“Like Sicily?” Her laugh cracks and breaks. “You lock me in here and go die a hero somewhere, is that your grand plan?”
Leo slides the chain into place with a quiet click. Cat slams her palm flat to the wood so hard the door rattles. “You don’t get to make this choice for me!”
“I’m making it for me,” I hiss, and it’s the truest thing I’ve ever admitted. “If you’re there, I won’t be able to focus.”
“Maybe I don’t want you focused,” she fires back, voice fraying. “Maybe I just want you alive.”
Silence floods the hall. I press my forehead to the painted wood and swallow down everything else.
On the other side, she breathes like a runner who hasn’t stopped because stopping means feeling. “You promised,” she whispers, the words tearing, “you promised you wouldn’t?—”
“I promised I’d come back,” I manage. “Hold me to that.”
“You have to go, Matteo,” Leo barks.
I back away one step, then another.
“Matteo!” she yells, and the sound shakes something loose in me that I need tight. “Don’t you dare?—”
But if I stay, I lose both the shot and my nerve. I turn and move, the door closing with a soft thud that feels like a verdict.
“Damn it, Matteo, I love you.” Her voice breaks, barely seeping through the thick timber. I’m not even certain I hear her right.
I don’t stop. Down the walkway, down the stairs, into a night that smells like rain and my reckoning. I tuck the weight of Cat’s voice in my pocket with the extra mag and walk away.
CHAPTER 40
PRETTIER QUIET
Matteo
The linen mill crouches on the canal like a rusted animal, all busted windows and brick that remembers better centuries. At 02:17 the rain quits like it’s holding its breath. At 02:20 the south camera goes dark just like Leo promised.
Luka, Niall, and Orso ghost out of a shadowed loading bay to meet me. They’re Leo’s men, no insignia and uniforms as black as the night.
“No Leo?” Luka whispers.
“Babysitting,” I murmur. “Try not to die. This is important.”
He nods and then we move.
The south door is chained, but it’s rusted out. Niall works a bolt cutter with a lover’s patience, and the metal finally sighs open. Inside is a corridor that smells like damp rope and oil and a row of busted looms leading to a staircase. I feel Tiernan in the place like a pressure drop. The man’s name is a bruise on this city.
“Eyes on the office,” Orso breathes, chin tipping to a lit window across the production floor. Two silhouettes argue in theyellow wash. One is lean and coiled, the kind of body that was built by other men’s blood. Tiernan. The other…
My stomach tightens. Donal.Cazzo. Of course, that traitor would be here.
We split on the catwalk like three shadows. Luka bleeds left, Niall right, and Orso stays with me. Silencers on. Boots soft. The place hums with old machines and the low mutter of men who think the night belongs to them. They’re about to have a fucking rude awakening.
We’re ten meters from the office when the door slams open and two guards step out, laughing like they forgot the part where they’re mortal. Luka ghosts up behind them, two quickpfft pfftand they fold without drama. We slip past.
Inside the office the stink changes. It’s heavy with cologne, cheap whiskey, and money. Tiernan stands with his back to us, rolling his neck like a man who hasn’t slept on a real bed in days. Donal’s profile is half-turned, jaw set, eyes meaner than the last time I saw him. There’s a map on the desk stabbed through with pins and a gun laying atop it.
I line up the shot on Tiernan’s skull, breath steady.
Donal’s gaze cuts up and finds us through the glass. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t shout. He just blinks, once, slowly, as if to sayI knew you weren’t dead. He turns his body a fraction, hiding something at his hip. Something like a detonator. Or a tiny mercy. Or neither.
“Now,” I whisper.
