Semua Bab The Black Rose: Bab 131 - Bab 136

ELLIEI count the eggs without meaning to. Four, five, six... enough. My hands move on autopilot, cracking them one by one into the bowl, and my brain is somewhere else entirely, running the same sequence it's been running since I landed on this island.Vittorio must've woken up hours ago, depending on how much of the wine he actually got down. When he does, the first thing he'll do is send someone to my room. When that someone returns empty-handed he'll lock down the estate and start making calls — the airport first, then every contact he has across Europe. He'll assume I panicked and bolted, which works in my favor. A panicked girl is a predictable girl, and predictable girls make predictable mistakes. He'll look for mistakes. I won't give him any.Elijah is the variable I can't account for yet and that bothers me more than anything else on this list. He got into that party through a blindspot I built, which means he's been watching me work for longer than I realized. How much does

LORENZOThe estate is too quiet.I notice it the moment we clear the perimeter wall — not the absence of sound exactly, because there's wind through the hedges and the distant push and pull of the sea somewhere beyond the grounds. It's the absence of the right sounds. No patrol at the east corner. No movement through the upper windows. The silence of a building that has been emptied deliberately, by someone who knew we were coming and wanted us to come.I hold up a fist. Silas and Noir stop behind me without a word.We crouch in the shadow of the hedge line and I scan the grounds — the path to the service entrance, the camera mounted at the corner of the east wing that should be sweeping and isn't, the faint light in the ground floor window that has no business being on at this hour."It's wrong," Silas says, very quietly, beside my ear."I know.""Could be a skeleton crew. Vittorio's at the warehouse, his people followed.""Or," Noir says from my other side, his voice flat, "he's not

ELLIEThe ceiling is wrong.That's the first thing I register before anything else — before the dull throb at my temple, before the brightness of the room, before the fact that I'm in a bed that isn't mine wearing clothes I don't remember putting on. The ceiling is too high, pale plaster with a thin crack running toward the window, and the window is throwing morning light at an angle that matches no room I've woken up in for the past six months.I sit up too fast and the room tilts violently and my hand flies out to grip the edge of the mattress. That's when I feel the pull at the inside of my elbow.I look down.IV line. Taped to the crook of my arm, running up to a drip stand beside the bed.My heart slams up into my throat so hard I feel it in my teeth.I swing my legs over the side, plant my feet on the floor, stand — the room sways and I grab the drip stand and drag it with me to the door and yank it open, and the two men standing in the hallway spin around fast, hands going to t