A map appears, and the Gemini interface pings a neat, blinking dot.
Northwest. Good girl.
I tell myself I only slipped the microtag under the insole of her boot because I knew she’d run the first chance she got. I tell myself it was insurance. I tell myself a lot of things while remembering how small her feet looked kicked up on the safehouse bed, boots flung half off like she trusted the room more than she trusted me. I slid the tracker in like a sin and stood guard like it wasn’t.
“You’re not following her,” I mutter to the empty apartment, reading the note again. “You’re making sure she lives.”
Then I close out the app and text Leo.
Me:Scrub cameras on our grid for the last two hours and feed Ale the wrong blocks.
His response takes a minute, and I hold my breath. He’s my guard but his loyalty extends to all Geminis. Can I really risk telling him the truth?
The reply finally comes.
Leo:Copy. You good?
Me:Define good.
Leo:What’s going on, capo?
Me:I can’t get into it now. Just keep this between us.
Leo:Will do.
A long pause, then more dots.
Leo:There was another breach in Gemini’s security system today. The IT guys are waiting on you.
Fucking Spada Nera. Their timing couldn’t be worse.
Me:I’ll handle it when I get back.
I push to my feet. The bedroom tilts, and I steady it with a palm to the dresser. The phone’s camera roll holds three new photos I didn’t take—me on the rug, limp as a corpse. Smart. Vicious. She must have sent Tiernan the pictures from my own phone. Proud doesn’t begin to cover the feeling crawling around under my ribs.
I grab a clean shirt from the closet, a different gun from the lockbox in the wall, and cash from the dead drop under the bathroom sink. I pocket a second tracker and a comms bead just in case. The mirror over the sink shows a man who looks like he lost a bar fight with a memory and came back for more.
I thumb the map again. The dot moves. It’s steady, not sprinting. Where are you going Kitty Cat? She thinks she has time now. She bought it for me too. Of course she did.
“Just keep her safe,” I say out loud, to the fan, to the walls, toDioif He’s listening. “Then let her go.”
It sounds noble until I really taste it. It tastes like the same lie I told myself on a Sicilian morning with seagulls in the air and a future in her eyes.
I kill the lights, rearm the alarm, and slip out the back like I was never here. The March air knifes my lungs awake. Somewhere a dog barks. And further in the distance a train complains its way across town.
The dot slides another block west. I set off after it, fast and quiet, telling myself this is the last time I chase her.
But I know fully well it isn’t.
If I’m being honest with myself, I started chasing her the day we met on the beach and some part of me never stopped. My thoughts whirl to the past, drawn deeper with my quickening footsteps.
My boys and I are shouldering through a crowd at the beach club the scent of the sea and rum thick in the air. Rope lights are strung between palms with a plywood bar in the center and a DJ spinning summer beats out of tired speakers. Waves crash along the shore, thumping behind the music like a second heart. I’m halfway to ordering shots when the back of my neck goes hot.
She’s here. The girl from the beach.
She’s in a white sundress, bare shoulders kissed pink by the sun, and hair like copper lit from the inside. She’s laughing at something a girl beside her says, not looking at me, and it ruins me more efficiently than any bullet I’ve ever dodged.
“Matteo,” Enzo crows, clapping my shoulder, “you’re buying the first round?—”
