"Plans." My voice comes out wrecked.
“The map,” she says after a long moment. “The data… gives us the path. If Vincenzo confirms the relays are dead, we can kill him.”
"I know."
"And the mole?"
Turi. The man who raised me and then betrayed me. “We tell Dominic when the switch is confirmed dead. Tonight, Turi stays locked down,” I say. My voice is hard again.
"Amara?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't ever run from me."
She turns her head, her nose brushing my chest. She looks at the dresser where her clothes are now folded alongside mine.
“I’ve got nowhere I want to go, Alessio. You’ve made that inconveniently clear.”
She says it with a smile, but the truth is there. She’s done running. And I’m done keeping secrets from the only person who matters. I pull the covers over us, cocooning her in my heat. The compound is quiet, the war waiting outside the door.
I press my mouth to her hair and say nothing, because for once she is still here.
She squeezes my hand. It’s enough. I close my eyes, and for once, I don’t dream only of blood.
The animal isn't gone. It’s just waiting. If anyone tries to take her, I know exactly how careful I will have to be. That’s a promise from a man who finally has something to lose. I tighten my grip as she falls asleep, counting her heartbeats. One. Two. Three.
She’s alive. She’s here. She is one more reason this godforsaken house has to survive.
13
AMARA
The monitorsin Alessio's locked study hum at a pitch I feel in my back teeth, a low-frequency growl that matches the tension coiling in my gut. Outside these reinforced walls, Chicago is dragging itself toward dawn, but in here, time is measured in the rhythmic click of keys and the steady, heavy presence of the man at my shoulder.
Alessio doesn’t just stand near me; he holds position at my shoulder, all muscle and protective intent. Every time I lean back to stretch my neck, he shifts closer, close enough to remind me I’m not doing this alone anymore. Ten years of hunting in the dark, and suddenly there is someone standing beside me with a light.
"Focus, Amara," I mutter to myself, blinking back the grit in my eyes. The blue light from the monitors washes over my skin, turning the dark coffee in my mug into something that looks like ink.
"You’ve been at this for four hours without a break," Alessio says, his voice a low rasp that vibrates against my ear. He’s standing so close I can feel the heat radiating off his chest. He smells like the antiseptic of his clinic and something darker, something like rain on hot asphalt.
"Eat."
He pushes a plate of sliced apples and some kind of fancy cheese toward me. I don’t look up from the cascading lines of code. "If I stop now, I lose the thread. This node isn’t just encrypted; it’s recursive. It’s like trying to untie a knot that tightens every time you touch it."
"Then we cut it," he says. The sheer violence in those four words makes me smile, just a little. That’s the Costa way. Why solve a problem when you can just terminate it?
“Not this time. We cut the wrong wire and Vane’s dead-man’s switch triggers. All my ten years of work, all your eleven years of evidence, and enough poisoned Costa-Bellanti data to bury the truth under federal chaos. We have to be surgical.”
I feel him stiffen at the word. He doesn’t like me being the one in the driver's seat when the stakes are this high. He’s the protector. He’s the one who kills the monsters in the hallway. Being the one who provides the cover while I do the heavy lifting is wearing on him. I can hear it in the way his breathing has gone shallow, the way his fingers twitch toward the holster at his hip.
“I’ve got the Gold Coast master relay isolated,” I say, my fingers flying over the keyboard. “If we stop this cleanly, the rest of the network can’t trigger without showing us where it bleeds. Vane loses his insurance.”
"Do it," he commands.
The air in the room feels thick, like we’re underwater. This is the moment. This is what my brother, Curtis, died for. I close my eyes for a split second, seeing his face—the way he used to laugh at my jokes, the way he promised me we’d make it out of the South Side. He found a money trail, and they snuffed him out like a candle. Now, I’m the one holding the flame.
I hit the final sequence.
