His thumb moves across my cheek. Slow. Deliberate. Drawing a clean line through the blood.
Then he takes my hand—the hand that killed—and holds it.
We walk out of the warehouse.
Side by side.
Into the night.
Chapter Twenty-One
ALESSANDRO
Killian’s handswon't stop shaking.
He is sitting on the edge of the claw-foot bathtub in the corner of Rory’s studio. The porcelain is ancient, stained with layers of pigment—cadmium yellow, prussian blue, burnt umber—that look like old bruises under the harsh overhead light.
Killian’s elbows rest on his knees. His hands hang between them, suspended over the floor, slick with drying blood. The tremor is fine, relentless. It vibrates through his forearms, shaking droplets of red onto the white tile.
He is staring at them as if they don't belong to him. As if they are foreign objects that have just performed a function he doesn't understand.
The blood is darkening. It has cracked along the deep creases of his knuckles and settled into the beds of his fingernails. His shirt cuffs are stiff with it, the white cotton turned a rusty brown. There is a smear across his jaw where my thumb traced a line earlier, and a spray of fine, arterial mist on his cheek from when he broke the man’s wrist.
The silence in the bathroom is heavy. It smells of copper and sweat and the lingering, chemical scent of turpentine from the studio beyond.
I turn on the tap.
The water runs cold, then warm. The sound fills the small room, a white noise buffer against the memories of the warehouse. I test the temperature with the inside of my wrist—a reflex from a training context I can't recall. Warm. Not hot. Hot would sting the abrasions.
"Give me your hands," I say.
He doesn't look up. He doesn't move. His breathing is shallow, too fast—the rhythm of a system stuck in a combat loop, unable to downshift.
I crouch in front of him. I reach out and take his right hand.
His fingers are rigid, locked in a claw. The tendons strain against the skin, holding the ghost of a grip. I straighten them, one by one. The index finger resists. The middle finger is easier. The ring finger—the one with the gold wedding band—gives under gentle, sustained pressure.
The blood has pooled in the engraving of the ring, turning the gold dark.
I bring his hand under the stream.
The water hits his skin. The blood begins to dissolve, running in pink rivulets into the drain. The color swirls against the blue stains on the porcelain, a macabre watercolor.
I use my thumb to work the blood from his knuckles. I scrub the beds of his nails. I massage the tension out of his palm. The water carries the violence away, bit by bit.
Killian’s breathing hitches. The rhythm slows. A fractional deceleration.
I take his left hand.
This one is worse. The knuckles are swollen, purple and angry. The skin over the fourth metacarpal is split wide open. The wrist is tender—he winces when I rotate it slightly. Sprained. Not broken.
I wash it methodically. I am thorough. This is not just hygiene. This is an exorcism. I am washing the killing off him because he cannot do it himself.
The intimacy of it hits me. His hand in mine. The water flowing over our skin. The steam rising between us. It is closer than the sex on the drafting table. It is closer than the sutures in the safehouse. It is an act of service that strips away the last of the barriers between us.
I wet a cloth. I wring it out.
I bring it to his face.
