Calvino was watching me, his gaze unblinking. I flicked my attention around the room. I could jump through the window, but I would probably break my leg on landing. And then there were all those bees to think about. Even if I could somehow get the ties off, I’d have to run through the fields at the back or take a chance going through the front of the house. I didn’t know how many people were here or how big the place was. The door was behind me. If I was lucky, maybe Calvino would get bored and fall asleep. It was dark out now.
My thoughts were still whirling when he stood again. He rerolled his sleeves.
“What are you doing?” I tried to hop off the couch, but the binds on my legs tripped me.
“I wasn’t finished,” Calvino replied as I landed against the floor and tried to slither away from him, using my butt and my legs like a caterpillar. “I just needed a rest.”
He rounded on me. I scooted furiously until my head banged against one of the walls. He brought his foot back like he was going to kick a ball, but I rolled over at the last second.
I pulled myself across the floor with my hands. He kicked me again, and this time it landed on my right side. I heard a faint crack as the wind left my lungs. Twinkling stars began to cloud my vision as I clawed at the rough wooden floors. There was a labored grunt from somewhere above and I crumpled as another blow hurtled into me.
Waves of nausea rocked back and forth inside me. I pulled my knees into my chest and cradled myself into a fetal position as shrieks of uncontrollable pain ripped through my body. Calvino began circling my frame. This time, instead of kicking me, he flipped me over with his shoe so that I landed under the force of my own body. He started to press against my back with his heel.
“Stop,” I wheezed. I tried to claw across the wood, but he stamped down harder, and then I heard the flick of his switchblade from somewhere above me.
“Please,” I panted, but to whom, I didn’t know. I was on my own, and I had to do something before it was too late.
He rolled me over again, until I lay flat out under the glaring ceiling lights, squinting as his angular face came back into focus.
He brandished the blade, running his thumb along the edge. Slowly, I pushed myself onto my side and pulled my legs back behind me, bending them a little at the knees. This was my last hope. I prayed he wouldn’t move before I could swing them forward again, and he didn’t; he was too busy staring amorously at the blade as it glinted above me.
It was my only chance: I pushed against the floor with my bound hands and swung the lower half of my body forward with as much force as I could muster, using my elbow and my hips to propel myself. My legs swooped in a semicircle, and by the time Calvino noticed what I was trying to do, they were already knocking his legs out from under him.
In what felt like slow motion, he careened backward, tumbling from his tremendous height. The blade landed with a ping beside my shoulder. His head hit the wall behind him with a deafening thump. He crumpled and slid toward the floor a couple of feet away from me, and then, apart from one brief twitch in his leg, he lay perfectly still.
I crunched into an upright position, biting hard on my bottom lip to stop the screams of agony building inside me. I grabbed the knife and got to work on my leg binds, sawing through them as quickly as possible, and glancing at Calvino every few seconds to make sure he wasn’t about to lunge at me and choke me out. His eyes were shut, but his chest was still rising and falling, so I knew I was short on time. The ties around my ankles came away.
I curled my hand around the knife and tried to cut backward into the binds on my hands, but I couldn’t find the right angle and each attempt was useless. But I had come too far to fail now, with tied wrists or not. I held the knife between my hands and rocked back and forth until I could push up onto my feet.
When I stood up, the pain in my chest tore through me like a flame. I doubled over, clutching the knife inside my fist. Using the wall as my anchor, I slid forward against it, one baby step and then another, forcing my screams into breathless sobs. The door was close enough to touch. Behind me, Calvino’s breathing was growing steadier.
Slowly, I started to slump against the wall. I held my ribs tight against my bound hands, but the strength was petering out of my body. I was shuddering with pain, and suddenly escape seemed impossible. He was going to catch me.
I couldn’t lift my head, and I couldn’t see the door anymore. But I was close enough to feel the surge of air that rippled inside when it swung open in front of me. With every last ounce of strength, I forced my chin away from my chest and fixed my gaze forward.
“Sophie?”
I opened my mouth to yell, but the words came out in breathless puffs. “You. Asshole.”
Luca and I stared at each other for a long, agonizing moment.
I watched his expression darken. I tried to speak again, but I couldn’t. I knew I was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness; flashes of pain were pulsing through my rib cage, and every breath was more difficult than the one before. But I knew, too, if I let myself fall into the darkness that was licking at my mind, then I might never wake up again — because Luca was Valentino’s underboss, and he had orders to extract a blood debt from me.
I unballed my fist and pushed onward, holding the knife as far from my body as I could and using my shoulder as an anchor to keep me upright.
“Get out of my way.” Brandishing the switchblade, I tried to shove against his chest with my other shoulder.
Luca curled his hand around my back and yanked the knife easily from my grip with the other. He flicked it closed and threw it onto the couch, far from my reach. “You can’t go through me.”
I looked up at him, glaring. I had seen enough of those piercing eyes for a century. “Let go of me.”
He didn’t. He moved his gaze across the room and let it rest on Calvino’s flat-out form. “You do that to him?” he asked evenly.
I nodded.
He studied me, first the dried blood on my chin, and then where I was trying to clutch at my ribs. “Cazzo,” he muttered, shaking his head.