Page 47 of Leave Me (Touch of Death 2)
Nero met nothing but opposition when he had a child with Una and made her his queen. The Italians claim they don’t like the Russians, that bloodlines should be pure, but in reality, they don’t like too much power in one place. With her at his side, Nero went from dangerous to lethal. I get the impression that it’s much like dogs and cats. No one even knows why we aren’t supposed to like each other anymore; it’s just habit.
“You’re lucky to have us. Apparently, you need all the help you can get,” Una snaps.
“He needs to get her back,” Lorenzo snarls, unwilling to hear anything else. He’s loyal, I can see it. More than an employee to an employer—more like the kind of loyalty you have to a family member.
They start making jibes back and forth, Una arguing that Nero owes them nothing. The situation becomes more and more tense with no resolution in sight.
“He’ll kill her,” I say, and Lorenzo’s glare fixates on me. “This is all the excuse he needs to put an end to Gabriella.”
Una speaks, although they both glare my direction. “You don’t know that. He probably just wants his guns back.” She knows I’m right, but she doesn’t care about Gabriella’s fate. She was always a scapegoat, there to throw under the bus.
“Which she can’t give them because you screwed us over!” Lorenzo shouts.
“No, we kept you all out of the loop for this very reason,” Una replies.
“I’ll go!” I say, cutting them off before they can start arguing again.
Una’s violet eyes snap to me. “What?”
“I’ll go. I watched his house for days. I know the layout, the security. I’ll get Gabriella.” Silence greets me, but Lorenzo offers me a respectful nod. “I’ll need weapons.”
Lorenzo’s gaze shifts over my shoulder, and I move to find a guy standing in the doorway. “Phillip will take you.”
I turn away and follow him out of the room.
“Sasha!” Una calls, hurrying to walk with me. “You don’t have to do this.”
I know I don’t. “Bianchi wants her, and he’s probably going to kill her. That, in itself, is reason enough to get her away from him.”
Anything that Bianchi wants is undoubtedly bad for us in one way or another. What I would never admit to Una is that for Adelina to lose her sister, after all she’s been through, would just be cruel. That age-old guilt eats away at me, leaving me with no option but to at least save one sister, even if I can’t save the other.
“Use your head, Sasha.”
“I am.”
She grabs my arm, forcing me to stop, and I glance down at where her fingers press into my skin. “You don’t owe Adelina anything.”
I meet her eyes. “You know that’s not true.” I see the acceptance pass through her gaze before she releases me, and I walk away.
Gabriella’s guy shows me to a room at the back of the house, and as soon as I step inside, my chest flutters a little. Every type of weapon imaginable lines the walls.
The guy shrugs, a smile on his face. “Eduardo liked to be prepared.”
“I can see that.”
My plan is clear. I’ve watched the house for twenty-four hours, and I can’t see Gabriella in any of the rooms. Adelina, however, is precisely where she was the last time. I survey the entire building, but my binoculars always find their way back to that one room. She no longer lingers on the balcony, and each time she receives food, the door is left open, only for her to get up and close it. She looks…broken and her face tear-stained. My mind instantly travels down a path I do not want to walk, imagining what Enrique did to her. I tell myself that it must be Gabriella. She must know that her sister is there, or that she’s dead. Either way, when I haven’t seen a trace of Gabriella, I know Adelina is my best bet at finding her. I don’t have the time to search the house, and my chances of getting caught are infinitely higher the longer I’m here.
By the time night falls, I’m twitchy and on edge. I easily slip past Enrique’s security detail, climbing the fence and negotiating the wooden spikes that decorate the top haphazardly. His security really is laughable. There’s a clear thirty-second window between guards walking the perimeter, and dead spots between the lights at the back of the house. Maybe the spiked fence is enough to deter most.
I scale the gutter and hop over the edge of a balcony on the second floor. Hunkering down, I keep my body low, sliding through the shadows before I climb the railing on the opposite side and hop to the next, and the next. I land on Adelina’s balcony on muted feet. The doors are wide open, the same way they always are, and how I always chastised her for. I creep into the room and linger, watching her sleeping form. The moonlight flickers through gaps in the blowing curtains, painting silvery light over the plains of her face. She looks different, more tired, as though the world has worn her down.
