Then lowers us to the floor instead.
Concrete bites cold through my bones. He folds around me like he’s hiding a flame from the storm.
My fingers hook into the back of his neck. “Look at me.”
He does.
God help me, he does.
His eyes are fever-bright, burned raw. No priest left inside them. Only the man who almost lost the one thing he would have burned the world to keep.
“I’m alive,” I tell him. “You got to me.”
His jaw locks like it hurts.
“You shouldn’t have had to survive tonight.”
I press my forehead into his. “But I did. And you’re here. That matters.”
For one heartbeat—
Mercy.
Then—
Footsteps.
Not one.
Too many.
Steel boots.
Commanded voices.
Gunmetal clacking against bone.
Santino goes still.
His head lifts, slow.
The sound coils around the warehouse like a noose drawing tight.
I push at his chest. “We have to go.”
He doesn’t move.
Not yet.
He laces our fingers together instead.
Hard.
Like the world will have to break him to pull me away.
“I’m not leaving you again,” he says.
Not a vow.
