Blood Ties

Chapter 5

Don't break out, he said. Never said anything about breaking in.

It was simple, in theory. Use the blood. Break the handcuffs. Damiana's body ached, a dull, all-over ache, and the cuffs dug into the inflamed flesh around her wrists.

She pulled her wrists apart again, feeling for the central chain with her fingertips. No. No give there. She pulled at it. Pinched it. It was meant to be easy. A matter of concentration.

Damiana breathed in.

There. It was a swelling sensation in her chest, a fire through her veins. A feeling that made her want to roar with fury, a red tint to her vision. Her fingers burned as she pulled the chain apart. Like it was nothing more than putty.

Damiana breathed out, rubbing the feeling back into her wrists. Her mouth felt dry.

Now. It was only a matter of time. Damiana took the fragment of soup bowl from under her arm and sawed at the ropes at her ankles. They frayed, their fibres peeling away under the edge.

She stood, rubbing the feeling back into her limbs and tilting her head from side to side.

The sound of jackboots on marble carried through the thin door. There was a blackshirt in the corridor, outside the room. Damiana knelt, watched his shadow pass. She slipped out. Crept up behind him.

"Don't scream." Damiana pushed the shard of china up against his neck. His adam's apple bobbed underneath her hand. "You're going to show me where Scordato is. And Neroni."

Slowly, carefully, he nodded. She watched his hands.

"Scordato's out on business," he said. "I don't know where Neroni is."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

She felt him swallow again. Followed his eyes. A door, on the east side of the house, with no sunlight coming from behind it. Damiana stopped, frowning.

"What's in there?"

The blackshirt shook his head, his eyes wide. "I can't-"

A dominate, she realised. "Shut up," Damiana hissed, and pushed him forwards. Shard still at his neck, she opened the door and shoved him through.

He stumbled, into darkness.

Damiana jammed the shard into the side of his throat, through the artery, puncturing his windpipe. He choked, clutching at it. She closed the door behind them as he fell to his knees.

By the time she found the light switch, he was dead, blood soaking into the pale cream carpet.

She stripped him. Took his weapons and his clothes. A coat with bright silver buttons and a sotto capo insignia, a knife, a pistol. A notebook. A pencil. Damiana turned the small, sharp length of wood over between her fingers. Neroni was nowhere in sight.