I pressed against the back wall so hard the hanger bar dug into my shoulders.My weight shifted the bar, and the hangers slid.One hit the floor.
Metal on hardwood.
The softest sound a human could make.The loudest sound in a house full of death.
The gun snapped into his hand in one sharp movement.No hesitation.No confusion.No fear.Only certainty.
He reached the closet.His hand closed around the doorknob.
I watched through the crack, paralyzed and conscious.Our eyes met.
Recognition didn’t mean familiarity.It meant he realized someone survived.
Shock crossed his face for a fraction of a second.It vanished under something harder.A decision landed in his expression.
His jaw set.
The closet door flew open.
I tried to scream, but his hand sealed over my mouth before the sound escaped.My feet left the ground as he dragged me out of the closet, my back slamming against his chest.I kicked hard, heel connecting with his shin, but he didn’t flinch.His grip didn’t loosen.I might as well have been fighting a stone wall.
He locked one arm around my waist and clamped the other across my mouth and nose, forcing my head back against him.I twisted, pulled, tried to bite through the glove covering his palm, but his control never broke—not sloppy, not frantic, not distracted.Panic pushed logic out of my head and adrenaline took over.I aimed another kick at his knee; he shifted, absorbed the blow without losing balance.The arm around my ribs tightened until air couldn’t reach the bottom of my lungs.Black dots crept across my vision again, and I realized I would pass out in the same entryway where my father lay dead.
“Stop.”His voice was low and sharp, not loud, not emotional—an order designed to override instinct.I didn’t stop.My body refused.I kept fighting even as my breath stuttered and my chest burned for air.His voice cut through me again, harder this time.“You’re going to hurt yourself.”The absurdity broke something inside me; I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to sob or laugh.The man who murdered my family worried I might injure myself struggling.I forced my muscles still to get oxygen.My lungs seized around the first real breath I managed, painful but necessary.
“Better,” he murmured, and the calm in his tone enraged me.“I’m moving my hand.If you scream, I make this worse.Understand?”I didn’t answer, didn’t nod.Another breath scraped through my throat when his hand eased away from my mouth.The first word came without planning, raw and instinctive.“Please.Please don’t kill me.”
He didn’t reply.I felt the steadiness of his breathing against my ear while mine came as jagged pulls of desperation.His arm still pinned me to him, keeping me upright when my knees threatened to give.His heartbeat stayed slow and even, completely unaffected by my terror or the bodies around us.He had murdered my father minutes ago, probably my mother and brother before that, and now held me like this was routine.
“My mother.My brother.Are they—”“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.”
The answer hung in the space between us, undeniable even without words.The air turned thick enough to choke me again.I swallowed the sob clawing up my throat.Crying wouldn’t stop him.Crying wouldn’t reverse anything.
“This wasn’t personal,” he said, voice flat again.“It was business.”“You murdered my family and you call it business,” I whispered back.Rage heated my blood faster than fear.“You think that makes it better?”
He squeezed my waist in warning, his patience thinning.“You shouldn’t be here.You weren’t supposed to be here.”“So it’s my fault?”I snapped.“Should I have texted first to make sure you knew I’d be home so you could kill me with everyone else?”“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean?Let me go.You’ve already destroyed my life.What’s the point of killing me too?I’ll disappear.I won’t say anything.I won’t go to the police.”“We both know that’s not true.”
He wasn’t wrong.The second he let me go, I would burn the world down to get justice.I would drag him into a courtroom and make him relive every second of this night.I would testify, identify, expose.But instead of saying that, I clung to survival.
“I’m not part of my father’s world,” I choked out.“I restore paintings.I work at a gallery.I have nothing to do with any of this.”“I know.”
The words pierced through my panic far more than his strength did.I froze.“What?”“I know who you are, Mia.You stayed away from the business.You built something separate.”“Then why—”“Because that doesn’t matter,” he cut me off.“Not to the people who ordered this.”
“Vincent Russo,” I breathed.He didn’t confirm.He didn’t need to.Everyone in our orbit understood the hierarchy.If Vincent Russo wanted loose ends tied, no one untied them.
“You want to finish the job,” I said.“You need to make me disappear too.”“You’re his daughter.That’s all that matters.”
“People will look for me,” I whispered.“People will miss me.I’m real.I’m not a loose end.I’m—”“People disappear all the time.”
Cold punctured through my body and stayed there.I saw the truth in his posture, in the certainty of his voice.I would die here unless something broke this pattern.
“Gabriel.”I said his name on purpose—human to human, not murderer to victim.“You don’t have to do this.You have a choice.”“No,” he said quietly.“I really don’t.”
But something changed when he said it.His arm loosened around me, not enough to free me but enough to shift pressure from my ribs.His hand moved to my shoulder instead of my mouth.His breath slowed deeper, not shallow like someone prepared to shoot.His gaze dropped to my father’s corpse and his jaw flexed hard enough to show strain.He wasn’t as composed as he wanted me to think.
I turned enough to see the side of his face.Our eyes met for a heartbeat.And that heartbeat showed something I never expected from a man who killed without hesitation—a painfully brief flicker of conflict.
