The roundabout looks exactly like every other piece of London infrastructure. Unremarkable, functional, a place thousands of cars pass through every day without a second thought. But from our position in the stolen van parked behind a lorry delivering office supplies, it feels like the center of the universe.
Everything hinges on the next few minutes.
I check my watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. The prison transport should be here any moment, following the same route they’ve used every Tuesday and Friday for the past eighteen months. Dante’s intelligence has been flawless so far, but that doesn’t stop the cold sweat breaking out across my forehead.
“Relax,” Pietro says from the driver’s seat. He’s the best wheelman I know, completely unflappable even when the job involves intercepting government vehicles in broad daylight. “You’re making me nervous with all that fidgeting.”
“Sorry.” I force myself to stop checking the time, stop adjusting my position, stop running through everything that could go wrong.
But Cristo, there’s so much that could go wrong.
The transport could be late, or early, or take a different route entirely. The guards could be armed. There could be backup vehicles we don’t know about. The whole thing could be a trap designed to catch people exactly like us doing exactly this.
And even if everything goes according to plan, even if we manage to extract Ginni without anyone getting killed, there’s still the question of what state we’ll find him in.
The contact Dante finally managed to reach inside the prison had been frustratingly vague. Ginni had been in a fight in the lunch hall, multiple injuries, taken to solitary confinement afterward. But no details about how bad the injuries were, or what might have happened to him in the days since.
The not knowing is eating me alive.
I think about my beautiful menace, alone in solitary, probably convinced I’ve abandoned him. The thought of him scared and hurt and thinking I don’t care enough to come for him is eviscerating me.
I’ve tried telling myself Ginni is safer in solitary. But I don’t believe it. I know guards can be worse than inmates. And thinking about that makes me want to scream.
He should never have been in that place. Should never have felt desperate enough to stab a policeman just to get my attention. Should never have doubted, even for a moment, that he was precious and wanted and absolutely worth fighting for.
I remember the conversation we had in the basement, when he was spiraling about his worth, about whether anyone would ever really want him. I’d told him that someday, someone was going to look at him and think, “That one, that’s the one for me, he’s crazy but he’s mine.”
I just wish I’d realized sooner that someone was me.
Ginni, with his impossible beauty and his fierce intelligence and his capacity for joy that can transform even the most mundane moments into something magical. The way he sang for me, putting his whole heart into every note. The way he looks at the flowers and candles, as if he is seeing the divine made manifest. The way he touches everything with such reverence, like the world is made of spun glass.
He should have been cherished his whole life. Should have grown up surrounded by people who saw his sensitivity as a gift rather than a flaw, who nurtured his creativity instead of trying to crush it out of him. Ginni should never have had to resort to kidnapping someone just to feel loved.
But his family sees him as an embarrassment. A problem to be managed and hidden away. And I was too fucking blind to see what was right in front of me until it was almost too late.
“There,” Pietro says quietly, nodding toward the road ahead.
The prison van comes into view, exactly on schedule. White with reinforced windows and government plates, flanked by a single escort car just like Dante predicted. It looks so ordinary, so unremarkable, except for the fact that somewhere inside is the most important person in the world.
“Remember,” I say into the radio, speaking to the crew positioned at various points around the roundabout, “minimal violence. We want this to look like an accident, not an assassination attempt.”
A chorus of acknowledgments crackles back through the static.
The van approaches the roundabout at a steady pace, the driver following normal traffic patterns, completely unaware that he’s about to become part of someone else’s plan.
Pietro eases our van forward, timing our approach perfectly. As the prison transport reaches the roundabout, a lorry that’sentering on the far side suddenly lurches forward, its driver apparently having mechanical difficulties.
The resulting collision isn’t serious enough to hurt anyone, but it’s spectacular enough to block two of the four exits from the roundabout. The escort car immediately moves to investigate, leaving the prison van momentarily isolated.
That’s our cue.
Pietro guns the engine, bringing us alongside the prison transport just as its driver realizes something’s wrong. I’m already moving, jumping from our van before we’ve come to a complete stop.
The rear door of the prison van opens as a guard tries to assess the situation outside. He’s middle-aged, soft around the middle, clearly not expecting to deal with anything more dangerous than a routine traffic incident.
I barrel into him with enough force to send him sprawling back into the van’s interior. His head slams against the metal floor hard enough to knock him out.
His partner, a younger man with nervous eyes, reaches for his radio, but my attention is focused entirely on the figure slumped beside him.
