Page 106 of Breaking Rosalind
This can’t be Cesare. He had no trouble pushing the lever that turned the wall behind the sink into a door. His brothers would also know about the secret entrance, so it’s probably a lackey, coming to interfere with what he thinks is a helpless woman.
Or Gunther finally staged a rescue party?
I shake off that thought. My handler probably wants me dead.
My heart pounds with two-parts trepidation and one-part anticipation. What have I got to lose by calling out?
Nothing.
Even if it’s a Montesano employee, he doesn’t know about the sink.
“Hello?” I call out.
The banging stops. “Rosa?” asks a familiar female voice. “Can you hear me?”
My heart skips several beats. “Britt?”
“How do I get inside?”
I blurt out an explanation. A second later, my best friend bursts through the door, dressed like a waiter.
My jaw drops. Britt must have followed the tracker I injected into my belly button. I glance at a metal cylinder hanging around her neck. It’s an encryption override module, which explains how she bypassed the biometric security.
Eyes widening, she takes in my naked form. “Are you hurt?”
I give her a nod and try not to squirm. Explaining why Cesare left my body unmarked might be more humiliating than suffering all his bullshit.
“How on earth did you get past all the guards?” I ask.
Britt rushes to my side with a set of bolt cutters and surveys the chains, the hooks, and the wrist cuffs.
She snips the padlock holding my hands in the metal split, and the leather comes loose. “I ducked out before the shooting.”
“Shooting?” I free my hands with my teeth and toss the splint on the floor while she crouches to snap my ankle restraints.
As we both slip into catsuits made of material to render us invisible to security cameras, Britt explains that the Moirai sent a team of assassins to infiltrate Roman’s welcome-home party as waiters and guests.
I frown, wondering if it’s a good idea to replicate the method another assassin used to take down the Capello family. There’s no time to question it when she presses an energy bar to my lips and cracks open a small bottle of water.
“Are you alright?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I down the entire contents while chewing. “Let’s go.”
We race out of the bathroom, through the playroom, and out of the door. My steps are unsteady and my gut churns with nausea at the sudden influx of sustenance, but I push through, not wanting to waste Britt’s deadly risk.
She didn’t just break through the Montesano family’s security. She abandoned her mission. If Gunther discovers Britt jeopardized a lucrative triple assassination for me, she’s dead.
We continue down the corridor, through another security door, and into a wider hallway lined with doors and cameras. I shiver at the reminder that this is where the Montesano family keeps their prisoners.
The faint noise of yelling and gunshots is my only source of comfort, knowing that anyone watching the security cameras will be too preoccupied with the assassinations notice if our catsuits don’t keep us completely invisible.
Britt turns to me, her features hardened with determination. “It will be chaos upstairs. There are hundreds of guests trying to escape the shooting. We can’t go back the way I came.”
“Alright,” I rasp. “Then let’s go in the opposite direction. If there isn’t another exit, we can find a hiding place.”
Britt rushes ahead down the hallway, passing the underground prison cells, and stops at another door. Her encryption override module lets it open with a click, and we continue down a darkened stairwell that leads to another door.
It shuts behind us, encasing us in darkness. From the musty air and the faint hint of damp, I can already tell that this lower part of the basement isn’t as well maintained as the place where they keep their captives.