We arrange my outfit to resemble Lia’s. The only way out of the hospice at Sacré Cœur is by pretending to be her.
“Are you sure? You know I can’t come with you,” she says, worry darkening her face. We have only one ID between us. Only one of us can leave at a time.
“I’ll manage,” I say as she slips a light jacket over my shoulders.
“Here.” She presses my cane into my hand and tucks a phone and some money into my palm. “Call me if anything happens.”
“Don’t worry, Lia. I’m not the same person I was.” My voice is small but hard. “I’m not that naïve anymore.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, Miss,” she whispers.
I let her fear sit with her. It is not mine. I know what I have to do, and nothing will make me waver.
She has noticed the change since I woke from the coma. She keeps saying I should let bygones be bygones and enjoy this second life I was handed. I tell her to let those bastards say their last prayers. I will not stop until every name on that list is crossed off.
My cane thumps on the pavement as I climb out of the taxi. I pass through the hospital’s mirrored double doors and avoid my reflection. The face is mine, but the person inside is not. The best plastic surgeons have rebuilt what was broken, and though I still resemble my past self, it has a foreign feel to it. They stitched the map of me back together, but that does not mean I recognize what I see.
I fill out the form, confirm my identity at reception, and a nurse leads me to Enzo’s room.
“He’s out of surgery and still out of it,” she says.
No complications, she assures me before leaving. He’s out of danger.
She thinks she’s giving me good news, but she doesn’t realize how far from the truth that is. He is merely hurt.
I tsk in my mind. That’s not enough.
I set my cane against the bedside desk, take a few wobbly steps, and lower myself into the chair. From here I study him—the same features he’s always had, unsoftened by sleep or time. The same beautiful face that once made my heart skip.
My chest tightens with pain.
“Why couldn’t you love me like I loved you?” The question slips out, breathy, my voice ragged from disuse. My vocal cords still carry the ghosts of the tubes that saved me.
“It would have made everything so much easier,” I add, and on an impulse of ruin, I reach for his hand. Skin meets skin; the contact is an electric betrayal, a memory that unspools down my spine.
It was all a lie.
For one tiny instant—one private theft of a heartbeat—relief floods me.
He’s alive.
I admit, even to myself, that I had been worried sick. I let that softness live for a second, let it warm the cavern where my tenderness used to be.
Then I lean forward and press my lips to the top of his hand. It is a kiss as chaste as mourning—a goodbye to the part of my heart that still wanted him.
“You’ve made it this far. You better survive this now, Enzo Agosti,” I murmur as I stand, my voice as sharp as a knife. “Because your death will be bymyhand.”
I gather my cane and step into the noisy current of the city, my lungs filling with the cold New York air as if I’m just learning to breathe again.
I take a long, steady breath.
Allegra Agosti died five years ago. They didn’t just kill my body—they killed my heart, my spirit, my hope. Now I am a shell with a purpose: to get my son back.
And no one can stop me.
3
ALLEGRA
