Hearing her talk about Sasha like Sasha’s dead feels like it twists the blade that already
seems to be buried in my chest. “No one saw anything?”
Giana shakes her head. “At least, not anyone who is still around to ask questions of. Most of your personal security detail, like I said, has been taking shifts here. None of them saw anything other than a man dragging Sasha away from your body. They said he was one of the security you hired from outside, which is why we’ve thought Edo might be involved. But that’s it.”
“How did you get me out?”
Giana gives me a lopsided smile. “Your personal security takes their job very seriously. You looked–” she hesitates.
“Dead?” I supply grimly, and she nods.
“Very. They managed to convince Edo and the others to let them remove the body. Tommas helped clear the room–none of them knew he was just staff, and he has enough of a presence about him that he was able to get your body out of there with the security. They figured out that you still had a faint pulse, and we snuck you out so that we could bring you here.” She gives me another lopsided smile. “The most harrowing and thrilling night of my life, actually. I’d rather not do it again. Too much excitement for these old bones.”
“What about Art?”
Giana presses her lips together, her brow furrowing with displeasure. “None of us have seen hide nor hair of him. Security saw him follow you to the library, saw you throw him out of the room with a torn coat and a bruise blossoming on his jaw.” She narrows her eyes. “What wasthatabout?”
“He was too forward with Sasha, as usual.” I grit my teeth, regretting it instantly as pain lances through my head. “So he just left the estate?”
Giana looks at me sorrowfully. “I don’t know,tesoro. I wish I could give you more answers. I truly do.” She reaches out, patting my hand gently. “Now that you’re awake, I need to get you some soup, something you can keep down for now. You need to recover, or you won’t be any help to anyone.”
I know she’s right, but I’ve never been good at feeling helpless. I’d left the priesthood, the thing around which I’d built my life, because I’d had todosomething after my brother’s death. I’d had to make sure that whoever had stolen my brother from us answered for it. I couldn’t stay in New York, pretending to be the righteous son, the dutiful son, while my brother’s blood called out for vengeance.
No one else would do it. And so, once again, it had to be me. That’s what I’d believed, what carried me through then, and what still does.
I can’t let this go unanswered, either.Wherever you are, I will find you,I think silently to Sasha, my fists clenching against the bedsheets.Whoever has taken you, will pay. Whoever has hurt you, will die for it.
I’ve tried to keep to vows that I’ve broken over and over again, tried to re-consecrate them, to recommit myself to the man I once was–but I see now, lying in the twin bed in Giana’s guest room, helpless and lost, that whatever was left of that man died on the ballroom floor.
If I’m going to save Sasha, to protect her, toloveher, I can’t cling to the past.
It’s time to make a new vow.
When I get out of this bed, it will be as a new man. A man who will break and bleed anyone he has to in order to find her, save her, and keep her.
Or, if she’d rather, stand beside her while she does it herself.
3
SASHA
I’m disappointed to wake up.
And then, a second later, I’m disappointed in myself for feeling that way, a wrenching sense of guilt mixing with the sinking realization that whatever was in that syringe, it wasn’t meant to take me out. Justknockme out for a little while. Long enough to make me stop fighting so that whoever it was that kidnapped me could get me wherever they planned to take me.
For all the things I’ve endured, for all the time that I’ve spent trying to heal, for all the therapy I’ve been through, I never really felt like I wanted to die. It shocked my therapist, actually, when I first started seeing her. She asked me, more than once, if I wassurethat I had never had any thoughts of self-harm or suicide. She’d reassured me, over and over, that I could be honest with her. That she wouldn’t think less of me for it, that she wouldn’t commit me to a psych ward, and that the room I met her in weekly was a safe space. Finally, she’d had to accept that I was telling the truth.
I’d always beengladthat I survived all of it. I’d felthopefulwhen Viktor had shot my attacker in front of me, when I’d watched his blood soak into the wood of the docks. I’d felt it when he’d whisked me away and given me a job in his home. Even in Alexei’s safe house, even in the pain and fear, even when that hope had dwindled, I hadn’t really wanted to die. Maybe in some moments, I’d wished for anything that would make it stop, even if that was death. But I’d always longed for the alternative, for a rescue, for hope, for afuture.
Even in the worst moments of my post-traumatic stress, even through the nightmares, through the fears that I’d never be able to have a normal sexual relationship–that I’d never trust anyone enough to be in a relationship at all–I’d trusted that there was enough good and happiness ahead of me to make life worth it. I’d never thought of ending it all, or wished for death.
But on that floor, as that needle had slipped into my neck, I’d wanted exactly that. I’d wanted it with a bone-deep ferocity that had frightened me. I’d wanted, more than anything in that moment except to have Max back, to not wake up.
It’s clear that I haven’t gotten what I wanted.
The room I wake up in is as opulent as anything back at the Agosti estate, but it’s clear that I’m not there any longer. This room is much lighter in tone, done all in luxurious creams and dusty blues, from the soft white wood of the bed I’m lying in to the rugs and textiles. The curtains are closed tightly, keeping the room dim, but I can see that it’s daylight outside.
There’s a clock by the bed, an old-fashioned alarm clock, and it reads seven a.m. Slowly, I shift in the bed, pushing myself up to a sitting position and realizing that, other than the pounding ache in my head, I’m otherwise physically fine.