“Get some sleep,” I tell him.
“Eventually.”
I leave him there. Sitting vigil for a girl who trusts no one, outside a door that stays closed, in a corridor where the charm has vanished. The patience in his posture, the way he’s arranged himself outside this room like a sentinel who isn’t guarding against threats but waiting for permission.
My room. I slip inside without sound. Isabella hasn’t moved. Still curled on her side, one hand reaching across the space where I was, fingers loose against the sheet.
I slide in beside her. She stirs, makes a sound that’s half a word, and rolls toward me without opening her eyes. Her body finds mine. Her face presses into my chest.
Her fingers curl into my shirt. I hold her closer.
38
NICO
Renzo’s footsteps fade down the corridor, and the smile I gave him dissolves like sugar in rain.
It was a good one. Easy. Warm. The kind that says everything’s fine. Brother, I’m just sitting on a floor outside a locked door in the middle of the night. No reason at all. Nothing to see here.
“Only a book. Progress.” Perfect delivery. He even bought it, or near enough.
So why does the performance leave a taste like copper on my tongue?
I resettle against the door. My tailbone went numb an hour ago. The hardwood floor has memorized the shape of me by now, the same way this hallway has memorized my nights. Same position. Same silence from the other side.
I’ve been here every night since we brought the girls in. If anyone in this family has caught the pattern, they’ve had the good sense not to mention it.
Except Renzo. He walked past with new eyes and a woman in his bed. Saw more of me in thirty seconds than I’ve shown anyone since I came back. Gia would have words for that. Warmones. Precise and impossible to deflect. My twin reads me the way I read everyone else, which is why I’ve been avoiding her since the raid. The questions she’d ask are the ones I don’t have answers for.
Why her? Why this door? Why do you speak Russian, Nico? When did you learn? What happened in Moscow that turned the charm from something real into something you wear?
On the other side of this wall, a girl who looked at me during the raid. Saw through every layer I’ve built since Russia.
The old walls creak around me. Pipes murmuring behind plaster. Rosa’s kitchen two floors down holding the ghost of tonight’s red beans and rice. I tip my head back against the wood. Let the dark settle in.
The room where I found her. Basement level. Concrete. A mattress on the floor. She was in the corner. Feral. Coiled. When I came through the doorway she launched at me. Fingernails. Teeth. A sound that wasn’t a scream but something more animal. More desperate. The noise of a creature that’s been fighting so long the fighting is the only thing left.
I caught her wrists. She bit my forearm. Drew blood. And I said the first thing that came to my mouth. Not English. Not Italian. Not any of the five languages I use to negotiate and charm and manipulate. Russian. Raw and unpolished and dragged up from a place I sealed shut years ago.
My hands went cold. Not nerves. Something older. A body response I haven’t felt since a concrete room with no windows. A voice asking questions in the same language I’d just used to comfort a stranger.
I shut it down. Pressed my palms flat against my thighs until the blood came back.
“Tishe. Ty v bezopasnosti.”Quiet. You’re safe.
She froze. Not the way people freeze when they’re afraid. Her whole body went rigid. Her eyes found mine, and what I saw inthem wasn’t fear or relief or gratitude. She looked like she knew exactly what she was looking at. Not the Santoroconsigliere.Not the charming brother. Her gaze cut through all of it like you look through glass.
Takes one to know one.
I started to step back. Give her space. That’s what the training says. That’s what Gia would do. Don’t crowd a trauma response, let the body come down on its own terms.
But when I shifted my weight toward the door, she made a sound. Not a scream. Not a word. A whimper so raw it went through me like a blade.
And she moved. Not away from me. Toward me.
She launched off that mattress and her hands found my shirt and she clung. Fists knotted in the fabric. Face pressed into my chest. Body shaking so hard I could feel her teeth rattling through the cotton. She held on. I stood there. Arms at my sides. Not touching her. Not holding her. Just standing still while a girl I didn’t know gripped my shirt like a lifeline. Shook against my ribs.
My hands opened. Fingers spread wide at my sides, useless, trembling.
