Good. Let him hate me.Hate is distance.Distance is safety.
My chest knots.
That’s a lie I keep shoving down my throat.
If you leave, they’ll be fine.If you cut yourself out, the bleeding stops.
One block.Then two.
By the time I hit the third, my lungs burn and my legs go soft—not from the run, from the way my body keeps dragging me backward. To Santino’s hands. To his mouth. To the way he spoke my name like a promise and an execution in the same breath.
I shove him out of my head.
He isn’t mine.I’m not his.
I’m a walking crime scene wearing lipstick.
Mercy is a luxury I stopped earning the night my father’s blood hit tile.
Water cascades off awnings. Somewhere a dog barks, sharp and desperate. Traffic whispers in the distance like it knows something’s wrong and refuses to say it out loud. A car glides past, headlights smearing gold across brick.
Disappear.Forget them.Let them forget you.
Lightning fractures the sky, white and violent. Thunder never comes. Even the heavens are holding their breath.
I’m halfway across the next intersection when the van appears.
Black. Unmarked. Windows are too dark for a city that likes to pretend it’s safe. It turns onto my street slow and certain, the curve of something that already knows where it’s going.
My pulse spikes.
Not because I’m scared.
Because the feeling is familiar — the weight of the engine’s hum,the grip of tires on wet stone,the way it doesn’t rush.
Predatory.
I tell myself I’m imagining it. Another vehicle. Another asshole driving cautiously in the rain. I tell myself I’ve lived in enemy territory too long, and every shadow looks like a threat when your nerves are stripped raw.
Then the van eases under a streetlight.
And I see the crest.
Small, black-on-black. Easy to miss—unless you grew up seeing it stitched on jackets across poker tables and back rooms. Unless you memorized it with your teeth clenched and your heart in your throat.
My stomach drops.
Vescari.
My father’s executioners.
My fingers go numb. My throat locks. I force my legs to move faster and duck down the next side street like I’ve got anywhere in the world to be. Rain lashes my jeans, colder, harder, like the night’s decided it owns me now.
If I can reach the avenue two blocks over — If I can melt into a crowd — If I can—
The van doesn’t pass.
It follows.
