I have everything to lose now. That does not make me invincible. It makes me careful.
I enter the basement war room, stale coffee and gun oil hanging over the mahogany tactical table. The brothers look up as I walk in, their faces grim.
“Alessio,” Dominic says, his voice gravelly. “About time.”
“I’m here,” I say, taking my place at the table.
Turi sits in his usual spot, warm smile in place, and every old part of me wants to believe it.
“You look tired, boy,” he says, and the word lands exactly where it always has. That is the problem.
I look him dead in the eye, and I don’t blink.
“I’ve had a long night,” I say, watching Turi’s eyes for the first crack.
7
AMARA
The sunlight hittingthe velvet curtains is too bright, too loud, and far too domestic for a morning that should feel like a crime scene. The air in the bedroom is thick with cedar, sterile soap, and Alessio, the man who just got past every defense I’ve spent ten years building.
My skin hums with a low-voltage current that refuses to shut off. Every inch of me feels marked. Not with bruises—Alessio is too precise for that—but with the raw reality of letting someone get close.
The friction of the high-thread-count sheets sends a jolt of memory straight to the gut. His hands. Those scarred, steady, devastating hands. He didn’t just touch me; he found the wire I’ve kept wrapped around my life for a decade and made it feel breakable. He shifted something in me I had spent ten years keeping locked.
I need to get out of this bed.
The reflex to bolt isn't a choice; it's a physiological response. It’s the itch in my heels that has kept me moving through three different states and a dozen temporary apartments since the day the dirt hit Curtis’s casket. I don't do mornings after. I dovanishing acts. I’m the woman who leaves behind cheap motel shampoo and no forwarding address.
I’m not the woman who stays in a mafia fortress while a Costa doctor decides I’m his new obsession.
Alessio’s side of the bed is cold. Empty. The realization hits like a bucket of ice water, followed by a traitorous pang of disappointment. Relief should be the only thing I have, but if he were here, looking at me with those dark, knowing eyes, the door would stay closed. He’d wrap an arm around my waist, pull me back into his heat, and I’d dissolve again.
"Get up, Amara," I whisper. My voice sounds wrecked.
Clothes are scattered across the floor—a chaotic trail of denim and cotton. I scramble out of bed, legs feeling like jelly, and gather my armor. No looking in the mirror. I don't want to see the flush on my neck or the way my eyes look different.
The bag is tucked in the corner of the walk-in closet—a rugged, black nylon duffel. It holds my entire life: three changes of clothes, a burner phone, and a single framed photo of Curtis wrapped in a t-shirt. I don't have much to pack. If you don't own anything, nothing can own you.
I move with the practiced silence of a ghost. I’ve slipped out of back windows while creditors knocked on the front door. I’ve vanished from job sites the moment someone started asking too many personal questions.
But as I reach for the mahogany bedroom door, my hand won't stay still.
It’s not fear. It’s the weight of the secrets. The ledger. The ghost financier. The man who spent six hours making me forget my own name is currently hunting a traitor who might be eating breakfast downstairs.
I can’t walk away from the case. Vane is the only reason I’ve breathed for a decade. If I leave now, the trail goes cold.
You’re leaving because if you stay, he’s going to swallow you whole, the cynical voice in my head snaps. You’re staying for the man, not the money, and that’s how people get killed.
I crack the door open. The hallway is silent, dim morning light filtering through the high windows. The house is a sleeping beast that could wake up and crush me at any second. I make it to the stairs, my pulse drumming a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Downstairs, the smell of wood smoke and frying garlic drifts up. It’s a warm scent that feels violently out of place in a house filled with guns.
I reach the bottom of the grand staircase, bag slung over my shoulder, eyes darting toward the front doors. I just need to find a side exit, a blind spot, and a way past the gate. I’ll go to a safe house and work the numbers from a distance.
I turn the corner toward the back of the house, heading for the secondary exit, and freeze.
Turi is sitting at the long, rustic wooden table off Matteo’s kitchen.
