I can’t see my way through the panic. My lungs are in the chokehold of my angry, grieving heart. They can’t breathe and my heart can’t beat.

What have I done?

On my knees, I lay my forehead on the drain, wishing my way through the slits. If I could fit myself in them, come out the other side in slices, each one divorced from the next, into the blackness. They’d flow down, down, falling through an abyss before mixing with raw sewage. Finally home, where I belong.

What have I done to her? Why can’t I wish myself dead? The bed is wood, or I’d smash myself against it. The mattress is too thin, or I’d suffocate myself with it. If I jumped off the bed, headfirst onto the concrete, maybe I could end this.

I want to do it again.

I want to take it all back.

Hope is poison, but regret is a fucking shredder.

If I could do it again, I wouldn’t do it the same.

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

SARAH

“You can’t come,” Massimo says in the parking lot under Precious Blood.

“I can drive,” I remind him. “And if I can’t steal a set of car keys, I know how to get a cab. Don’t think I won’t, or I can’t, and don’t think your men can stop me.”

There was money in the safe. It’s in the desk drawer now. All I have to do is take it.

But then what? I don’t even know where we’re going.

Most of the men have loaded shovels and buckets in the backs of SUVs, like overgrown children going to the beach for a middle of the night sandcastle contest. Doors slap closed and engines hum as they exit in a line.

“I know.” Massimo throws two spades into his Suburban and shuts the rear door. It refuses to slam, hissing to a gentle close. “And I don’t think anyone can stop you.” He leans closer to me and speaks softly. “Except him.”

He means Dario. But Dario didn’t stop me. He told me a place to go so that I’d go there.

“I’m trained to be an obedient wife. He told me where Mom is. He wants me to go. So I go.”

All of those things are true, but unrelated. I am trained for obedience. Dario did tell me, and I’m sure he wants me to be the one to dig up whatever’s in the hole. But that’s not why I want to go. I’m sick of waiting around. I need to see this with my own eyes, and if it’s some kind of trap, so be it. I’ll be caught inside it.

“Get in.” Massimo taps his phone.