Page 17 of Sinner's Vows

“Oh, she’ll survive,” my guardian angel says to me as he starts to dig with his free hand in an emergency medical kit.

Franco is going to die in the next few moments, I just know it, and for the first time in weeks, a spark of hope flares up in me.

My will to survive kicks in, and I let go of his hand. As long as he’s here, I’ll be okay.

He puts on surgical gloves, and I know what he’s going to do next. Contain the bleeding, cover the wound, and get me to hospital as soon as possible.

Except I’m an illegal here on a fake passport with a madman who isn’t going to live through the next hour.

Then, the sounds of a fight break out. Feet scuffle, fists hit, bones crack. It’s blood sport.

“Don’t look, sweetheart,” my guardian angel murmurs as he tears something open that smells like disinfectant. “It’s the thing of nightmares.”

As if my rapist’s and tormentor’s murder could give me anything but sweet dreams.

His hands are on me, gentle, warm, prepping the wound, folding my skirt’s fabric even lower and exposing my underwearso he can apply the bandage. He stills, and then his fingers dip underneath the band of my panties and peels them away.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath.

I fall to pieces. He said earlier it was going to be okay? No vital organs… I can feel it’s bad, the end of the road as Franco called it, but for a good five minutes, I had hope.

“Franco did this to you?”

His question sinks in slowly. This man isn’t looking at my bullet wound—he is looking at everything else. Franco’s cigarette burns and how he kept tally on my skin.

He turns my face with the back of his hand so I’m forced to look at him.

“Did he do this to you?” he asks again, and the only answer I can give are tears streaming down my temples.

“Fuckfuckfuck.” He picks up the urgency. “Watch all you want, sweetheart. It’s the last time anybody hurts you like this. Watch that fucking maniac die.”

9

DOMINIC

This woman has been tortured. At the hands of Franco Fiore.

“Hang in there, sweetheart,” I whisper now, only wanting to get her away from the hands that did this to her. “You’re doing well, so well.”

I’ve zoned out the grunts, cracks, and thuds coming from the death spar going on ten yards from us. I told her not to watch—fuck,Idon’t want to watch—but with what he’s done to her, I don’t blame her for wanting to see Franco Fiore meet his end.

My fingers are trembling. The notion this woman could be my little sister, our baby Gabriella, is so far-fetched, but it’s affecting me. I don’t buy into anything, least of all manipulative shit like this, but I’m rattled.

Gabriella was stillborn. Mom died in childbirth. It’s impossible.

You weren’t there. You never saw a body. Without a body, anything is possible.

I grind my jaw to keep my focus on the task at hand: getting this woman out of here without letting Stephano lose his concentration. Whether she is Gabriella or not, she needs to get to the clinic as soon as possible. I’ve already alertedour emergency response team, and the surgeon will be waiting, operation table ready. Ever since that night with Alex’s death, we’ve put systems in place to guarantee us the best possible outcome in situations like these. We would never be taken unawares again or suffer such an immense loss—not if I could help it.

I glance down at where I need to close the wound for transportation. When I first cut away her skirt to assess the bullet wound, I was too focused on where and how many bullets to look for anything else. It’s only when I inched down her underwear to stick on the bandage that I noticed the rest.

Cigarette burns. Cheap torture, and unrefined.

But then my gaze homed in on the lines cut into her flesh—four down, one straight across. Old-school tally marks, counting sets of five.What the actual fuck?

She also has a tattoo I’ve seen before. Randazzo’s seal. She’s one ofhisgirls.

For the hundredth time, I curse Don Guiliano Scalera for this final post-mortem fuck-you farewell. First Gigi Trapani, and now this unknown woman, both landing into our laps just because Emilio Randazzo is dead.

---