Page 27 of Wicked Bloodlines

I made it to the narrow door that led to the service stairs. My palm was damp. I wiped it against my pant leg and pulled out a key card I’d lifted from one of my regular guards earlier, and headed toward the stairs.

The service stairs led down to the lower level parking garage. My footsteps echoed here, a soft tap-tap against the concrete that seemed too loud in the sleeping house. The corridor turned, and then the heavy metal door of the garage appeared ahead, gray and imposing. I swiped myself into the garage. This was my one chance. If I left, I might be able to contact one of the very few people at my father’s villa who could help me get Maria away and make a break for it. I hoped we might make it far enough away to drop off everyone’s radar before I was missed. Mostly, I didn’t want to betray this family. And if I stayed here, that’s exactly what would happen. My father would expect nothing else. And Matteo… Yeah. Matteo would likely kill me if he found out my father’s orders. Not necessarily because he believed me guilty, but to send a message to Cesare.

I stepped inside the garage and stood there, unsure what to do. I’d always been so focused. I wanted to get away and take Cesare down as I went. Now, the situation had become even more dire. The problem was, I’d engaged with the Luca family, had been brought into their wicked bloodline and now, I had no idea what to do.

Chapter Ten

Matteo

Iwoke with a start, my eyes snapping open automatically. The comforter lay across my chest, white and plush. It was supposed to be in my bedroom, not my office couch. Sofia’s scent lingered in the soft fabric, faint but unmistakable. Rain on warm stone. Something sweet beneath it. The smell of her skin after I’d been inside her and she was glistening with sweat. I sat up, dragging the comforter with me, and scanned the office. Her clothes were gone. Mine lay in a pile near the desk. The phone on the floor beside the knocked-over tumbler glowed blue with an alert.

I snatched it up and peered at the security notification. A guard’s key card had been swiped at the lower garage door at three forty-two in the morning.

“Fuck.” The word left my mouth and hung in the cold air. I dressed in the dark before hurrying out.

The villa slept around me as I moved through the east wing. The service corridor was a narrow throat of shadow. Every villa I’d ever been to had several and they were always excellent ways to disappear. I’d grown up in these walls and knew every inch.

The heavy door to the service stairs groaned open under my hand. Concrete steps, steep and narrow. My footsteps echoed, too loud for the sleeping house. I pushed through the final door and the garage opened before me, a cavern of shadows and parked cars.

She stood in the middle of the concrete floor, frozen between my Aston and Dario’s Bentley. A key card glinted in her right hand. The blade in her boot I could see from twenty feet away, the way the fabric pulled against her ankle. She wasn’t running. She was standing there like the ground had turned to ice beneath her feet.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?”

Sofia didn’t move. Didn’t turn. Her shoulders were rigid beneath the black fabric. “I wasn’t leaving.” Her voice was small in the vast space.

“Bullshit. You’re standing in my garage with a stolen key card and a blade in your boot at four in the morning.” I crossed the distance between us, slow and deliberate. “Try again.”

She turned then. Her face was pale under the harsh fluorescents, her eyes wide and dark. She looked young and almost terrified. Her fear hit me like a sucker punch and I nearly grunted like she’d actually struck me.

“I came down here to leave,” she admitted. “Then I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m an idiot?” She looked ready to cry and I knew I needed to be careful with her.

I closed the last few feet between us carefully. When I was close enough to smell her, it took every ounce of my control to not pull her into my arms and hold her until she knew I’d take care of her fears. Instead, I asked her gently, “What’s in the boot, Sofia?”

“A knife.”

“What else?”

She reached down and pulled the small, brass handled blade free. She handed it to me handle-first without being asked. The metal was warm from her skin.

“Who gave you this?”

She shrugged. “I’ve had it for years. Can’t remember specifically, but I probably stole it from my father.”

I turned the blade over in my palm. “And the key card?”

“The driver when Belle and I went to the dressmaker’s.”

I slipped the blade into my jacket pocket. “You’ve been busy.”

“Matteo.” Her voice cracked on my name. “I need to tell you something.”

“Tell me about the flash drive first.”

The color drained from her face. Her lips parted. For a long moment, she didn’t breathe.