She shouldn’t say my name like that. Soft. Wounded. Trusting me with something I don’t deserve.
She shouldn’t look at me as if I’m someone who can keep her safe when I couldn’t even keep my own child alive.
And yet I can’t remember the last time hearing my name didn’t feel like a knife. But from her it feels like a plea. A tether. A reminder that I’m still a man beneath the monster.
And that destroys me more than any bullet ever could.
“You stay here,” I say at last. “Where it’s safe. My men will guard you around the clock. You don’t go anywhere without me.”
She blinks, confusion and something like hurt rippling through her expression.
“Lorenzo, you don’t have to do this,” she whispers. “You can send me home. It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
“I do.”
The word comes out flat. Iron. Final. I don’t soften it with gentleness I don’t have. I don’t pretend this is a request. It’s a sentence. One I have every intention of enforcing. She cannot leave my home until I know she’s safe.
Her brows pull together, a small crease of worry forming between them. I’ve seen that look before—on Sienna, when she wanted to fix something she had no power over. The memory slices through me so violently I feel it in my ribs.
We stare at each other, the air between us thick and choking. The fire snaps loudly in the grate, one burst of flame leaping upward, casting her in gold and shadow. It feels like it’s mockingme. Like even the damn fire knows my life has split open and everything inside is burning.
And then it settles. A glow. Embers.
Just like what’s left of me.
My voice barely comes when I speak again.
“Will you pick out an outfit for Sienna to be buried in?”
Her breath catches, but I push forward, hollow and numb.
“You know what she’d like best.”
The words echo in the vast room, swallowed by stone and silence. Saying them feels like ripping the last thread holding me together.
Her lips part but no sound comes out. And in her eyes, I see it. The moment she realizes I’m not asking because I need help. I’m asking because I can’t do it myself.
Because choosing clothes for my dead daughter will break me in a way even bullets never could.
And because—God help me—I trust her to honor my child more than I trust myself.
I turn to leave, but she whispers behind me. “I’m so sorry she’s gone.”
I nod once, not trusting my voice to do anything but promise more violence in the hours to come. Because sorry doesn’t change the fact that Sienna’s gone.
Outside, the snow keeps falling. Inside, I move because there is work to be done.
8
Birdie
I wake up in a bed that’s not mine.
The room is too large, too quiet, too cold despite the fire that burns low in the corner. I blink at the pale morning light spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and for a moment, I can’t remember where I am.
Then it hits.
The pain in my side and in my arm.
