“What did you just say?”

“I can only protect her for so long.”

My need to draw her down here is replaced by a visceral, crushing terror. Screw the embroidered code. She can’t come down here. She can’t be anyplace she can’t leave on a moment’s notice.

“Let me out of here.” Every muscle is coiled tight—arms, jaw, heart. The razor blade is behind a leg of the bed frame. I could slit his throat. Take the two guys in the hall. Draw the two from the hall through the open door.

Unless they let him bleed and leave me behind the door with him. Because they might. They already have another leader lined up.

“Obviously, that’s not going to happen,” Massimo says.

“You can’t protect her.”

“I can.”

“How?”

“You need to tell us where our women are. Where you buried them, if you have to.”

What if I said the words “St. Eustatius” right now? What if I gave up all those Colonia women to save one? Would that one woman ever forgive me for saving her? Would forgiveness matter if I was dead?

“Then what? You let her go?”

“Come on, man. That’s not how this works.”

“Don’t lecture me on how things work. You don’t get twenty-seven lives and in exchange you keep Sarah locked up in this fucking cult.”

“She’ll be happy.”

He believes it, the ignorant fucker. He’s the product of a belief system he’d never had to question. We all are. Me. Massimo. Sarah. Even Sergio. We’re all cornered by our history and choices. This, right here, is the status quo we all made together.

“She needs to be free!” The truth is louder than my voice. “Let her go.”

“You know I can’t. You know it.”

Massimo’s hands may be tied, but I’m locked in a cell, so the last decision’s going to be his, and I’m going to find myself in a quickly narrowing matrix of choices, until there’s only one I can make, the one thing I never thought I’d have to do—direct the Colonia to Willa’s island outpost and let them sort it out.

It will be the most evil thing I’ve ever done. I’ll burn in a hell of regret—if they even let me live long enough to feed the flames.

If there’s anyone in the world who won’t forgive me for saving her at the expense of so many, it’s Sarah. She’d follow me into death, reminding me of what I’d done.

Given up on her.

What’s the point of teaching a woman to shoot if she doesn’t have a gun?

Why teach her to drive if there’s nowhere to go?

I need to include her in her own salvation. I need to read her embroidered runes if I want to keep her safe, but I can’t make anything out of them.

I step closer to Massimo. He’s only out of reach by half the length of my arms. He doesn’t flinch, but the guys on the other side of the glass go into a heightened state of awareness.