The burner in my pocket buzzes again, a slow, threatening pulse. I let it ring out into the dark. Whatever I do next, I will do on my terms. Not because someone else ordered it, not because Donal’s boots will thunder down the corridor.
I fold the mask into my palm, squeezing the silky fabric. I pocket the cash I stashed under the loose brick and stand. Methodical, like I was born for this and like I might be dead tomorrow.
I can run. I can be a rumor and a ghost. Or I can stay and face the thing I broke.
I walk to the edge of the roof and look down at the street where Matteo left his cousin’s pregnant wife on a stretcher,where Alessandro’s hands shook with a fury that will not be easily sated. I imagine Matteo must look that way too now, and still, a part of me that remembers the boy with wild, wet hair flinches.
I am supposed to be precise. I am supposed to be efficient. I am supposed to be unbreakable.
Instead, I am a woman with a gun in her pocket, a list in her head and an impossible choice in her chest.
I pull my hood up, tuck the mask deeper into my jacket, and move. I’m not ready to run just yet but I can’t stay either. I just need to move, because motion keeps the panic from calcifying into fear. I have twelve hours left on my countdown. I have plans and favors to call in and a list that will get longer.
And even as I walk along the rooftop, a single thought follows me like a shadow.
If Tiernan comes for me, I will not be caught.
CHAPTER 17
HEAVY AS SIN
Matteo
I end up at the hospital just after midnight after a solid two hours of stalking across upper Manhattan. I couldn’tnotcome. As broken, shattered and fucked up in the head as I am right now, I couldn’t do that to Ale. Or Rory.
Then there was that scathing text message from Serena threatening to cut off my balls if I didn’t get my ass over here immediately.
I inhale a deep breath and try to still the manic thrumming of my heart. The emergency room smells the same no matter the city, a mix of antiseptic and burnt coffee, with that fluorescent light buzzing overhead. The cousins are clustered in the waiting area, much too quiet.
Serena’s on the far side of the couch with her phone in hand, the neon light making her cheekbones glower. Antonio sits silently beside her, arm slung across her shoulders, absentmindedly stroking her arm. Bella is curled into Raf, nails digging crescent moons into her palms. Alessia paces by the double doors. They all look up when I slide into a chair, and bothgirls immediately notice because how could they not? I look like I haven’t slept in a week, and I haven’t. The dark under my eyes is heavy as sin. My hands are still shaking from the drive.
“Matteo,” Serena whispers before I even have my jacket off. Her voice is all sharp worry and something else I can’t name. “You look like hell. What happened? Are you okay?”
I pull the tired, practiced grin down over my face and set it like a mask. “Hungover.” I shrug. “Late night, hookup. You know.” The lie tastes like poison in my mouth, but it sits closer to something honest than the alternative. I have no idea how to explain that the woman who tried to kill me, the woman whose face is already carved into the part of my mind I can’t reach around, is the same woman I can’t stop thinking about.
Serena rolls her eyes. “And you picked the night after my bridal shower to go hard?” She doesn’t believe me. Neither does Bella.
“You don’t have to be acoglione, Matty,” Bella says. “Talk to us. Whatever is going on, we can help.”
I want to tell them. I want to tell them everything… about the alley, the crosshairs, the thing I didn’t let myself do, the way Cat’s fingers trembled when she missed, the way I found out she’s the assassin and the way that knowledge feels like a fist inside my ribs.
I tell them everything. I always have. Keeping silent feels like a betrayal.
But there’s Rory on the other side of that wall with a baby in her belly that the doctors are still fussing over, and Alessandro shouldn’t have to overhear it all right now when he’s already being ripped apart by the rest of it.
So I fold the truth in and press it under my tongue like a shard of glass.
Raf slides to the end of the chair and stares pointedly at me. “Any leads from the shooting?”
“Alessandro is going to raze the whole damned city if that asshole isn’t found,” Antonio adds.
My gut twists.
“Well?” Alessia stops her pacing just long enough to ask.
“It’s…complicated,” I mutter. “Apparently, someone’s got a vendetta.”
“La Spada Nera?” Her eyes go wide.
