Inside the armored SUV, the gunfire drops to a dull percussion, and the quiet between us turns surgical.
Alessio is breathing hard, his hands resting on his knees. His knuckles are split, dripping a slow trail of red onto his dark slacks. He looks like a surgeon who has just used violence as a scalpel, every line of him too controlled to be calm.
“Are you hit?” He reaches for me, his hands hovering over my shoulders, my waist, my legs. He’s looking for blood, for holes, for anything that might take me away from him.
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice sounding more steady than I feel. “Just a bruise. I hit the machine when we went down.”
He doesn’t believe me. He grabs my chin, tilting my face up into the dim light of the streetlamps passing overhead. His eyes are dark, the pupils blown wide with adrenaline and something much more dangerous. “If you are lying to me, I will check every inch of you before we reach the gate. Do not make me guess about blood loss.”
The possessiveness in his voice is a physical weight. It’s not just about the mission anymore. It’s not about the ledger or the dead-man’s switch. It’s about me. Somewhere in the middle ofthe slaughter, his protection stopped feeling like a threat and started feeling like a line I could stand behind.
“I’m not lying,” I whisper, though the sting in my upper arm is getting louder, a persistent throb that feels like more than a bruise. I tuck my arm closer to my body, hiding it in the shadows of my jacket. I can’t be the broken thing right now. Not when we just found out the house is compromised. “Alessio, the paper. I found something.”
I pull the crumpled manifest from my pocket and smooth it out on my lap. The light from a passing neon sign—a garish, buzzing pink—washes over the signature.
“He’s here,” I say, and the words feel like a curse. “Not offshore. Not behind ten shells. Here.” Either he was there recently, or someone wants us to chase the idea that he was. But the signature is close enough to hurt.I’ve studied his handwriting for ten years, Alessio. I know every loop, every arrogant slant of his pen. He’s in Chicago.”
Alessio takes the paper, his fingers brushing mine. The contact sends a jolt through me, a reminder that we are both still alive, still breathing, despite the world’s best efforts to stop us. He stares at the name, his mouth thinning into a hard, cruel line.
“He’s close,” Alessio says, the words tasting like ash. “And he’s feeding the Bellantis our movements from inside our own walls.”
“We can’t go back,” I say, the panic finally starting to claw its way up my throat. “If they have eyes inside the compound, going back blind is how we walk into the knife.”
“No,” Alessio says, his voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm register he uses right before he does something drastic. “We go back. Dominic and the war room are reasons we're going back, and if anyone inside those walls is supplying Vane, I want every exit secured before he realizes we've identified him. We go back, and I find out who is holding the camera.”
He looks out the window, his profile etched in the shifting city lights. He looks lonely. Even with a car full of men and a family that would die for him, he looks like a man who has been carrying a mountain on his back for eleven years. And now, I’m standing on that mountain with him.
“You should have left me at the clinic,” I say softly. “I’m just more weight for you to carry.”
He turns his head, his gaze locking onto mine with a ferocity that steals the air from my lungs. He leans in close, his scent—expensive soap, gunpowder, and the metallic tang of blood—filling my senses. His thumb traced the line of my jaw as he reached out, his touch unexpectedly tender for someone who had just broken a neck.
“You aren’t weight, Amara,” he rasps. “You are the only reason I’m still standing under it. If you go, the mountain falls. Do you understand me? You stay. Stay in my line of sight. You stay where I can keep your heart beating.”
I don’t have a comeback for that. The sassy, sharp-witted woman who always has a line ready is gone, replaced by a girl who just wants to press her face into his neck and stay there until the war is over. I don’t move away. I lean into his hand, closing my eyes for just a second.
The SUV hits a pothole, and the jar sends a white-hot spike of pain through my arm. I gasp, the sound escaping before I can catch it.
Alessio’s hand drops. His eyes snap to my arm, catching the way I’m cradling it. “Show me.”
“It’s nothing, Alessio. Really?—”
“Amara. Show. Me.”
He doesn’t wait for permission. He reaches over and unzips my jacket, his movements efficient and clinical, yet colored with a frantic edge. The damage is obvious, even in the dim light, as he peels back the fabric of my shirt.
A shard of glass from the window must have caught me as we dove. There’s a jagged tear in my skin, red and angry, blood soaking into the dark fabric of my sleeve. It’s not deep, but it’s messy.
He doesn’t say a word. He just stares at the wound, his face going terrifyingly blank.
“It’s just a scratch,” I say, trying to pull away. “I’ve had worse from a paper cut at the office.”
He grabs my wrist, his grip like a vice. “A paper cut doesn’t bleed for me, Amara. A paper cut doesn’t happen because I wasn’t fast enough to cover you.”
“You were fast enough! You saved my life!”
“I let you get hurt.” He says it like it’s a confession of a mortal sin. With trembling hands, he folds the clean white handkerchief he pulls from his coat pocket. He presses it against the cut, and I hiss as the pressure hits the raw nerves.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and the vulnerability in his voice breaks something inside me. This man, this monster who just tore through a warehouse to protect me, is apologizing for a splinter of glass.
