time.
Then his unsettling stare catches me, and I freeze.
Shit!
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says quietly, voice so low that I almost don’t hear him over the sound of my pounding heart.
My stomach drops away as his arms move out from behind his body.
And in his hand is a knife.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Without another sound, he rushes towards me, closing the distance in three quick steps.
Shrieking in the hopes that someone will hear me, I try to slam the door shut. But he’s faster than me. In a blur, he crashes through the thin door and knocks me down onto the bed.
The musty odor of Olivia’s sheets rises up to choke me, and long thin fingers close around my throat to silence my cries.
I grab his wrist with my left hand to no avail. He’s just too strong.
Kicking and struggling under the weight of his body, I swing my right hand—still closed around the key to the apartment—towards his face. My left hand extends for anything I can reach, and grab nothing but empty air.
The man snarls. The knife rises.
