“I told you. I want you to give me something I can use. Names. Routes. A timeline. Something that justifies why she’s still breathing and why I’m still lying to my brother.” He pauses. “And then I want you to finish it.”
He holds my eyes long enough for the silence to calcify. Then he turns, gets in the Mercedes, and drives out. The car climbs the ramp and disappears into the white Vegas glare, leaving me alone with the heat, the concrete, and the taste of that conversation still lodged in my throat.
I stand there until I can’t hear the engine anymore. Hands in my pockets. Back teeth clenched so hard they might crack.
Excellent. Everything’s going great.
The hotel room is too quiet.
I’ve been back for an hour. Pacing. Sitting. Pacing again. The curtains are drawn and Vegas hums outside like a machine that doesn’t care about any of this. Natalia’s still at the hospital. Anna’s transfer is probably underway. Everything is probably fine.
Nothing is fine.
My burner phone buzzes in my pocket.
Unknown number.
I blow out a breath and pull it free as I drift toward the bathroom, already over this conversation before it starts.
“Paolo, I get it. You don’t need to?—”
“Luca.”
Ice floods my veins. It’s not Paolo. It’s Dario.
“What do you want, Dario?”
“What do I want? I want to know where the hell my brother has been for the last three weeks. I was worried. But fuck me for caring, right?”
“You’re not worried about me,” I shoot back, the old resentment flaring hot and fast. “You’re worried I fucked up. Be honest.”
The problem with Dario has never been that he’s a bad brother. He’s just the one Lorenzo turns to first. The one who walks into a room and doesn’t have to wonder if people are humoring him. The one who never had Blanco hanging off his neck like a sign that sayswatch this one, he breaks things.
Love you, bro. Hate this dynamic. Deeply.
“Can you blame me?” he finally bites out. “We haven’t heard a thing. Paolo just said you were ‘dealing with it.’ What the hell does that mean, Luca?”
I lean against the marble counter and stare at myself in the mirror. I look like shit. Pale. Tired. Haunted as hell. “It means the situation is complicated.”
“Complicated. Right. You know what’s not complicated? The job. Go there. Do the thing. Come home. That’s three steps. Even you should be able to count that high.”
Even you.
He probably doesn’t even hear himself say it. That’s the thing about Dario, the thing that makes it worse. He’s not trying to twist the knife. He just lives so comfortably in the role of the son who gets trusted that he doesn’t notice when he’s standing on the spot where I’m trying to breathe.
“You want the truth?” I ask.
Dario doesn’t answer.
That should be my cue to shut up.
Instead, I keep going because apparently I’m addicted to making my own life worse.
“The situation changed.”
“How?”
“Natalia changed it.”
