Riding The Edge - Elise Faber Page 0,29

my biological parents were to have that sounding board, to have solid and stable people in my life who didn’t keep me at a distance, even though I was rarely available for more than the odd phone call.

“But I feel like a fucking asshole,” I said, “knowing that I can talk to her about almost everything when I can’t even move the conversation past weather with my own mom.” A beat. “Which, I understand, makes me sound like a big whiny baby when I was lucky to grow up in a stable home, to have a roof over my head.”

“Dan,” Ava said. “That’s not your fault. ”

“Whose then?” I asked.

“Theirs,” she told him. “Just because they made sure you had food and a place to sleep doesn’t mean they gave you everything you needed to thrive.” I heard her shifting, felt her gaze on me. “You’re allowed to have your feelings, to wish you had something different.”

“Maybe.” I glanced over at her, unable to discern much of her body in the shadows. “But I know how lucky I was, especially when I’ve seen what other people go through, what you’ve endured.”

“I’m not a victim,” she declared.

“Certainly not anymore,” I said. “But at one time, you were a victim of your circumstances, just like we all are.”

“That’s—”

“The truth,” I pressed. “The only difference between you and other people is that you’ve overcome your past.”

“Fucking hell, Dan,” she burst out. “Do you really want to know? Do you?”

“No!” I exclaimed, surprising myself. “I don’t want to know or need to know. But it’s bothering you. It took you away from me when I thought we were at the beginning of something special.” I yanked at the fucking rock. “So yes, I think I have to know. You have to tell me. Otherwise—”

“I’m not ever going to be open for a relationship, you infuriating man.”

“Well, I’m not ever going to want anyone but you.”

Her inhale was sharp. “What?”

“I—”

I broke off.

Because footsteps were echoing outside the cell.

I launched myself over to her, reached Ava’s side the instant the door was wrenched open.

Light blinded me, hands reached in and grabbed hold of me.

“Dan!” Ava called. I felt her fingers brush mine, trying and failing to hold on. I was yanked out of the cell, too many rough hands restraining me to fight off every single one.

Then the door slammed closed.

And I was dragged down the hall of a dungeon belonging to an Italian mafia boss.

Fourteen

Southern Italy

Unknown hrs local time

Ava

I lurched up, throwing myself toward the door, but I didn’t make it in time.

The metal panel slammed, and I fell to the ground, the momentary adrenaline disappearing in an instant of agony, my ankle screaming, my side sending fiery pain along my torso.

“Fuck,” I whispered, tears prickling. “Fuck.”

For a few moments, I concentrated simply on breathing through the hurt, on waiting until my eyes adjusted. They’d been blinded by the light in the hall, by the tears—from my injuries, and not because I was feeling helpless and alone.

Right.

Once I’d calmed and my nerves didn’t feel like someone had taken a blowtorch to them, I shifted to the cell door. It was locked, no surprise, but I’d had to try on the off chance that they’d not latched it properly.

I looked through the tiny crack at the bottom of the door, so narrow that hardly any light made it through, but enough that I could lie flat and squint out of it.

Empty, from what I could see.

Empty, from what I could hear.

“Fuck,” I whispered again, rolling to my back.

Alone. Dan taken who knew where. They would most certainly hurt him. The question was simply how badly.

I had to get the tracker out.

Now.

Painfully, I crawled my way across the cell, over to the far wall, to the spot where Dan had been working on the rock.

And then I got to work . . .

Scratching away the buildup around the rock I’d managed to remove years before. It loosened and fell to the ground much easier than long ago. But it had also been more than a decade. There was dirt and dust crammed around the sliver of stone and it had to be slowly removed, chipped away with calloused fingertips and short nails.

Slow and steady.

Bit by bit.

Just like before.

I’d spent hour after hour doing this before I’d escaped, lying flat like I was now, body riddled with more severe injuries than I was sporting now.

Broken fingers and ribs. Cuts from sharp knives that had dripped my blood onto