He lifts me without warning—one arm under my knees, one at my back—and carries me through the wreckage like the world doesn’t weigh a damn thing and neither do I. We move over bodies that will never stand again. Blood slicks the concrete. Shell casings grind under his boots like broken prayers.
Carlo is gone.
I know it without looking.
“The bastard ran,” Santino growls. “I’ll find him.”
Later.
Not now.
Not when he’s holding me like this.
He cuts into a dark corner of the warehouse where the shadows are thick enough to swallow sound. We vanish into it together, chaos sealing behind us like a door slammed shut.
He sets me against cold brick but never lets the space open between us.
Instead, he cups my face.
Both hands.
Careful.
Too careful.
His thumbs trace the edges of my bruises with reverence instead of fear. His eyes burn with it—rage and relief braided so tight I can’t tell which one will win.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, wrecked. “They… they—”
“Not like you think,” I whisper.
It’s a lie.
It isn’t.
It’s both.
My silence splits him anyway. I see it in the way his jaw tightens, like he might bite steel in half if it looks at me wrong.
“I need to feel that you’re alive,” he breathes, our foreheads touching. “Please.”
The word kills something in me.
I raise my shaking hands to his face and hold him like I’m afraid he’ll vanish if I blink.
“Then take me,” I whisper.
It isn’t about skin.
It’s about gravity.
It’s about pain loosening its grip when his breath tangles with mine and my heartbeat finally answers to his palm. Hekisses my forehead first. Then my cheek. Then the corner of my mouth like he’s afraid I’ll shatter if he moves too fast.
His hands slide to my back.
Press.
Anchor.
