Rough hands grab me from both sides, their fingers digging painfully into my arms and shoulders as they start to drag Luca and me toward the back of the SUV. I scream then, clutching Luca tighter against my chest as I try to twist away, my body reacting on pure panic.
“Let me go!” I shout.
Someone yanks me backward hard enough that my grip falters on him, and for a terrifying split second, I feel Luca’s weight being pulled out of my arms. His arms tighten around my neck as he cries out, startled and scared.
“Mama!”
“No!” I scream, fighting blindly, kicking, twisting, doing anything I can to get us away from these people.
A hand clamps over my mouth and soon, Luca is ripped away from me completely. The world narrows as I’m dragged off the shoulder of the road and thrown into the back of the SUV. Luca is screaming now, his guttural cries piercing the night air.
I’m flipped over onto my stomach. Something snaps around my wrists. They cinch them together brutally tight behind my back before I can even fully register what’s happening, the bite of them unforgiving.
“Stop! Please! Please—” I sob, the words tumbling out brokenly. “Don’t hurt him!”
I’m shoved forward, my head slamming against the opposite side’s door. Pain flares bright behind my eyes, but I barely feel it over the terror clawing up my throat. I kick my legs and manage to roll onto my side, catching one last glimpse of Luca as someone comes around to shut the door.
“Mama!” he cries again, reaching for me.
“Luca!” I scream.
The door slams shut, sealing me inside the SUV alone.
18
DANTE
I wake to the sound of rain hitting the windows outside my study.
At first, it’s only that—the soft, insistent patter against the terrace doors. Normally, it calms me. White noise for a mind that never truly shuts off. The kind of sound I let bleed into my thoughts when frustration knots too tightly and slowly begins to steal the sanity from me.
Tonight, strangely, it doesn’t.
I shift on the couch and force myself to sit up, immediately regretting it.
Pain lances through my shoulder, radiating down my arm in a slow, punishing throb. I hiss quietly through my teeth, breath catching for just a moment before I school it back into the same mask I always hide behind. It’s an unfortunate reminder of the self-inflicted punishment I’ve decided to cast onto myself. A penance, of sorts, one I didn’t bother to avoid.
Rolling my shoulder once, I grit my teeth until the pain dulls into something a little more manageable. It doesn’t disappear entirely but remains as a physical echo of choices I’ve made. It’s a consequence I’ve accepted.
Sleeping in my study isn’t exactly new.
What’s different is thewhy.
After my conversation with Elena, I made the decision to give her space. Not because I wanted to. I simply felt it was necessary. I had just upended her entire world with news no mother should ever have to hear. There was no version of me that could soften that blow, no amount of reassurance that wouldn’t sound hollow in the face of a bounty placed on our son’s life no matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise.
At the time, I thought promising to protect our son would pacify her. Now I see that that had been a hubristic thought. Anything I said in those moments would have been forme, not for her.
So I stepped back.
While I spent the last few days tearing through leads, tracking Enzo across continents and shell companies and dead ends, Elena had spent every waking second with Luca. Which is exactly where she belongs. As much as I hated being separated from her and felt the absence of her like a phantom limb, I understood it. This wasn’t about my comfort. It wasn’t even about my guilt.
It was about Luca.
He barely knows me. I have no right to wedge myself between a mother and her child simply because I miss her, because the quiet on my side of the house has started to feel unbearable.
So I didn’t.
Instead, I did what I’ve always done when I can’t fix something. I buried myself in work.
