I laugh into it.
I cry into it.
This is our peace.
This is our ending.
For approximately three seconds.
A low rumble cuts through the quiet.
My brain offers thunder.
It’s wrong.
Gravel crunches.
My body stiffens before thought returns.
Santino’s hand drops from my face.
He turns toward the window.
Toward the drive.
Toward the lie we’ve been telling ourselves all evening.
The engine dies.
Silence roars.
He’s already moving.
The man who said I love you is still here.
So is the one who was trained to kill.
My stomach drops.
“Of course,” I whisper. “Of fucking course.”
Peace never lasts in this family.
The Knight’s Warning
The knock isn’t loud.
It doesn’t need to be.
It cuts through the house like steel through silk—precise, deliberate, final.
Santino is off the couch before the echo dies. The warmth burns off him in a single breath, replaced by something iron-hard and coiled beneath his skin. He pulls on his pants without looking at me, movements controlled in the way men get right before they destroy something.
My heart slams so hard against my ribs I taste metal.
I follow him down the short hall, bare feet on floorboards still warm from us. The sanctuary feels wrong now—too open, too exposed. The quiet that held us an hour ago has sharpened into a waiting thing, taut as a wire pulled tight between trees.
Santino doesn’t touch the lights.
