Roberto doesn’t argue. “I’m with you.”
We pivot together, shoulder to shoulder. The stair runner eats our steps as I take them two at a time.
Muscle memory takes me up even as a hundred calculations fan out in my head—angles, windows, the fact that the south side of the house sits in more shadow without the pool lights bleeding color over the lawn. I’ve lived in this layout more years than I want to count. I could draw it blind.
“Left wing is clear,” a voice whispers in my ear—Nico on comms, filtered through my phone. “Two down outside the mudroom. Four unaccounted for.”
“Copy,” Roberto murmurs into his cuff without breaking stride. “We’re on second-floor sweep, north corridor.”
We hit the landing, and the hallway stretches before us, a dim tunnel, light stitched in along the floor from slats not fully shut. A shadow slides across the far wall. The chandelier swaying. Then—
A thud. Not a shot. A body, maybe.
Coming from my room.
I don’t remember telling my legs to run; they just do. Roberto is at my shoulder, gun angled, mouth thinned to a line. The distance from landing to door stretches on and on, like a trick of the mind. I don’t slow.
The distance from landing to door shrinks and stretches and then snaps back to its true length. I still don’t slow. The knob resists under my hand. Something is braced on the other side, wedged tightly, turning the door into a wall.
Another sound, short and strangled, follows, and then a voice, high with pain. Elena.
“Elena!” My voice is a roar, shredding my throat. “Elena!”
Every bad night I ever had tightens into a single point under my breastbone and lodges there. Carlotta getting weaker and weaker before dying in the bed on the other side of this door, without me there. Lucia’s face before she walks through a door, and I never see her again.
Not again. I can’t lose her.
I can’t.
I won’t survive it.
“Together,” Roberto says. His voice is steel. “On three.”
I plant my feet, square to the wood, shoulder cocked. “One—two—”
We brace and hit. The door gives half an inch and punches back like a chest. The shock runs down my spine and flashes my teeth. A heavy oak cabinet behind it. The one that sits by the door and holds nothing but fucking flowers.
I curse the damn thing.
“Again,” I tell Roberto.
We rear back and hit together.
The frame shudders. The white paint spiderwebs around the lock plate. Something behind the door skids an inch and digs in. My shoulder blooms with pain. I lean into it and let it strengthen me.
Another cry of pain from the other side fuels me.
I step back two paces, set, and ram the door with Roberto.
The lock plate tears, the jamb splits, and the door blasts inward six inches, crushing the edge of an oak cabinet. It tips, slides, and goes over with a crash that shakes the floor. We force through the gap, wood clawing our shoulders—
—and three shots crack the dark. One-two-three.
My heart stops mid-beat.
Chapter Forty Two
Elena
