He found Damiano leaned against the wall, trying to get into his tux jacket, a pained grimace on his face.
“What are you doing?” Jordan shot to his feet. “You’re going to reopen your wounds!”
“Help me put it on,” Damiano said, in a tone that brooked no argument.
Frowning, Jordan helped him reluctantly. Some of the wounds on Damiano’s back had barely scabbed over because they kept opening every time he moved. “Why?”
“If I’m right and Lorenzo doesn’t fuck up, we’re about to get rescued,” Damiano said.
Jordan’s heart jumped to his throat. He racked his brain, trying to remember who Lorenzo was before finally remembering the stony-faced older guy who followed Damiano around and bossed his security detail. Some kind of right-hand man? Head of security? Something along those lines.
“And why do you need to put on your tux for that?” Jordan said. “Will Lorenzo faint if he sees you bare-chested?”
“Appearances are everything,” Damiano said, his eyes hard and distant. “He can’t see me as weak. He can’t know that I’m injured—that I have been whipped.”
“I thought he was your right-hand man or something?”
“He is.”
Jordan looked away, feeling a jolt of sadness. What a lonely existence it must have been if Damiano didn’t even trust his right hand…
“How do you know it’s your people and not someone else?” Jordan said, trying to fix his own clothes. It was a lost cause.
“The timing is right. It’s been ten days, enough time for the traitor to relax and come see me personally without being afraid of being followed—or so they would think. Lorenzo was supposed to have everyone in the family followed 24/7. As soon as someone behaved suspiciously, he would have tailed them until they brought him to our location.”
Jordan stared at him. “It was a trap? You organized the whole thing?”
Damiano smiled grimly. “You give me too much credit. But it was a possibility. I discussed it with Lorenzo and he knew what to do if I got kidnapped.”
It came to him slowly. “You wanted to lull them into a false sense of security after you were so lenient with Andrea. That’s why you let him live.”
“Yes,” Damiano said. “I knew Andrea wasn’t the only one plotting against me. There was someone else acting independently from him. Someone more subtle and cautious. I wanted to draw them out.” Damiano smiled. “Sometimes inspiring too much fear can be detrimental. By letting Andrea live, I made myself look more merciful than I am. That made them less cautious.”
“Great plan,” Jordan said, glaring at him. “And what if they killed you? Weren’t you scared at all?”
“I knew they wanted to kidnap me more than they wanted to kill me. Our attackers were trying very hard to avoid shooting me anywhere vital. They wanted to take me alive. If they wanted to kill me, I would be dead.”
The sounds of gunshots sounded a lot closer now.
Jordan tensed up, watching the hatch with his heart in his throat. What if Damiano was wrong and it wasn’t his people?
What if he was right?
When the hatch opened, it was Lorenzo’s square-jawed face squinting down at them. “Damiano?” he said uncertainly.
Jordan breathed out and looked at Damiano. He was a little unsettled when he saw that all emotion was gone from Damiano’s face. His face hardened, his eyes turning cold and unreadable, his posture straightening. He said something in Italian, his voice not loud but distinctly unimpressed.
Lorenzo was clearly uncomfortable. His tone was apologetic as he replied, and then he threw down the ladder.
Biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying something, Jordan watched as Damiano confidently walked to the ladder and climbed it, as if his back wasn’t still a mess. He must have been in a great deal of pain, but his face betrayed nothing. Lorenzo probably had no clue that his boss was holding himself up with sheer will.
Jordan climbed the ladder after Damiano, his hands shaking as it hit him:
It was over.
Everything was over.
He hauled himself up onto the floor above and looked around, momentarily disoriented by the brightness and noise. The first thing his gaze focused on was the body on the floor. A fresh corpse with a bullet in his gut. It was one of the men who normally brought them food.
Bile rising in his throat, Jordan wrenched his gaze away and looked around. They still seemed to be underground, judging by the lack of windows.
He exhaled when he finally saw Damiano speaking to Lorenzo down the corridor. Lorenzo nodded, handed Damiano a gun, and they walked away together.
Jordan stared after them unseeingly for a moment, not understanding. Were they leaving him behind? Damiano didn’t even glance back at him.
His stomach in knots, Jordan followed after them slowly, not sure what else to do. He kept his eyes firmly on Damiano’s nape, to avoid looking at the bodies littering the floor.