Page 6 of Blood Heir

She hasn't stopped talking since I got in beside her and shut the door.

“I could call the cops, you know!” she snaps, jiggling the locked handle again like the fourth time will work differently.

Her body jerks with the motion—sharp, unpredictable. She’s folded into the corner of the back seat, half furious, half disoriented. The oversized hoodie she’s wearing swallows her frame, sleeves pushed up past her elbows, revealing bandaged wrists and pale forearms still dusted with IV tape residue.

Every so often, her foot kicks the door. Not out of strategy. Just noise. Frustration.

Her hair’s down—thick waves of chestnut still damp from the hospital. It tangles around her shoulders and clings to her cheekbones. Stray strands stick to her lips as she talks.

Her eyes—hazel, gold-flecked, too wide—cut to me with the heat of accusation and absolutely no recognition. Like I’m just some man with a nice suit and a kidnapping habit.

“Mr. Driver,” she huffs, turning toward Mateo up front, “you can see I’m being kidnapped, can’t you? Are you really going to just sit there like this is normal?”

Mateo keeps his eyes on the road.

She slumps back, crosses her arms with dramatic precision, and lets out a heavy sigh.

“I know I have friends. I can’t be that weird. Someone out there misses me. I demand to see them. I demand answers. I demand—at the very least—water.”

I reach for the chilled bottle beside me and hold it out without a word.

She eyes it like it’s radioactive, then snatches it with both hands.

“I hope this isn’t drugged,” she mutters. She twists the cap with her teeth, spills some on her fingers, then gulps down half the bottle like she’s been crawling through desert sand.

I watch her.

She’s not the woman I remember.

Fioretta used to move with quiet intention. Everything measured. Everything withheld. She could sit in silence for hours without fidgeting. She never raised her voice. Never swore.

But this woman?

She’s alive in a way I haven’t seen in years. Even before the incident. There's color in her cheeks despite her pallor. Heat behind every glare. Restlessness in every limb.

We drive in silence for another ten minutes. Then the gates come into view.

She leans forward, squinting through the tinted window. “Where the hell are we?”

The iron gates of Villa Malavita part slowly, groaning open as if they remember her.

The gravel creaks beneath the tires. Towering hedges, thorned roses, perimeter guards.

Her eyes go wide.

She gasps.

The car rolls up to the circle drive. A line of men in black suits wait in formation—armed, precise, unsmiling.

The car stops.

I step out.

She doesn’t.

I wait.

Eventually, she opens the door just enough to peer out, one leg extending cautiously to the wet stone.

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