Part 4:

Boss, there’s nothing on her. No phone, no bag, no papers. Oos went still. His eyes stayed on Anita, and something turned behind them, slow and certain, like a key going halfway in a lock. Tony. He didn’t look away from her. Bring me the maid. On the other side of the wall, Isabella’s hand flew to her mouth. Then she ran.

She jammed the torch back on, and its beam jerked across the walls. Turn. Stairs. Another turn. Her breath tore loud in the narrow dark, her heart slamming high in her throat, and her mind kept running faster than her feet. Tony was already moving. She was three walls in a staircase from a locked room she was supposed to be sitting inside, and she wasn’t going to make it.

She reached the library wall a moment too late. Through the thin seam where the bookcase met the wall, she heard the lock turn, the door of the room she was supposed to be locked inside, and then Tony’s boots crossing an empty floor. Where is she? a second of nothing, then his voice climbing the stairs. Boss, the girl’s not in the room. Footsteps came down hard and fast.

She knew that stride. Aos crossed into the library on the other side of the wall, and his voice carried straight through it. The door was locked. Quieter now, which was worse. How does a woman walk through a locked door? Find her now. She had seconds. Going back led straight into them. She turned and ran the other way, deeper, her breath ragged in the black until the tunnel gave out at a low steel door.

A keypad glowed faintly beside it. Her fingers were shaking. She steadied them and keyed in the code. The lock released with a soft click that down here landed like a gunshot. She slipped through, pulled the door shut, and felt the tunnel seal itself back into the wall behind her. No one could find out this passage existed.

Light hit her face. She was in the back garden now, chest heaving, the sun too bright after the dark. For a heartbeat, she only stood there thinking it through. The gate was watched. She would never clear it, and even if she could, Anita was still inside, still wearing her name. She wasn’t leaving without her, so she wouldn’t run at all.

Isabella crossed the lawn to the chairs by the pool and sat down as if she had every right to the chair, to the garden, to the whole house. Inside her heart was throwing itself at her ribs. She made her hands lie still in her lap, and her face give nothing back. A man on the far path caught sight of her and stopped short. “Mr.

Svino!” His shout carried over the water. “She’s here.” Then she heard the terrace doors and the footsteps, and she didn’t turn around. OS Svino was coming across the grass behind her, slow, in no hurry at all, and she could feel each step land somewhere under her skin. The pulse in her throat climbed. Her hands stayed folded.

He came around the chair and stopped in front of her, close enough to block the sun, and still she kept her breathing even, and her chin where it was. Only then did she lift her eyes to him, calm as the water beside them. He looked down at her for a long moment, and the longer he looked, the less amused he seemed. “How did you get out of that room?” She held his eyes, a slow smile curving her mouth, and gave him the answer, light and sweet, like it was nothing at all.

“Hocus! Hocus!” He ran his tongue slowly along the inside of his cheek, watching her. For one dangerous second, something almost broke through his control. Then his eyes cut to Tony. Move my things into the master suite. Tony glanced at her. And the maid? Eris’s gaze came back to her and stayed there. The maid stays with me.

He took her by the upper arm and pulled her up the stairs, his grip closing hard above her elbow. Let go of me. Isabella matched his pace so he’d have no excuse to drag her. I can walk without you holding on. Every time I let go of you, you throw yourself off a cliff or vanish through a wall. He didn’t slow. Easier to keep you where I can see you and reach you.

That was when she saw it. Blood. A thin line of it trailed down from somewhere high on his arm, dried at the edges. A faint smear of it left on her own skin where he held her. Her breath snagged. The thought came before she could stop it. Had he done something to Anita? OS brought her into the big suite on the top floor, and this time when the door shut, he turned the lock with himself on the inside of it.

She backed up against the wall. She was watching him now, every nerve pulled tight, and she could feel her own heartbeat in her ears. What was this man going to do? He read the question on her face, and something in it almost amused him. He took his time about it, shrugging out of his jacket, working the shirt buttons loose one by one while he spoke, and she found she couldn’t look away.

What’s this? A minute ago you were leaping off cliffs and walking through locked doors. His attention never left her. Now you’ve decided to be afraid of me. She didn’t answer because the shirt came open and the reply died in her throat. He was built like something carved, broad through the shoulders, the muscle of his stomach hard and burned bronze by a lifetime of this sun.

And high on his arm, roar against all that gold, ran the torn line of a bullet graze, a graze, shallow, half dried, the kind that bled slow, and seeped for hours. and he’d been hauling Isabella up staircases the whole time like a man who’d done nothing harder than pour himself a drink. Her eyes went from the torn skin back to his face. If Mr.

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