No one moves.
No one breathes.
I cross the room, grip his collar, and drag him to the center where everyone can see him. His screams turn wet and incoherent as I force him onto his knees, his weight dead in my hands.
“She was still warm when you erased her,” I say quietly. “You had no right.”
I pull the knife from my jacket. Slender. Silver. The one Beatrice gave me years ago, when she still believed I could leave this life behind.
I carve the letter deep into his face, slow and precise, from cheek to jaw. He howls until his voice breaks, until there is nothing left but breath and terror. The mark bleeds freely, impossible to hide, impossible to forget.
I lean in and whisper something meant only for him.
Something he will carry longer than the pain.
Then I let him fall.
I turn and walk out without rushing, without looking back, untouched by the chaos behind me. Carlo is alive. That is intentional.
A warning breathes louder than a corpse ever could.
The city notices.
By nightfall, everyone knows. The syndicates. The brokers. The men who thought I had softened, who thought grief would make me careless instead of lethal. Conversations stop when my name surfaces. Allies lower their voices. Enemies disappear before dawn.
Some call it vengeance. Others call it a message.
They’re both wrong.
It’s a correction.
I loved her. I lost her.
And grief has stripped me down to the most dangerous thing I have ever been.
You can survive a man’s hatred.
You do not survive his grief.
I don’t knock.
The door to her father’s apartment gives under my hand, the lock rattling as I push inside, bringing the cold with me. My blood is still hot, still wired from what I did hours ago, my hands carrying the faint stink of gunpowder and antiseptic that no amount of scrubbing seems to remove. I haven’t finished peeling this apart. I’m only just beginning, and I want answers while the city is still shaking.
He stands in the hallway like a man already half gone. Pale. Unsteady. His eyes struggle to focus when he sees me, like he’s trying to place a nightmare he hasn’t slept off yet.
I don’t give him time.
“You signed the cremation order,” I say. “You didn’t even wait for me to get there.”
The words hit him wrong. I see it immediately. His eyes widen, not in guilt but confusion.
“What?” he says. “No. I didn’t sign anything like that. They gave me papers, yes, but I thought they were hospital forms. I didn’t know.”
I step closer. The space between us disappears.
“You’re telling me you signed away your own daughter’s body without reading what they put in front of you.”
His breath stutters. His voice cracks open. “She was dead,” he says, and the word still sounds foreign in his mouth. “She was dead and I wasn’t thinking. The doctor said it was routine.Policy. They rushed me. Told me it had to be done immediately. Something about health protocols. Safety.”
