Dan
I touched her cheek.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t touch me.”
I pulled back. “Because you don’t want me to? Or because you do?”
“We need to deal with the tracker,” she said in a tone bordering on desperate. “Not worry about what I want or don’t want.”
Shuffling back to the wall because I knew she was right but not letting the thread of conversation drop because we were stuck in this place. We were trapped and probably fucked, tracker or not. And I wanted to know . . .
If she wanted me to touch her.
“What are you afraid to tell me?” I asked.
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
Silence.
I went back to work on the rock as I waited her out.
“I’m not.”
Continuing to scrape at the loosening edge of the rock, I waited. Probably, it was stupid to try and outwait a sniper, one who could be so still and patient, but this wasn’t the normal Ava. She was more open than I had seen her in years, freer, rawer—
Which doubled down on my asshole gene.
Because I was demanding information when she was hurt and dealing with that raw and—
“I haven’t talked to my parents for more than five minutes in the past two years,” I told her, finally understanding that I needed to give, too. That I was asking her to be vulnerable and to share painful truths, and she needed me to be just as open as her. “I talk to Brit regularly, and I talk to my best friend, Blane.” Then I admitted something that made me feel guilty, “And . . . I talk to Blane’s mom more often than my own. I tell Allison about my life—as much as I’m able. I know I can go to her for advice, that I can just relax and be myself and know she’s just happy to hear from me and shoot the shit.”
Her voice was soft. “I’m glad you have that.”
I was, too, and I felt really lucky, considering how detached my biological parents were to have that sounding board, to have solid and stable people in my life who didn’t keep me at a distance, even though I was rarely available for more than the odd phone call.
“But I feel like a fucking asshole,” I said, “knowing that I can talk to her about almost everything when I can’t even move the conversation past weather with my own mom.” A beat. “Which, I understand, makes me sound like a big whiny baby when I was lucky to grow up in a stable home, to have a roof over my head.”
“Dan,” Ava said. “That’s not your fault. ”
“Whose then?” I asked.
“Theirs,” she told him. “Just because they made sure you had food and a place to sleep doesn’t mean they gave you everything you needed to thrive.” I heard her shifting, felt her gaze on me. “You’re allowed to have your feelings, to wish you had something different.”
“Maybe.” I glanced over at her, unable to discern much of her body in the shadows. “But I know how lucky I was, especially when I’ve seen what other people go through, what you’ve endured.”
“I’m not a victim,” she declared.
“Certainly not anymore,” I said. “But at one time, you were a victim of your circumstances, just like we all are.”
“That’s—”
“The truth,” I pressed. “The only difference between you and other people is that you’ve overcome your past.”
“Fucking hell, Dan,” she burst out. “Do you really want to know? Do you?”
“No!” I exclaimed, surprising myself. “I don’t want to know or need to know. But it’s bothering you. It took you away from me when I thought we were at the beginning of something special.” I yanked at the fucking rock. “So yes, I think I have to know. You have to tell me. Otherwise—”
“I’m not ever going to be open for a relationship, you infuriating man.”
“Well, I’m not ever going to want anyone but you.”
Her inhale was sharp. “What?”
“I—”
I broke off.
Because footsteps were echoing outside the cell.
I launched myself over to her, reached Ava’s side the instant the door was wrenched open.
Light blinded me, hands reached in and grabbed hold of me.
“Dan!” Ava called. I felt her fingers brush mine, trying and failing to hold on. I was yanked out of the cell, too many rough hands restraining me to fight off every single one.
Then the door slammed closed.
And I was dragged down the hall of a dungeon belonging to an Italian mafia boss.
Fourteen
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Ava
I lurched up, throwing myself toward the door, but I didn’t make it in time.
The metal panel slammed, and I fell to the ground, the momentary adrenaline disappearing in an instant of agony, my ankle screaming, my side sending fiery pain along my torso.
“Fuck,” I whispered, tears prickling. “Fuck.”
For a few moments, I concentrated simply on breathing through the hurt, on waiting until my eyes adjusted. They’d been blinded by the light in the hall, by the tears—from my injuries, and not because I was feeling helpless and alone.
Right.
Once I’d calmed and my nerves didn’t feel like someone had taken a blowtorch to them, I shifted to the cell door. It was locked, no surprise, but I’d had to try on the off chance that they’d not latched it properly.
I looked through the tiny crack at the bottom of the door, so narrow that hardly any light made it through, but enough that I could lie flat and squint out of it.
Empty, from what I could see.
Empty, from what I could hear.
“Fuck,” I whispered again, rolling to my back.
Alone. Dan taken who knew where. They would most certainly hurt him. The question was simply how badly.
I had to get the tracker out.
Now.
Painfully, I crawled my way across the cell, over to the far wall, to the spot where Dan had been working on the rock.
And then I got to work . . .
Scratching away the buildup around the rock I’d managed to remove years before. It loosened and fell to the ground much easier than long ago. But it had also been more than a decade. There was dirt and dust crammed around the sliver of stone and it had to be slowly removed, chipped away with calloused fingertips and short nails.
Slow and steady.
Bit by bit.
Just like before.
I’d spent hour after hour doing this before I’d escaped, lying flat like I was now, body riddled with more severe injuries than I was sporting now.
Broken fingers and ribs. Cuts from sharp knives that had dripped my blood onto the stone-covered floor. Bruises and eyes swollen shut.
And I’d still always crawled my way to this wall, this rock.
There was a reason I’d begun working at this particular stone—yes, it stuck out of the wall, but it was also low to the ground. Oftentimes, I’d not been able to do much more than lie down.
And scratch.
And chip away at the old mortar, the dirt and dust that sealed that rock in place.
Until it had finally given way.
Until I’d seen the sliver of the Mediterranean Sea and promised myself that once I escaped, I would never be back in this cell.