She goes on stroking my hair, and my eyes are already drifting closed. The exhaustion is too much, pulling me under despite my best efforts to stay in this moment. She’s the last thing I see before sleep claims me.
Her face glowing with possibility, like she’s just discovered what it means to be truly loved.
I’m falling now, sinking into warmth and safety and the knowledge that she’s here beside me, that she let herself dream with me, that she made my obsessive fantasy into something real and beautiful and full of life.
For the first time in five years, I feel like maybe we could actually be a family.
Maybe this perfect moment doesn’t have to end.
20
Cristiano
The afternoon sun is warm on my shoulders as I move carefully between the rosebushes, garden shears in hand. It’s been five weeks since I was discharged, and I’m stronger than the day I nearly fainted in the shower, but I’m still not supposed to be doing any of this. Lifting my arms, bending, exerting myself. But I need to do something other than lie in bed all day.
Besides, this is for Mina. I’m cutting flowers for her. All her favorites that I know she loves and she was never allowed to pick from Don Agnello’s garden.
She kissed me this morning before going to check on Leon. A quick, casual kiss that felt like the most natural thing in the world.
This garden is Don Cristiano’s now, and all my flowers are for her.
I’m examining a particularly perfect bloom when I hear tires on gravel. I look up to see Leon’s surgical consultant’s car pullingaway through the front gates. Dr. Silva, leaving after Leon’s weekly checkup. I lift a hand in acknowledgment as he drives past, then turn back to the roses.
The gates are still closing when movement catches my eye.
There’s a strangephtt phttsound, and then the two guards I posted at the gates slump against the stone pillars. Dark stains spreading across their chests where bullets punched through.
Silenced shots.
My blood runs cold.
Four men push through the gates before it can fully close, moving with the kind of precision that comes from training and experience. Tattoos crawl up their arms, and I see wolves with their teeth bared among them. Lucania soldiers. All of them armed.
Horror floods through me as understanding hits.
I’ve been so consumed with Mina and Leon and our perfect little world that I stopped thinking about the Lucanias and the consequences for leaving them with their mess.
And they’ve been watching me. Waiting for exactly this moment. The doctor’s visit. The gates opening. Me alone in the garden with nothing but shears in my hand.
They’ve been patient.
And now they’re here to collect what I owe them.
I drop the shears and lunge for the shovel leaning against the stone wall, diving behind the thick trunk of the oak tree. My incision screams in protest, but I ignore it. Pain doesn’t matter right now.
I should call for Paulo and Nico. One shout and they’d come running.
But if I shout, Mina might hear. Mrs. Santoro might hear. They’d come out here to see what’s wrong, and these men would put a bullet in their heads without thinking twice.
I can’t risk it.
The four men spread out across the lawn, flanking my position with the kind of coordination that tells me these are Rafiel’s best soldiers. Men who know how to hunt.
Men who know how to kill.
One of them calls out, his voice carrying easily across the garden. “Montoni! You left us to die. Left our brothers bleeding in the streets while you played house with your whore. Now you get to see how it feels.”
My hand tightens on the shovel until my knuckles go white.
