Twenty minutes go by like that. Thirty. My arms start to ache from holding the binoculars steady. A stray cat picks its way across the overgrown lot next door. A car passes on the cross street, music thumping, then fades into the distance.
Still, nothing stirs.
The familiar tang of betrayal rises in my throat. Did Frank play me? What if he fed me bullshit coordinates to buy himself time—or worse, to set me up for whatever Aleksei has planned next? I should’ve known better than to trust a man who’d already sold me out once. Idiot. I’m an idiot, and Sage is going to suffer for my idiocy.
“This was a mistake,” I mutter, lowering the binoculars. “Just a dumb fucking— Wait.”
Right as I spoke, a light clicked on. Fourth window from the left, second floor.
I yank the binoculars back up so fast I nearly crack myself in the eye socket. My hands are shaking as I adjust the focus, but there’s no mistaking what I see.
It’s Sage’s silhouette against yellowed curtains. I know the distinctive shape of his wheelchair and the tilt of his head as he reads something in his lap. He’s sat like that, hair falling in his eyes no matter how many times I’ve tried to coax him into cutting it, since he was eight years old, back when he hunched over comic books in his hospital bed while I sat vigil and prayed to a God I didn’t believe in.
My throat seals up tight.
“Bash?” Zeke sounds like he’s miles away from me right now. “You good? What do you see?”
I can’t answer or explain or do anything except stare at that window, at my little brother’s shadow moving behind the glass.
He’s right there. Close enough that I could probably hit the building with a well-thrown rock. If I screamed his name, he might hear me.
But with the guards I still can’t see, the guns I know must be waiting, and all the imminent violence simmering between us, the distance is as good as infinite. Sage might as well be on fucking Jupiter.
“He’s there,” I finally manage to croak. “Z, he’sthere.”
I remember all over again the moment I first laid eyes on him: Aleksei standing in my doorway nearly sixteen years ago, snowflakes melting in his dark hair, holding a bundle of blankets that couldn’t have weighed more than a loaf of bread.
“His name is Sage,”Aleksei had said, thrusting the baby toward me.“Mama died having him. He’s got nobody else.”
I was basically a fucking baby in my own right in those days. I didn’t know shit about how to raise another human being. Hell, I couldn’t even take care of myself. I’d been working double shifts at a steakhouse, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, eating ramen seven nights a week as I tried to get Hale Hospitality off the ground. But I took that bundle anyway, because what the fuck else was I supposed to do?
Sage was so small then. Impossibly, unbelievably, terrifyingly small. His fingers were the size of matchsticks. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he made these tiny mewling sounds that reminded me of a kitten we’d found once behind our apartment.
But in that moment, I held my baby brother against my chest and made a promise.
Nobody will hurt you. Not ever. Not as long as I’m still breathing.
Now, I’m staring at his shadow through binoculars, and I’ve never felt more like a liar in my life.
But I’m going to fix this. I’m going to fix everything. Zeke, Yasmin, Sage, Eliana—I have so many people who wish they didn’t have to rely on me, but they do, they are, they will. I won’t let them down again.
I’m going to take care of my people.
No matter what it costs me.
21
ELIANA
hand feel /hand fel/: noun
1: a baker’s intuitive sense of dough readiness through touch alone.
2: his palm on your belly, learning the shape of what you made together in the dark.
I should be sleeping. I know that.
But I can’t.
