From ashes to fire

Running scared

*Livia*

I duck into the narrow alcove beside the stairwell and rip open the plastic. The uniform is too large, a navy tunic with the hotel crest embroidered over the heart. I pull it over my silk dress. It catches at my hips, then falls almost to my knees.

The white ribbon Enzo tied around my wrist this morning sticks out beneath the sleeve.

He said it matched my dress.

I tear it off.

The ribbon lands in the trash beside an empty bottle of industrial cleaner.

The stairwell door pushes open under my palm.

I freeze.

A security guard stands on the landing below, looking down at his phone.

Not hotel security. Vitale security.

Marco Bellini has been in Enzo's orbit since I met him. He used to bring me espresso when Enzo kept me waiting in cars. He used to call me Miss Rossie with a polite little dip of his head.

Once, when Enzo broke a glass near my face, Marco handed me a napkin for the cut on my cheek.

He had looked sorry.

He had still locked the door after Enzo left.

Marco lifts his head and his eyes land on me.

For half a breath, neither of us moves.

Then he says, "Liv."

The nickname makes the stairwell shrink around me.

I put one hand on the rail. "I'm going to the spa."

"No, you're not."

I keep my expression smooth. "You want to call Enzo and ask if I'm allowed a massage?"

His jaw tightens. "Don't make this difficult."

The line is so familiar that my skin prickles.

"You all take a class for it?"

"Mr. Vitale is looking for you."

"I noticed."

He takes one step upward.

I take one step back.

"Come with me," he says. "Please. He's already in a mood."

A thin laugh catches in my throat. I swallow it down. "That sounds terrible for him."

"Liv."

His voice drops. He does look sorry. That is the worst part. Enzo keeps men like Marco close because remorse makes them feel human while they do inhuman things.

"You know what happens when you run," Marco says.

Yes.

The locked ward. The injection. The way every word I spoke became a symptom written in someone else's handwriting.

I press the coin so hard into my palm that its edge hurts.

"You know what happens when I don't?" I ask.

His gaze flicks away.

There it is. The answer.

I shove the stairwell door into him.

It slams his shoulder and knocks his phone free. He curses. I run.

My heels strike concrete, sharp and stupid. I kick them off after six steps, one after the other. The shoes tumble down the stairs, expensive black things Enzo chose because he liked the way they made my legs look.

Barefoot, I fly down two flights.

Marco shouts my name behind me.

The sound of his footsteps follows.

I hit the lower door hard enough to bruise my palm. It opens into a broad corridor washed in dim amber light. Spa signs. A display of scented candles. Soft instrumental music leaking from somewhere nearby.

I run past a woman in a robe holding a cup of cucumber water. Her mouth opens in surprise as I sprint by in a housekeeping tunic with my hair falling down my back.

"Ma'am," she calls.

I do not stop.

At the corridor's end, a mirrored wall reflects the lobby entrance fifty feet away. Crowds move through revolving doors beneath huge arrangements of winter branches. Taxi lights pulse beyond the glass. Freedom sits right there, across polished marble and a security desk with two men in black suits.

One is hotel staff.

One is Vitale security.

My breath catches painfully.

Marco bursts through the service door behind me.

"Liv!"

Heads turn.

Every part of me wants to fold. Smile. Apologize for causing a scene. Let the familiar machinery close over me. It would be easier to go upstairs and choose which version of myself Enzo wants tonight. Quiet Liv. Tearful Liv. Grateful Liv.

The woman who understands he is only trying to help.

My eyes find the lobby.

A family walks in from the rain, dragging carry-ons. A bellman laughs with a little girl in a yellow coat. A man at the front desk argues over a reservation while a pianist plays something slow near the bar.

There are witnesses.

That does not make me safe.

It gives me one ugly chance.

I step into the center of the corridor and raise my voice. "Don't touch me."

The words crack across the spa entrance making Marco stops.

His face drains of color. "Liv, please lower your voice."

"No."

People stare now. The woman in the robe backs away. A spa receptionist comes out from behind her desk, eyes wide.

Marco puts both hands up. "You're upset."

"I said don't touch me."

"I wasn't going to."

"You followed me into the stairwell."

His mouth tightens. He knows what I am doing. He also knows he cannot drag me through a hotel lobby while half the building watches.

A man in a navy hotel blazer approaches from the lobby. "Is there a problem here?"

Marco turns to him with practiced concern. "No problem. My friend is unwell. She got separated from her party. I am simply helping her back where she belongs."

I look at the hotel manager. He is young, handsome and slightly nervous. He sees my bare feet. The borrowed uniform. The hair hanging loose around my face.

He sees a mess.

Enzo has taught me what men like him will see next.

I push my shoulders back.

"I'm not unwell," I say. "I'm leaving."

Marco's eyes sharpen. "Liv, don't do this."

The manager glances between us. "Miss, would you like us to call someone?"

My blood goes thin.

Call someone. A doctor. Security. The police. Enzo.

I keep my gaze on his. "A taxi, please."

Marco steps forward.

The lobby manager raises one hand. "Sir."

Marco stops again.

The manager's attention returns to me. "We can arrange a car."

"No hotel car." I say it too fast, then make myself breathe. "A yellow cab. Please."

The manager nods, uncertain but moving toward action. "Of course."

Marco lowers his voice. "You don't understand what you're risking."

I almost smile.

He thinks I do not understand risk because Enzo has spent three years telling me fear is confusion.

I understand it perfectly.

I am leaving behind the documents that could prove what happened at Bellwether. The clothes I bought with cash. My grandmother's rosary. The only photograph of the two of us that does not have Enzo's fingerprints somewhere near the frame.

I am walking out with seven hundred dollars, a broken phone, and a key to a locker Enzo may already know about.

Still, my feet carry me toward the lobby.

Marco follows at a distance.

The manager speaks into his radio. A doorman hurries outside through the revolving doors. A few guests pretend not to watch. Others do not bother pretending.

I can feel Enzo's anger before he even appears. It has its own weather. The expensive citrus of his cologne. The calm voice. The silence afterward, when everyone else leaves the room because they know better.

My phone vibrates again.

I do not need to look.

I look anyway.

‘You are embarrassing yourself… and me.’

The next message comes before my thumb can move.

‘Come upstairs. I will forgive this.’

My vision blurs at the edges.

A cab pulls up at the curb.

The doorman opens the rear door.

I walk faster.

Marco says my name one more time, and then a man comes around the corner near the concierge desk.

Not Enzo.

Giacomo.

He is broader than Marco, older, with a broken nose and the dead, flat eyes of a man who never bothers feeling sorry. He moves toward me through the lobby with one hand inside his suit jacket.

The taxi is ten steps away.

The revolving doors are between us.

My bare feet slide once on the marble. I catch myself on a bronze planter, draw a breath that tastes like dust and panic, and veer right.

Away from the cab.

Away from the front doors.

Toward a narrow hall marked RESTROOMS.

Giacomo sees where I am going.

His mouth curls.

I shove through the men's bathroom door before he can reach me.