“Bring her.”
My spine goes wire-tight.
Two guards peel away and disappear inside.
I don’t breathe.
Don’t flinch.
Carlo smiles like he bought tickets to something beautiful.
“Let’s see what she thinks of your offer.”
And when I hear boots deep inside the building—when the air shifts, when something in my chest recognizes her before my ears do—
I know something with a clarity that burns.
This was never about my life.
It was about whether I’d still have one after I saw her.
The Truth Changes Him
Carlo flicks two fingers in the air.“Bring her.”
The word cracks across the entrance like a match.
Metal scrapes somewhere inside the warehouse. A grunt. A scuff that could be a shoe catching on concrete—could be pain. My spine locks. My hands curl, empty and useless.
Then she appears.
Dragged.Not walking.
Her body stumbles between two men like they took her apart and put her back together wrong. Her wrists are chained behind her back, metal biting into skin that was never meant to carry this much weight. Her lip split, and a dark red line sliced her mouth in half. Blood glistens under the industrial light. Her hair is a tangled mess on one side, the snarl you get when hands grab and pull just because they can.
And her eyes—
They find me.
Not dim.Not broken.
Alive, like a fire that’s been feeding on smoke and finally got a mouthful of oxygen.
“Santino,” she whispers.
It barely leaves her throat. It doesn’t need to. The sound knows the way through my ribs; it cuts straight in, like it’s been waiting for this opening.
Everything narrows to her.
The warehouse. The men. Carlo’s mouth and his gun. The stink of oil and old blood and money rotting in steel barrels.
Gone.
There is only Pia in front of me—hurt, furious, unbent.
And I know.
More sure than I ever knew God.
