“Neither did you,” Gabriel answered, not raising his voice.“That’s why I—”
“Don’t.”I cut him off before he could shape it into anything that sounded like mercy.
For a long moment nobody spoke.The fire cracked behind him.The storm slammed against the walls like it wanted in.My vision blurred and I blinked hard, refusing to let tears fall.
When I finally spoke, my voice came out steady.“My father made choices.Choices that endangered people.But you’re still the one who killed them.That’s never going to change.”
“I know.”His voice scraped out of his chest.“I know exactly what I am.”
I stood because I couldn’t sit anymore.The chair legs screeched across the wood.He didn’t move, didn’t reach for me, didn’t try to explain or defend.I crossed to the window and pressed my forehead against the ice-cold glass.The storm was just white—no horizon, no trees, no sky.Just nothing.
Behind me, he stood.His steps stopped several feet away, not close enough to touch, not far enough to forget him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I didn’t turn.Didn’t answer.Sorry meant nothing next to what he’d taken.
I stared into the storm and tried to hold too many truths in my head at once—my father as a traitor, my mother as someone who stayed anyway, Tommy as collateral, Gabriel as the man who killed them and the man who kept me alive and the man who kissed me.
Too much.All of it.
So I stayed at the window and let the world outside disappear, and let his apology sit unanswered in the space between us.
The hours blurred again.They seemed to stretch and collapse at the same time—too much and not enough.I didn’t remember walking away from the window, only that eventually my legs stopped holding me and I ended up in the chair closest to the fire.Too tired to keep anger burning at full strength.Too raw to hide behind silence.
Gabriel rebuilt the fire.He did it without speaking, every movement controlled but empty.Not precise like before—this was the careful motion of someone running on instinct, doing a task because stopping would require thinking.He sat afterward, not in his usual watch-post by the window, but across from me.The flickering light hit him in a way that made him look like someone who’d lost something important and didn’t know how to get it back.
His shoulders weren’t squared like always.His spine wasn’t rigid.He looked...worn out.Almost defeated.His eyes stayed fixed on the flames, but he didn’t seem to be seeing them.
“This was supposed to be my last job.”The words barely broke the quiet.
I didn’t move.Didn’t breathe too loudly.“Last job” could have meant anything.
He kept staring into the fire.“Before the order came in.Before your father.I’d already decided—one more job, and I was done.”
The idea of Gabriel Russo—of this man—wanting to stop killing felt unreal.“Done with what?”
“All of it.”The slight motion of his hand indicated something wide—his life, the violence, the power structure that owned him.“I was going to leave.Run.Hope Vincent lost interest before he found me.”
“Why not leave sooner?”My voice came out low, unfamiliar.
“You don’t leave the Russo family,” he said.“Not standing.”There was no bitterness in his tone, just fact.“The only way out is to die or disappear so completely Vincent decides you’re not worth the trouble.”
The fire cracked.It echoed louder than it should have.
“You were going to run and start over,” I said.
“I was going to try.”His eyes still didn’t leave the flames.“Probably would’ve failed.Probably would’ve died fast.But it was the first time in my life I wanted something else.”
He paused long enough that the silence stung.When he spoke again, the resignation in his voice made it hard to breathe.
“And then I killed your brother.”
I went still.
“I’ve done a lot of terrible things,” he said.“Enough that I stopped counting a long time ago.But killing kids isn’t easy.Watching your brother sleep, not knowing he was about to die...”A muscle jumped in his jaw.“It hit me harder than it should have.So, I just pulled the trigger anyway.And watched something good get erased because someone paid me to erase it.”
My throat tightened.My pulse hammered in my ears.I should have been furious—blinding, consuming furious.Instead the grief was too big to make space for anything else.
