Wedded, Bedded, Betrayed

He peered cautiously inside.

The man stood in the middle of a pale blue bedroom, his back to him. Before him, her hands tied at the wrists to a headboard, her mouth gagged, her knees raised tightly to her chest, was a woman with terror-filled eyes.

Not giving the man time to respond, Gabriele stepped behind him and struck him in the neck, aiming for the spot that would bring instant unconsciousness. He aimed correctly. The man collapsed immediately, Gabriele only just catching him at the waist before he could fall in a thump to the floor and alert the men waiting below.

Laying him down carefully, he checked his pulse.

Satisfied he hadn’t killed him, he unzipped the waterproof pouch and pulled out his penknife.

The woman’s eyes widened further and she pulled her legs even closer to her chest, whimpers coming from behind the gag.

He crouched beside her.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said quietly, speaking in English. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

She whimpered some more but managed to nod.

There was something familiar about her...

‘I need you to trust me. I am not with those men,’ he said. ‘If they hear you scream they will come up here and probably kill us both. I’m going to untie you and remove your gag and we’re going to escape but I need your word you won’t scream. Do I have your word?’

Another nod. The whimpering had stopped, the terror in her clear green eyes lessening a fraction. Now her eyes searched his, the familiarity he felt clearly reciprocated.

‘We’re going to escape,’ he repeated. He sat on the side of the bed and lifted her head, enabling him to untie the cloth that had been wrapped around her mouth. As soon as it was freed, he placed a finger to her lips. ‘We don’t have much time,’ he warned. ‘We’re going to have to escape through a window unless you know a way out that doesn’t involve going downstairs?’

She jerked her head to an interconnecting door behind her. ‘The dressing room is above a roof. We can slip out through the window in there.’ Her husky voice was croaky. He guessed the scream she’d given had damaged her vocal cords. He could only hope she hadn’t suffered damage of any other kind.

He admired the fact that through the abject terror she’d just experienced, she’d still had the foresight to plan an escape route in her head.

He thought of Paul, the captain of his yacht, who would soon be on the lookout for his return.

‘Give me one moment,’ he said, pulling his phone out of his pouch and pressing the emergency button that would connect him.

‘Paul, I need the jet ski to be brought to the north harbour immediately.’ It was one of the many contingency plans they had spent two days running through. Gabriele attempting one of these contingency plans with a woman in tow hadn’t been in any of the blueprints.

His call done with, he sliced his penknife through the ropes binding the woman and quickly pulled the lengths away from her. Dark red welts encircled her wrists where the man had cruelly tied the rope so it bit into her tender flesh.

A groan came from the floor.

Gabriele ignored the urge to throw himself on the prostrate man and kick him in the ribs. Avenging this woman might give fleeting satisfaction but they could not afford to waste a single moment.

‘Can you walk?’ he asked, wrapping an arm around her waist and helping her sit up.

The woman was tiny. With white-blonde hair tied in a messy ponytail and those large green eyes, she reminded him of a porcelain doll. Breakable.

She nodded, but allowed him to help her to her feet. He wrinkled his nose. She smelt like a...bonfire? Studying her in more depth, he revised his porcelain doll opinion and altered it to grubby urchin.

Suddenly it came to him why she looked so familiar.

He recalled a small, doll-like girl from his youth, who had dressed like a boy and been able to climb a tree faster than anyone and then shimmy back down it as if a twenty-foot drop was nothing to worry about.

This was Ignazio’s only daughter, Elena.

He was putting his life at risk for his enemy’s daughter?

This woman was his enemy every bit as much as her father was. When Gabriele brought Ignazio’s downfall he had every intention of bringing his entire family down with him.

The man on the floor’s groans were becoming louder. Elena was eying him with a look that suggested she very much wanted to kick him in the ribs too.

‘We need to leave now.’ Gabriele grabbed her hand, having the presence of mind to avoid her wrists, and tugged her away and through to the dressing room she’d spoken of.

Whatever his personal feelings towards her and her family, and his plan to destroy them all, his destruction did not include allowing a vulnerable woman to be at the mercy of four armed men, one of whom he’d heard with his own ears wanted to hurt her.

He might hate Elena’s family but he still wouldn’t abandon her to such a fate.

He pulled the sash window up and looked out. As she’d said, a sloping roof ran under it.

Gabriele heaved himself out, dropping a couple of feet onto the roof.

‘Come,’ he said, righting himself when he was certain the roof was stable enough to hold his weight without crumbling beneath him.

Elena was already hoisting herself over the ledge. He put his hands to her tiny waist and helped her out, holding her tightly until he was sure she was secure on the roof. Apart from her bare feet, she was dressed in the perfect attire for escape, in long black shorts and a baggy khaki T-shirt.

Without exchanging a word, they both shimmied down to the edge of the roof.

‘Rescue is coming from the north beach,’ he said as he tried to get his bearings as to where they were, exactly, in conjunction with said beach. ‘We need to run to the right.’

She nodded, grim determination on her face, and then expertly swung over the edge so she was holding onto the rim of the roof with her fingers.

Being much larger, it took Gabriele a little longer to drop down. Before he could let go, she’d released her hold and fallen onto the wraparound veranda. Immediately she was back on her feet and jumping over the wooden rail and running to safety...except she was running to the left of the beach and not the right as they’d agreed.

He let go. He landed heavily but ignored the pain that shot up his leg and set off after her, calling as loudly as he dared, ‘You’re going the wrong way.’

She didn’t look back. The band holding her hair back had come out, her long, straight white-blonde hair billowing behind her.

* * *

Run, Elena, run.

In her mind’s eye she pictured the tree house her father’s staff had built for her and her brothers when they’d been children. If she could only reach it undetected, she would be safe.

But no matter how quickly she ran along the beach, she could hear him gaining on her.

Gabriele Mantegna. A man she vaguely remembered from her childhood. A man who scared her as much as the armed men in her family’s holiday home.

This was the man who had spent two years in an American federal prison and tried to implicate her father in his criminality.

In the distance ahead was the pathway that led into the forest and to her sanctuary.