Page 28 of Sinner's Vows

Fucking hell. He’s going there?

“Is that so?”

“For one, we can send in the calvary, now that we have one.”

“The calvary?” I ask, hitching my brows. What is he on about?

“Tasha and Gigi. Surely, Ariana will open up to them? Let the women talk. They’d like nothing better than a good chit-chat over a cup of tea.”

A chit-chat? Over a cup of tea? So it’s not… Never mind. I smirk. I’ve never heard Matteo use those words before, never mind in one sentence. “You think?”

“And if that doesn’t work—” he reaches for my shoulder to squeeze me in the exact way I squeezed him minutes ago, “—you of all people know best how to make a woman submit to you, don’t you, Nicky?”

Fuck. Hewasgoing there. He only took a detour.

A weighty beat of silence bounces off the walls of the office as I stare at him.

“What the actual fuck, Matty? Can you listen to yourself for a second?” I hiss, incredulous. My brothers know what I’m into sexually, but fuck, it’s not on the agenda for discussion—ever. I don’t prod and poke around their fucking sex lives, and the least they can do is leave mine the fuck alone. And now— “You’re calmly suggesting I seduce her—to the point of her begging me to fuck her—for information? A woman who has been prostituted, violated, used? A woman who could be our little sister?”

Matteo is already at the door and opening it to leave when he throws back at me, “We both know Ariana Morelli isn’t our little sister.”

Right. As if that makes anything better.

15

ARIANA

It’s almost eleven in the morning. I’ve been lying in bed feigning to be asleep ever since Dominic and Matteo left. I’ve quietly been observing the coming and goings in this private clinic. The nurse came in with some meds, woke me up, watched me swallow them, and then pulled up the blind to let in some daylight.

I blinked in confusion as I took in the outside world. A low wooden fence separates this house from the next one. Our neighbor has a small vegetable garden with tomatoes and beans already trellised for easy picking. There’s a whole bed of sunflowers and another one with lettuce and kale.

Beyond this small, narrow yard, the next wooden fence. The back porch has a coffee table and two rocking chairs. Very companionable, but not a soul in sight. I’m in the heart of American suburbia. I should be able to scale the wall without a problem and cross to the other house, then the next one and so on, until I find a bigger, busier road where I could disappear.

“Do you rather want the blind down?” the nurse asks, and I shake my head.

Sleep isn’t my friend right now, and after weeks without sunlight, I’m craving it.

“I’ll bring your lunch soon. It’s only soup, but better than nothing.”

True, that, and I should know. I touch my stomach where the bullet wound throbs as soon as the pain meds start to wear off. One thing is for sure, I won’t last out there, not without help. Once I’ve made my escape, I’ll have to get to the right people without any detours. I don’t know who the right people are here. My job was never meant to extend beyond Italy into Europe. The States isn’t even on our map.

Plus, if this is anything like Italy, I could be running the risk of talking to the wrong police. If I talk to someone who is taking a cut from the Mafia, I’ll be back to Square One—and delivered right back into the beautiful hands of Dominic Scalera. There is no way to know, and it’s a risk I’ll simply have to take. Unless I can bypass all of these risks and get my hands on a cellphone.

The nurse walks out, and I glance around the room. There’s nothing here to use as a weapon, and I still haven’t figured out how to get around the bodyguard sitting outside my door. Whenever he gets up to go the washroom or whatever else he does, the nurse comes and keeps an eye on me in his place by leaning onto the doorjamb and scrolling on her phone.

There aren’t many people here. In fact, today, it would seem to be just me and Carla as patients, the nurse, and the bodyguard.

My gaze snags on the small fire extinguisher mounted on the wall. Perfect. You’ve got to love building codes. I suppress a giggle—to think these mobsters adhere to building codes. Nothing like butting a guy’s head with this and have him out of it for a few minutes.

I’m not fooling myself here. I’m only going to have a few seconds, unless I take him out, grab his gun, and shoot everybody in this house. I’ve never taken anybody out, never mind innocent victims. All I need to do is buy myself time. Thenurse is sweet and not a threat at all. Even in my diminished physical state, I can take her out if I need to. As for Carla, she’s pregnant and won’t risk her baby. Plus she probably still has a pounding headache from her head bouncing on the concrete yesterday.

The only tricky part is going to be to detach the fire extinguisher from its mount without anybody noticing.

Yep, I’m screwed. First, I need to get my weapon, and then I need to sneak up on the bodyguard and get in a proper swing without him noticing.

I lean to the side, as far as the bed would allow me to go without toppling off, and look. From here, I can see his elbow and his leg where it’s stretched out. He’s sitting on a chair, similar to the one in my room. Then I spot a framed watercolor print on the corridor wall that screams hospital decor. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now with the blind up in my room and the sun pouring in, the framed glass reflects the bodyguard’s face perfectly.

My heart starts to thump in my chest as my mind does the math. I can see him, but he can’t see me. If he turns his head away as he is doing now, engaging with the nurse in some small talk about coffee, I can sneak up, raise the fire extinguisher, and with one step come down on his head. Then I can spray the stuff in the nurse’s face and get out of here.

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