When we step outside the warehouse, the night air hits my face like a slap of cold water.
I’m still shaking.
Everything feels unreal. The gun in my hand only minutes ago. The knife at my throat. Vladimir Pavlov’s body hitting the floor. Suddenly, none of that matters anymore. Noah is alive. That’s the only thought my brain seems capable of holding.
Nico walks beside me, one arm around my shoulders. Noah is half asleep against his chest, his small arms still looped tightly around Nico’s neck like he’s afraid someone might take him again.
“I should tell you something,” I say quietly.
Nico glances down at me.
“I had never shot a gun before tonight.”
His eyebrow lifts slightly.
“I figured.”
“I was terrified,” I admit. “I thought I was going to shoot Noah. Or you, somehow.”
Make the right choice,Nico had murmured to me then. I knew he was telling me to aim to the right. The furthest fromwhere Noah was. So that, if I made a mistake, I wouldn’t risk hitting him. I aimed high. I aimed right.
I nearly hit that fuckface Vladimir.
And I did not hit my son.
That’s the part that scared me the most. The part that still scares me. Because it was reckless and stupid and if I’d been even just slightly off?—
Nico stops walking for a moment and turns me gently toward him. The corner of his mouth lifts in that calm, confident way that still makes my stomach do stupid things. “You didn’t,” he says, as if he’s been reading my thoughts.
“I almost did.”
“But you didn’t,” he repeats. His hand brushes the back of my neck, grounding me. “You did exactly what needed to be done.”
My throat tightens.
“You saved him,” he says softly.
I shake my head and glance at Noah sleeping against him.
“You saved him too.”
For a second we just stand there in the middle of the dockyard, the wind coming off the water, the distant sounds of men finishing the cleanup behind us.
Then, I notice the group waiting a few yards away.
And I blink.
Because I know them.
“... What the hell?”
Erin is the first one to reach me.
Except this is not the Erin I know from the restaurant floor.
This Erin is dressed in black, armed, and looks like she walked straight out of a crime movie.
She pulls me into a fierce hug.
