Quinn's POV
She shrugged, smug. "Still more than you."
That was it.
I slapped the phone from her hand. It clattered against the marble floor, the screen cracking on impact.
Then I lunged, my hand flying to her throat before I could stop myself.
The bottle slipped from Nina's grip and hit the ground with a hollow clink. The sharp, unmistakable stench of gasoline exploded into the air, hitting my nose like a physical blow. It burned the back of my throat, filling the room in seconds, soaking into the hardwood and the hem of the curtains.
We struggled. Pushing, grabbing, stumbling over each other in the fume-thick air. Then she kicked something. Maybe it was the lighter she'd brought with her. Maybe it was her heel striking the metal edge of the fireplace grate. It didn't matter.
Flames erupted like they'd been waiting for a reason to consume us.
Smoke swallowed the room. My body, still weak from the blood they'd stolen, from the child they'd taken, couldn't keep up. I choked, coughing violently, my legs collapsing beneath me. The heat pressed against my skin like a living thing, and the air turned to poison with every breath.
The last thing I saw before darkness claimed me was fire crawling across the ceiling of the Montecchio estate like the hand of God reaching down to pass judgment.
"Quinn!"
"Boss! It's too dangerous! You can't go in! Let the men handle it!"
"Out of the way! Quinn's still in there!"
The sound of Zane's voice tore through the smoke. I tried to open my eyes. Had I imagined it? Did he really say my name? Did he still care?
"Zane, I'm here too. Please save me and our baby!"
Nina's voice. High and desperate and perfectly calibrated.
For a moment, I almost believed he was coming for me.
It was pathetic, really. That tiny flicker of hope that burned inside me just from hearing my name fall from his lips. Like I was still someone he'd fight for. Like the man who had once placed a ring on my finger and sworn a blood oath before God and the Family still existed somewhere beneath the monster he'd become.
But of course, reality slapped the fantasy right out of me. He hadn't come running in because he missed me. Not because he cared. He'd stormed in because he wanted to save face. Wanted to be the Don. The protector. The man whose house was always in order.
And when Nina cried out? He didn't even pause. Just scooped her up like she was something precious, something irreplaceable, while I lay there on the floor of his grandfather's estate, smoke choking the last bit of strength out of me, the taste of gasoline and ash coating my tongue.
Half an hour passed.
After making sure Nina Valducci was safe, tucked into the back of an armored car with a blanket around her shoulders and a doctor checking her vitals, he tore through every hallway of the estate to find me.
But I was gone.
I still wasn't sure how I'd made it out. The flames were everywhere, roaring in my ears and stealing every breath from my lungs. Smoke clawed at my throat, filling me with dizzying heat that made the walls swim and the floor tilt beneath me. My vision narrowed to a tunnel of orange and black.
But when instinct finally took over, it wasn't the quiet, obedient wife who saved herself. It was something older. Deeper. The part of me that had been buried under years of deference and silence and swallowed pride. The survival instinct I'd suppressed for so long it had become almost foreign to me.
It surged up like a fist closing around my spine.
I forced myself to my hands and knees, every muscle screaming. My bag. I needed my bag. The documents Rowan Mancini had slipped me, the medical files, the evidence of what they'd done. Without it, I had nothing. I was nothing. Just another discarded wife with a story no one would believe.
I crawled through the smoke, my fingers finding the leather strap by memory more than sight. I grabbed it, clutching it against my chest like a lifeline. Then I dragged myself toward the window.
The glass was already cracked from the heat. I drove my elbow into it, once, twice, and on the third strike it shattered outward. Shards scraped my arms as I hauled myself through the frame, landing hard on the grass outside. My legs buckled. My chest heaved. Blood ran in thin lines down my forearms where the glass had bitten deep.
But I was alive. Barely.
And I didn't look back.
One of the side corridors must have been untouched, or maybe the fire hadn't reached the east wing yet. I dragged myself along the exterior wall, staying in the shadows, lungs screaming, barely able to stand, until I reached the back service entrance. The one the kitchen staff used for deliveries. The one no soldier ever bothered to watch because it led to nothing but a loading dock and a chain-link fence.
I collapsed outside in the cold night air, coughing so hard I thought my ribs would snap. The sky above me was clear and black and indifferent, and the distant wail of sirens told me someone had finally called it in. Not the Family. They'd never involve outsiders. Probably a neighbor. Someone who saw the smoke and didn't know enough to look the other way.
No one saw me. No one followed.
And I didn't stop. Not even when my knees buckled on the uneven pavement. Not even when I had to use street signs and parked cars for support, leaving smears of blood on every surface I touched. I just kept going, one block, then another, then another, because if I stopped, if I let myself get caught again, if I let them drag me back into that house and that life and that slow, methodical destruction of everything I was, I knew I wouldn't survive it this time.
Not physically. Not in any way that mattered.
I found a payphone three blocks from the Montecchio estate. I called a car service. Paid cash. The driver didn't ask questions. In this city, at this hour, a woman with ash in her hair and blood on her sleeves was not the strangest fare he'd ever picked up.
Then I boarded a flight to the Northern Boroughs.
The moment before takeoff, as the cabin lights dimmed and the engines began their low, building roar, a message came in.
From Zane:
Don't have time for games, Quinn. I'm not playing hide-and-seek.
I stared at the screen. The blue glow of his words illuminated my face in the darkened cabin, and for one long, terrible second, I felt the old reflex. The urge to respond. To explain. To apologize for inconveniencing him with my survival.
Then I powered off the phone.
The plane lifted into the darkness, and the city that had been my prison for five years shrank to a scattering of lights below me. I pressed my forehead against the cold window and closed my eyes.
I was done being found.
