Page 20 of Sinner's Vows

Emilia Korhonen.

No. I swallow. Too many things have moved too fast, and now my head is stuck in my earliest memories.

I want to buy into this promise that I’m safe, but I’m no fool. When was the last time I was really safe? Lying might be the best option here, but I can’t—not to him. “Ariana Morelli.”

“Nice meeting you, Ariana.” He smiles, and it softens the angular lines of his face.

More like…nice saving you, Ariana.I’m in this man’s debt, and not in a way I want to be. Already, I’m adding up all the crimes I’ve witnessed. His promise of safety is a very thin net that can snap at any second under the weight of it all.

“Not Gabriella, then?” he asks as he squeezes my hand.

“No?”

“Never been called that?” Another squeeze to my fingers.

“I’m not your sister,” I whisper.

I was my mother’s only child. This man is looks like he’s about ten years older than me, and it would’ve meant my mom started to have babies when she was like…ten? In the realm I grew up in, shit like that isn’t that far-fetched, but I don’t want to even go there.

“Okay. How do you know Franco Fiore?”

At his question, I pull my hand away and turn on my side, giving him my back. I probably shouldn’t. Not with the bullet wound, but I’m not ready for this. I regret telling him I’m not his sister, giving away how I was fully conscious in that warehouse. I can’t randomly answer more questions as if all my training’s deserted me. I’ve no idea where this is going to lead me.

“Ariana—”

I feel him behind me, his eyes on my back. A shutter is drawn down the room’s window, but a thin slit into the outside world is open at the bottom. It’s night already. “Where are the other women?”

Dominic’s footsteps sound around the bed, and he comes to stand in front of me. “Carla is here in another room. She’s got a concussion, but she’s going to be fine.”

When I don’t look up to meet his gaze, he goes on his haunches to be at my eye level. Now I have no choice but to look into his eyes, his gaze warm on me.

“Gigi’s home. She didn’t get hurt. Not like you or Carla.”

“And Carla’s baby?”

“They don’t know yet.”

I nod. At least it’s not worse news.

He rests his hand on the edge of the bed and straightens again. It’s a beautiful hand. Long, strong fingers, neat nails, veins branching out to a muscular forearm. He is still in the same clothes from the warehouse, his shirtsleeves rolled up. As I slide my gaze along his arm back to his hand, it snags on his little finger. It has a black ring tattoo, right in the middle knuckle.

It must be a marking of sorts, identifying him as belonging to some gang.

I close my eyes, blocking out the visual of him, of his hand as it hovers, indecisive, on the edge of the bed. I sense he wants to touch me, stroke my hair as he did in that warehouse.

“I’ll be back to see you in the morning,” he says. “And then we’ll talk.”

I don’t respond, but in me, the coil that gave a bit tightens again. I can’t talk, not to him, not to anybody but the police. If I’m lucky, I can make my way to the Italian Embassy, but that might not even be in Boston. I have no clue. I’m in a foreign country, cornered, in the hands of some new crime ring. This is my life coming full circle. Born into it, dying the only way out.

He sighs, and then a featherlight touch brushes my hair. “Sleep tight, Ariana.”

I don’t want Dominic to go. After all the time in that dungeon, I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts that can’t channel to anything else but impeding death. Or how I failed the mission I set myself in my life: honoring my mother’s death, saving those girls from that sex-slave auction, from men like Franco Fiore. Killing Franco first, and eventually getting so close, I kill Randazzo, too, dismantling his sex-trafficking ring in Europe.

I don’t want him to go, because I want him to hold my hand, to remind me that I’m alive and managed to swerve away from Franco’s final destination for me at the last second.

His footsteps fall softly, and I keep listening, counting, until all is quiet around me. For a long while, I lie still, my mind grappling with the fact I’m alive.Observe, adapt, act only when the timing is right.

Eventually, I roll onto my back and run my palms down my body. I’m dressed in a hospital gown which gives easy front access to the bandage covering my wound. I glance to where my personal items could be, but there’s nothing in this room except the usual hospital paraphernalia and an occasional chair.

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