We march into the office, the smell of disinfectant and a kind of despair that gets in your shoes clinging in the air. I pay in cash, and the clerk doesn’t even look up from his phone.
A few minutes later, we’re in Room 12. It’s small and surprisingly clean with a thin carpet, a bolted wardrobe, and a bedspread that has outlived at least three presidents. A thin band of light leaks through the curtains like a dare.
Cat drops the duffel by her feet, then moves to the window and peels back an inch of fabric. Her reflection stares back in the glass, pale and hard. I lock the door, run the chain, and check the bathroom window out of habit. Then I fold down onto the bed and exhale. The mattress complains when I do, and the sound feels too loud.
“Have you heard anything else from Leo?” she asks without looking at me.
“The Geminis will hit the linen mill when Tiernan rotates his men. He’s been bouncing between there and the docks like a rat with two holes. He’s probably heard they’re coming by now. He’s scared.”
She nods once, still staring out the window. “Are your cousins coming?”
My head dips, and I can’t help the sigh from spilling along with it. “I need to finish this before they get caught in a war.” My voice comes out lower than I plan. “But I don’t want you there.”
“Because I’m a liability?” Her mouth edges toward a smile that isn’t one.
“Because if anyone dares to touch you, I won’t think straight.” The truth lands sharp between us. “And because I don’t need you in my head when I pull the trigger. I need your voice reminding me to breathe when it’s all over.”
She lets the curtain fall, eyes boring into mine. For a second she looks eighteen again. Stubborn, sun bitten, and dangerous to every plan I ever made. “You’re not going in there by yourself.”
“No, I’m not. I’ll have Leo and a few men he’s lined up. It’ll be quick and easy. In and out.”
She scoffs. “You don’t know Tiernan Quinlan.”
“No, not personally. But I’ve put down plenty of assholes just like him.”
Cat clucks her tongue, shaking her head. “Assuming you succeed in this suicide mission, then what?”
“Then we leave.” I stand because sitting feels like surrender. The words race ahead of better judgment. “We don’t wait for morning. We don’t go back to Manhattan, and we definitely don’t ask permission from anyone. There’s a train to nowhere and a cabin at the end of it with our names on it. We make a stupid little life too boring for gunfire.”
Her throat works. “Matteo…”
“I mean it.” I step closer, careful, like she’s a cliff I’m more than willing to fall from. “I’ll walk away from all of it, my family, my friends. Gemini can crown another son. I don’t care. I did the math a thousand times and italwayscomes back to you. Come with me.”
She almost says yes. I can feel it in the way her breath stutters, in the way her fingers flex against her chest like she’s unpinning something that’s stitched there. The word gets to the edge of her mouth and stops.
Her eyes shine, then shutter. “I can’t,” she whispers. “I already told you, I can’t.”
“Because of Donal? Or is it your Da?” My jaw tightens before I can stop it. “Because they put a leash on you for a man who would hang them from it?”
“Because of everything,” she rasps, a raw scrape. “Because the world we made doesn’t exist anywhere but in ferries and sleepers and rooms like this. Because if you walk away from your family to follow me into the dark, I’ll hate myself for the days you’ll miss with them that you won’t admit you miss.” She takesa breath that hurts. “Because there are ghosts you still haven’t met.”
My head snaps back at the last part. It should make me angry. It doesn’t. It makes my bones feel hollow and my hands want to do something stupid like shake or hold or both. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She looks at the carpet, at the bedspread, at anything that isn’t me. “Nothing that helps.”
Which is not the same as nothing.
“Cat,” I say, softer. “Whatever it is, tell me. I promise I won’t break. I won’t run.”
“That’s the problem.” A bitter laugh tumbles out. She shakes her head. “I just can’t. Not yet.”
I don’t push. I’m learning. Instead, I inch closer and touch her knuckles where they guard her chest. She doesn’t pull away. “When Tiernan is a body and all the Quinlans are nothing but a rumor, the offer stands. A stupid life with a stupid lemon tree. I’ll ask again.”
She closes her eyes. “Ask me somewhere with sun and the sea.”
“Deal.”
We build a temporary peace out of silence. I lay my guns out on the motel desk like a ruined still life. I have two mags, a spare slide, and a little black friend for close quarters. She watches, then opens her duffel and does the same. “I’m going with you, and you have no say in it, Matteo Rossi.”
