All right means he moves the target. All right means the order in his ear won’t be the one his hands follow.
Sirens argue with the river. The city pushes busy against our skin, too many people living out the rest oftheir day. He stands in the shadow and does math I can’t see. His tie’s missing. His shirt carries a smear of someone else’s blood. He’s beautiful the way a weapon’s beautiful.
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
I understand it for what it is. A question punctuated by a bullet.
“Yes,” I say.
He exhales once, the kind of breath that lets a man decide something he won’t uncross later. He takes my hand again. We go deeper into the city, the truce dissolving behind us like sugar in black coffee, the name I carry turning from crest to target.
The heir’s chair is left behind and my place is now in a shadow next to a man I shouldn’t want. My feet find their rhythm beside his.
We don’t speak of love. We don’t speak of feuds. The river keeps our silence. Ahead, a building waits. We go through a door that I’ve never used. He knows the keycode. I don’t ask how.
He reaches, punches in the numbers, and the green light blinks fast, like my heart beating.
Chapter Six
Luigi
We cut through the city like someone just tried to kill us, because someone did, and the lie of Valentine Week peels away fast once bullets start landing where they’re not supposed to. The ceasefire exists so money can move cleanly, so routes stay predictable, so men who profit from violence can pretend they prefer order. The Vendetta is the verse that tells my house and hers when to break that rule, and someone meant for me to be the one to break it.
I didn’t reach for the weapon taped beneath my chair, and the peace shattered anyway.
That is when I understood I was meant to be the stooge everyone could point at afterward. The unusual orders, the timing, the way Isabella’s fiancé kept her in the line of fire rather than pulling her back, all of it clicked into an ugly shape.
I don't have a weapon, and I don't have time to finish him once I have her, so survival is key.
Survival for us both.
We’re saved by back stairs, service corridors, and doors that open because men owe me. Isabella keeps pace without a word. She doesn’t ask where we’re going.She watches my hands, the corners I examine, the places my attention lingers, and she trusts the route the same way she trusts me. That isn’t blind faith. That is recognition.
The place I choose isn’t the closest. It’s the one with the fewest eyes.
A shuttered restaurant on a narrow side street that still smells like steam and pepper even with the burners cold. I take us in through the rear, kill the alarm, bolt the door. I cut the back camera feed with a switch in the office drawer, the kind of small advantage you earn by being owed. The kitchen is stripped down to steel and tile, a skeleton waiting for muscle. The office is a box with a desk, a sink, and a couch too short for a man, perfect for two people who won’t sleep.
“Hands,” I say.
She gives them to me without hesitation.
I turn her palms up, thumb resting lightly on her pulse, and check each finger. No deep damage, only glittering cuts from shattered glass. I run cold water over her skin. The sink blooms pink and then clears. I tease out two slivers with the corner of a bar towel, rinse again, and pat her dry.
“This will sting,” I tell her, then swipe alcohol across the cuts.
Shebreathes. That’s all. No flinch. No apology.
I tape each knuckle cleanly, bridge the shallow slice at her wrist with a neat butterfly, smooth it down with my thumb. My hands stay steady. Her breathing evens. A tremor passes through her once and leaves, as if it found no place to stay.
“The order?” she asks. “Say it.”
“End the truce by ending the Valentine heir.”
Her chin lifts by a fraction. Not shock. Confirmation.
“And you, a Moretti, chose me.”
“I chose you, Miss Valentine.”
