Sergio on the floor. Sarah putting bullets into him—over and over—until the hammer clicks uselessly. The doctor’s sitting with his arms loose at his sides and his back to the wall—maybe dead. I barely looked at him long enough to discern whether he’s a threat.

I don’t ask myself how he got out of that room or about the source of the blood on his chin.

My mistake. Again. With her hair pulled out of its nest, her breasts heaving inside the torn dress, and the hot-barreled gun dropping to the floor, she’s a wild creature. Fearsome. Majestic. When she looks at me as if I’m the only man on Earth, I’m frozen in awe—rendered useless by her beauty.

Not her beauty, though she’s more beautiful in this condition than any other woman has ever been… it’s her power that pins me in place for a split second too long.

The doctor isn’t dead.

He lunges for Sarah with the speed of a last chance about to be lost, grabbing her by the throat and holding her in front of him. She claws and twists, but before I can get to them, he gets the wedding knife at her throat. I freeze.

“Dario,” she chokes out, trying to fight him off. She has to stop. They keep that knife razor sharp.

“Shh.” He tightens his grip. “Before you get your throat cut by accident.”

She stills herself. I have one bullet left, and if I send it for him, it could hit her. It could hit him, and he could slit her throat on the way down. He could startle and cut her artery. She could bleed to death right in front of me.

“You got out.” I move left, looking for an angle, but he moves Sarah between us.

“Did you know the human jaw can exert enough force to cut tendon between the carpal and metacarpal bones of the thumb?”

He bit off the guard’s thumb. That explains the blood on his chin and how he got out. It doesn’t tell me what he wants, it only tells me how badly he wants it.

“Then you came up here to die?” I shift left again, and he shifts with me.

“I know you love her,” he says. “You can stop acting like you’ll shoot at me as long as you might hit her.”

“And if you kill her, I have a clean shot.”

His last shift leaves him against the wall, under the portrait of Peter Colonia.

“I died the day I lost my daughter.” His back is fully against the wall now.

“Because you sold her! You dumb fuck! She ran away!”