“Stay with me,” he breathes.
I nod, because my voice won’t work. He takes my hand, places it on his belt again, and we move.
The door opens to the cool night air. He doesn’t push it wide, just enough for us to slide through sideways and ease it back into its frame.
The cold makes the sweat along my spine chill. We’re on a shallow stoop along the house’s flank, tucked between a downspout and a bank of shrubs. The fountain’s hush reaches usfrom the courtyard. Lights bleed across the lawn in long ovals. Men cut through them and vanish.
Gio crouches, shoulders narrower than they look in a suit, and scans the lawn with a patience that makes my throat tighten. He studies the rhythm of the moving shadows, the way I do a simmer—waiting for the exact second where the surface breaks. He points with two fingers: hedge, then hedgerow gap, then the darker line where the wall runs to the service gate. I nod. I can make that.
We go low. Dew soaks the hems of my pants. The shrub scratches my ankle where the fall into the hedges left a scrape. I don’t think about it. Gio sets our pace, a crawl that feels like forever until all at once we’re at the hedge and swallowed by it. Voices slide past, too close. Someone laughs again, too loud now, nerves in the sound. Another voice tells him to shut up. Boots grind gravel ten yards off.
Gio’s hand tightens on mine—wait. A flashlight washes the hedge tops in a thin line. I press my face to the dirt and count the seconds. The beam moves on. We move with it, staying under its edge, two bodies threaded through branches.
At the break in the shrubs, he stops me with a touch and looks out. The gate is a darker cut in the wall, iron ribs throwing thin shadows. Two guards stand thirty feet to the right, talking in low voices, their backs turned to the gate as they look toward the front drive, where they expect Gio’s assault to come from.
Farther along, another pair crosses the lawn toward the fountain. No one is looking at this slice of wall.
Gio leans toward my ear. “Straight,” he breathes. “Don’t run; just match my pace.”
I nod, because I don’t want to risk speech, afraid I can’t control the volume of my voice. My fingers are cold around his belt. He shifts forward, waits for the pair by the fountain to hit the far side of their arc, then moves. We ghost out of the hedge and into the open. The grass gives just enough under my feet to swallow the sound. I keep my eyes on his shoulder blade and copy every angle he makes.
At ten yards, a voice barks from the opposite side of the lawn. Both guards by the drive turn. Gio doesn’t break stride at all.
The gate fills my vision. Iron. Lock plate. A dark seam where it meets the brick wall.
We reach it, and he moves me to press into the shadow of the pillar beside him, breath thin in my chest, waiting for the next move.
I don’t know what we’re waiting for. I’m afraid to ask, to draw attention to us.
Soft footfalls approach. I brace to bolt, but a shadow forms in front of us, and my throat loosens: Antonio. Another shape steps in behind him: Nico. We trade quick nods.
Antonio raises his hand, presses his thumb to the plate. A green pinprick shows. The lock releases with a small click.
Gio pulls the gate an inch, then two. He turns my shoulder, slides me through first. Cold iron grazes my arm. Gio follows, then Antonio, then Nico, easing the gate shut until the latch settles.
We keep to the wall, single file, shoulders brushing brick. The neighbor’s hedge begins twenty feet on; we slip behind it and cut across their lawn, staying in the dark strip between shrubs and house.
Another corner. A side yard. The street opens ahead. A dark SUV waits half a block down.
Gio angles me to it without breaking pace. Antonio peels off to look up and down the street, then circles back. Nico takes the rear.
We reach the car. Gio opens the back door and guides me in, then slides in beside me. Nico takes the front. Antonio drives.
It’s not until we’re well away from the house that Antonio speaks.
He checks the mirror, voice low. “You make your drop?”
Gio gives a short nod, his arm anchoring me to his side.
“The drop?” I ask, looking between them.
“Little gift we left for Russo,” he says.
The name jolts through me. “Russo?”
Gio glances down at me. “Adriano Russo.”
My brow pulls tight. “I know that name.”
