The shot spun him sideways, not fatal, but enough to break his forward momentum.His return round grazed past my ear—close enough to burn—and we both dove for new angles, weapons clattering across the floor.Then the fight turned primal.No distance, no guns—just fists, knees, elbows, and every brutal skill the mafia had drilled into us both.Victor broke my lip with a right hook.I shattered his nose with a headbutt.He went for my throat; I broke his grip.Every second of it felt like watching years of conditioning collide in a single violent loop neither of us could escape.
We hit the wall hard enough to rattle the shattered windows.His hand reached for the knife in his boot—the one he always carried, the one he’d used to teach me what close-quarters survival meant.I slammed his wrist into the wall until his fingers opened.The knife fell.I took the advantage, drove a knee into his abdomen, and he dropped, breath gone in a hard grunt.
I retrieved a gun from the floor.Victor leaned against the wall, bleeding heavily, chest heaving.Our eyes locked, and the resignation there cut deeper than any blow.He told me to make it clean, and he was right—I owed him that much.Not loyalty.Not forgiveness.But a professional ending.I raised the gun, sighted center mass, and wished—for a fraction of a second—that any of this had been different.“I’m sorry,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
He died instantly.I felt something inside me fracture, something permanent and irreversible.Victor had been the man who made me into this, had shaped me into a weapon—had brutalized and forged and sharpened until there was nothing left of the boy I’d once been.But he had also been the closest thing I’d ever had to a father.Now he was a body cooling on a cabin floor like every other man who’d come through the door tonight.
Mia approached slowly, as if she understood instinctively that I was hanging by a thread I couldn’t let snap.She took the gun from my hand, set it aside, and wrapped her arms around me without hesitation, without judgment, without fear.I let myself lean into her for a breath.Just one.Long enough to feel everything I’d been refusing to feel—grief, rage, guilt, and a crushing certainty that the life I’d been part of would never let us go.
Outside, the storm roared on, wild and indifferent.Inside, the fire sank into embers, and the bodies cooled around us while I tried to understand how to keep her alive in the ruins of everything I used to be.
***
Mia
Glass crunched under my boots as I crossed the ruins of what had been our sanctuary.Five days ago I’d wanted nothing more than to escape this cabin.Then everything had shifted—truth, violence, firelight, and the impossible way we’d reached for each other in the middle of the world breaking apart.Now there was nothing left of that fragile peace.Just bodies, blood, and the metallic burn of gunpowder in the air.
Gabriel stood over Victor’s body, shoulders locked with something I didn’t have words for—grief, maybe, or the ghost of loyalty dying inside him.I wanted to go to him, to touch him, but I didn’t know how to comfort a man who’d just killed the only person who had ever come close to being a father to him.There weren’t words for that kind of loss.Not when killing had been necessity, not choice.
Instinct pushed me to focus on something I could control—survival.We had to move, gather whatever we could before the next danger found us.I started toward the supplies, but the smell of smoke hit me like a physical shove.
Flames were already climbing the wall near the supply corner, bright and hungry.One of the lanterns must have ruptured during the gunfight, kerosene spilling until it found the dying coals in the hearth.The fire raced upward with frightening speed.
“Gabe!”My voice cracked through the thick air.“Fire!”
He turned, took in the scene with a single glance, and the soldier in him took over.“Grab the bags.We’ve got maybe three minutes.”No panic.Just fact.
Heat rolled toward us as I shoved the duffel strap across my shoulder, the weight of cash and forged IDs thudding against my spine.Gabriel moved fast, sweeping up weapons and ammunition, not hesitating when he stepped over bodies that had been alive minutes ago.The man who’d made love to me by the fire was gone for now.The weapon Vincent Russo had engineered was back, moving with lethal efficiency because that was the only version of him that could get us out alive.
Flames crawled across the old wood like they’d been waiting for the chance.Curtains went up in a sheet of fire, and the temperature spiked so sharply it felt like opening a furnace door.I grabbed the blanket we’d shared—sentimental, irrational, but I couldn’t leave it to burn—and scooped whatever food my free hand could reach.
“Mia, now.”His hand closed around my arm as smoke thickened and the roof above us groaned.The glow was everywhere, and we ran for the only exit not already swallowed by fire.
The door threshold nearly tripped me.A body lay half-blocking it—the man I’d killed.His eyes were still open, glassy and blank.I forced myself to look away because hesitation meant death.Time to break later.If there was a later.
We plunged into the storm.
The cold hit like a punch.Air so sharp it sliced through every layer of clothing, wind screaming like something hunting us.Snow came past my knees, every step a battle against the drifts.My lungs burned from the sudden temperature shift, and the weight of the duffel dragged at my balance until I nearly fell twice.Gabriel steadied me with one hand and pointed to the tree line—our only chance at cover.The fire behind us was already too bright, too obvious, a beacon for anyone searching the mountain.
I forced my body to move.Step, sink, drag, repeat.Each breath stabbed my chest, but stopping wasn’t an option.The storm wanted us back at the cabin, where it was warm and bright and deadly.The flames lit the snowstorm in reflected orange, making the world look like the inside of a nightmare.
A sharp crack sounded—an explosion—and I turned to see the cabin collapse inward, sparks spiraling upward before the blizzard swallowed them.The structure folded in on itself like an animal going to sleep, taking with it the place where I’d loved and hated and broken and changed.Watching it burn hurt more than I expected.That cabin had been the end of everything I was before and the beginning of whatever I was becoming now.
Gabriel called my name, barely audible over the wind.He didn’t drag me, didn’t command me—just waited until I looked at him.The firelight reflected in his eyes, catching the exhaustion and determination there.I didn’t know where we were going or how long we could run.But I knew I wasn’t alone.That mattered more than fear.
I reached for his hand, fingers cold and shaking.His closed around mine, steady and sure.Not promise, not comfort—commitment.We walked because there was nothing else except death behind us and danger ahead.One life had ended in that fire.Whatever life came next started here, in the snow and darkness.
We turned away from the burning cabin and moved deeper into the blizzard.The storm swallowed us quickly, erasing our shapes, our footprints, our past.Behind us, the fire raged, marking the place where Mia Grant had died and someone new had been forged by violence, need, and a choice that could never be undone.
We walked until the cabin was only a memory behind the storm, our hands locked together against the cold and everything waiting on the other side of night.The snow covered our tracks almost as soon as we made them, erasing any proof we’d ever been there.Soon there would be nothing left except a burned-out foundation in the mountains and two fugitives who vanished into winter because love—or something dangerously close to it—had made them choose each other over everything else.
We kept going.Because stopping meant dying.Because everything ahead was unknown and terrifying.Because neither of us could let go.
And because we had already chosen each other, even if tomorrow destroyed us for it.
Chapter Eleven
Mia
