I told her things I never tell anyone—about my first love, my father, things I’d buried so deep I almost forgot they existed. And I don’t know why. Maybe because that day, with her, the world stopped feeling so sharp around the edges.
It wasn’t just her words. It was the way she looked at everything, from the sky to the street, the food, and the trinkets, as if the world still deserved to be admired. And when she turned that gaze on me, I felt like maybe I did too.
For a few hours, I wasn’t a man chasing ghosts. I wasn’t defined by loss or revenge or the blood on my hands.
I was just…a person. Sitting in the sun. Breathing. Existing.
And it terrifies me how much I miss that feeling.
The moment she started talking about her past, I felt the pain. It was in the way her eyes glistened, the way her lip trembled just slightly before she caught it. I kept telling myself it was all a performance, another one of her masks. She’s fooled me before, back when I pulled her out of prison.
But that day, it wasn’t the same. I know it wasn’t. I could feel it in my bones, in the way the air shifted around us. I haven’t told anyone, and I won’t. I already know what they’d say.
She’s playing you.
She’s a manipulator, a liar, a killer.
She’spoison.
And they’d be right. But even then, I don’t care. Because whatever this is, whatever spell she’s cast on me—I can’t fucking break it.
It’s like she’s gotten under my skin, taken root inside me. She’s there when I close my eyes, when I breathe, when I try to think about anything else. I can still feel her hands on me—just a few quick touches, and yet they burned deeper than anything else I’ve ever felt. It’s like she branded me without trying.
When I told her I’d never met anyone like her, I wasn’t trying to manipulate her into opening up. Not that time. I meant it.
I’ve seen every kind of killer—cold, efficient, detached, broken. Yet somehow, Estella is alive. She moves with chaos, color, and confidence, all contained in a single body. She loves what she does, and it’s terrifying how breathtaking that is to witness. It’s impossible not to be impressed when someone embraces their darkness so completely.
Harder still is realizing that you’re falling for it.
“I think they got to him.”
The words slice through my thoughts, yanking me out of the spiral that’s been looping in my head since Barcelona. I blink, grounding myself back in the room—the hum of the fluorescent lights, the smell of cold coffee, the mess of scattered papers.
Every time I stop thinking about her, the craving grows stronger.
Jason sits across from me, his hand trembling slightly as he twirls a pencil between his fingers, pressing so hard that his knuckles bleach white. “I don’t know how or why,” he continues, his voice cracking around the edges. “And I don’t know what the fuck to do.”
I study him for a moment. The shadows under his eyes run deep, darkened not just by sleeplessness but by something heavier.
Guilt. Fear.
“When was the last time you slept?” I ask, and his gaze snaps to mine. “And I don’t mean an hour with your face buried in paperwork. I meanrealsleep.”
“How the fuck can I sleep, Dante?” he explodes, the pencil snapping in half between his fingers. “We spent years planning this, and our agent disappears six weeks in.”
“I know, Jason,” I say, my voice sharp as I match the rough tone of his words. “I’m the one who decided to bring these bastards down, remember? You don’t have to remind me what’s at stake. I’m not fucking stupid.”
He’s forgetting something. Without me, none of this would exist. Not the network, not the leads, not even the idea of justice we built from scraps of rage and grief. He and Lucia are good, and I’ve never questioned their skill or their commitment. But if he’d been alone, he’d still be that lost kid with too much pain and nowhere to put it.
Jason and I go way back. He was a mess growing up—unstable home, self-destructive habits, the kind of darkness that eats you alive if you don’t learn how to feed it something else. I remember the night he almost ended it all. I barely talked him out of it.
He’s been trying to repay me ever since, though I never asked him to. I didn’t save him for that. But working for the greater cause gave him something real. It gave both of us something real.
A purpose.
A meaning.
Lucia, on the other hand, carries a different kind of wound. Her death was social, legal, and reputational. Her fiancé—a manwith too much money and not enough soul—orchestrated it all. He erased her name without ever pulling a trigger. He used every weapon power could buy.
