So as Amara sits me down and pins my hair, I tell myself that I may escape one day. Sergio could lose this battle for control. If Massimo wins, I won’t be trapped forever. A day will come when I will get away. And if I can’t, I’ll live and die the way I was always told I would.

But Dario will be free. There’s enough hope in that to keep me going.

Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

DARIO

Sergio Agosti’s going to take what’s mine and destroy it.

I sit up, razor blade between two fingers.

If I open up my veins and bleed for her, nothing will change.

My death, my life, nothing. I’m a skin bag of helpless rage bursting at the seams. This cannot happen. I can’t let it. But these walls. This fucking door. This fucking glass. I leap up to punch it with everything I have, and my fist bounces back with a shock of pain.

“Fuck!” I scream from the bottom-most part of my lungs. “Fuck you!”

I punch it again. The pain shoots through my shoulder. Fuck pain. Fuck everything. I’ll break myself against this window. Sticking the razor between my teeth, I put the fingers of my left hand in the slit between the two panes and pull. I add the stiff, crooked fingers of my right and pull harder, shouting sounds that don’t make words. I’ll rip my arms off to tear down this thing. I swear it. I’ll dismantle this entire building with my bare hands.

“Dario!” A woman’s voice comes down the hall.

It’s not Sarah. But I recognize it. I remove the blade from my teeth.

“Oria.”

“It’s really you?”

“Don’t talk. They hear everything.”

“They keep the little ones in here. I remember it.”

That statement deserves a compassionate response, but I am not verbal right now. Leveraging my feet against the bottom of the glass, I pull, growling from a place deeper than the pain. But my hands slip on the lentil soup I threw, and inertia throws me back against the bed.

“Fuck!” One fist is balled so tight I could crush coal into diamonds. The other is locked into a claw. I shake it out.

“Is Nico dead?”

I have to assume no one told her because no one knew. Jesus. I don’t know if that was why she was hanging around close enough to get caught, or if my people have been infiltrated. I’m still going to have to get out of there, and if I get out of here, stopping Sarah from marrying Sergio is the first priority.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“Oria.”

“Don’t.”