Page 18 of The Assassin's Captive
The road curves ahead, and I follow it, but my reaction time is slow. Too slow. I'm going too fast for the turn, and I can feel the car starting to drift. I jerk the wheel to the right, overcorrecting, and the tires scream against the asphalt.
The guardrail rushes toward me, metal and concrete and the promise of impact. I wrench the wheel in the opposite direction, but the car is already sliding, already out of control.
Time slows. The world tilts. I see the road dropping away, the rocky slope beyond the guardrail, the trees that will stop my momentum. I smell burning rubber and something else—gasoline, maybe, or smoke.
The car hits the embankment and rolls, metal screaming against stone. My seatbelt cuts into my chest, and my head snaps forward, then back. Glass explodes around me, tiny diamonds catching the morning light.
Then everything is still.
I'm hanging upside down, held in place by my seatbelt. Blood drips from my forehead, warm and sticky. My left arm throbs, bent at an angle that doesn't look right. But I'm alive. I'm conscious.
I hear voices, distant but getting closer. Footsteps on gravel. Someone shouting orders. Sirens in the distance, growing louder.
"There's someone in the car," a man says. "Call for backup."
"Can you hear me?" A woman's voice, closer now. "Don't try to move. We're going to get you out."
I try to respond, but my mouth won't work properly. The words come out slurred, unintelligible. Everything feels far away, like I'm watching it happen to someone else.
"What's your name?" the woman asks.
I want to tell her. I want to explain everything—the questions, the disabled phone, the way he looked at me when he realized I was leaving. But the words won't come. My tongue feels thick, useless.
"Can you tell me your name?" she asks again.
The sirens are louder now, right on top of us. I see flashing lights through the spider-webbed windshield, red and blue painting the morning in urgent colors.
"I need…" I try to speak, but the effort exhausts me. "I need to…"
"It's okay," she says. "Don't try to talk. Help is coming."
But I do need to talk. I need to tell them about Lorenzo, about the apartment, about the questions he asked. I need to explain why I'm here, why I'm driving a car that isn't mine, why I'm running from a man whose bed I shared.
Instead, I close my eyes and let the darkness take me.
9
LORENZO
The private hospital sits forty kilometers outside Rome, surrounded by cypress trees and sprawling manicured lawns. I park the rental sedan in the visitor lot and check my watch. It's been three days since Serena disappeared from my house. Three days since Emilio's phone rang with questions about his registered vehicle wrapped around a guardrail on Via Cassia.
"Handle it," he told me, "quietly." Based on the tone of his voice, I knew then, and I know now, what he meant. This entire thing has gotten too loud for the Costa name. Three days of a public prosecutor going missing while working on a case connected to us and now being tied to his car means trouble.
I walk through the hospital's polished lobby with a tightness in my chest and an understanding of what I have to do—make it look like an accident. But how I'll accomplish that, I'm not sure. The minute they ran his plate, the entire situation was fucked.
At the reception desk, a nurse in crisp whites looks up from her computer screen. Her badge readsGretchen. I lean forward, letting concern crease my features as if I'm a very worried loved one of some very sick patient.
"I'm looking for information about a woman brought in three days ago," I say, keeping my voice steady. "Car accident on Via Cassia. My cousin was supposed to meet her that evening, and when she didn't show…" I let the sentence trail off, allowing her to fill in the gaps.
Gretchen's expression softens. "What's your name, sir?"
"Marco Tessari," I tell her. The false identity rolls off my tongue without effort. Years of practice have made deception second nature, and setting up her other mysterious follower to take the fall for this will help at least slow the investigation. My eyes flick up to the camera overhead, and I can only pray my face doesn't show up in some database somewhere for facial recognition.
She types into her system, frowning at the screen. "There was a woman brought in from that location. Listed as unknown—no identification found at the scene. She's in room 314, but I have to warn you, she hasn't regained consciousness since admission."
My chest tightens, though I keep my face neutral. "Is she… will she recover?" Feigning worry is easy. Keeping my heart steady after learning maybe I don’t have to kill her right away, after all, isn't quite as easy. If they don't know who she is, it means my job is less conspicuous but more complicated. I still need to find out everything she knows—but now my face is definitely connected to her in public ways.
"The doctors are optimistic. No major internal injuries, thankfully. Some bruising and a concussion, but her vitals are stable." Gretchen glances around the empty lobby, then lowers her voice. "Between you and me, she's lucky to be alive. The car was completely destroyed."
