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The thought was relentless, circling my mind like a vulture waiting for something to die.

I had made my decision. I had chosen her, chosen this life, chosen to walk away from everything I had ever known: my old identity, my carefully constructed walls, the safe distance I’d always kept between myself and anything that mattered. But the timing... God, the timing felt wrong. Like I had waited too long, hesitated too much, let my doubts and fears hold me back when I should have been decisive. And now something was already in motion that I couldn’t stop, something that had been set into motion by my hesitation.

I didn’t know what it was. That was the worst part. Something I couldn’t see but could feel in my bones, like a storm gathering just beyond the horizon. A pressure in the air, a shift in the wind, a darkness creeping closer with each passing hour.

At night, I lay awake beside Madigan, listening to her breathe, watching the moonlight paint silver across her skin through the gap in the curtains. She slept peacefully, deeply, one hand resting protectively on her belly, her face soft and untroubled, completely unaware of the fear that was eating me alive from the inside out.

I wanted to wake her. Wanted to shake her gently and tell her about the dread that had taken root in my chest, the certainty that we were running out of time, that something terrible was coming for us and I didn’t know how to stop it. But how could I? What would I even say? That I had a bad feeling? That my instincts, which had kept me alive for so long, were screaming at me that danger was close?

She would think I was losing my mind.

Maybe I was.

One afternoon, about a week after I returned, we were in the kitchen together. Madigan was making bread. Something she had taken up since we moved to Montana, finding comfort in the ritual of kneading dough, in the smell of yeast and flour.

I watched her from the doorway, my arms crossed, trying to memorize every detail. The way her hair fell across her face. The way she hummed softly to herself. The way her hand occasionally drifted to her belly, as if checking that the baby was still there.

She looked up and caught me staring.

“What?” she asked, a smile playing on her lips.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just... looking at you.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of that lately.” She wiped her hands on a towel and crossed to me, sliding her arms around my waist. “Salvatore, talk to me. What’s going on?”

I wanted to tell her. Wanted to unburden myself of the fear that was suffocating me.

But how could I explain something I didn’t understand myself?

“I’m just... adjusting,” I said finally. “Being back—it’s harder than I thought it would be.”

“Harder how?”

“I don’t know.” I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated by my inability to articulate what I was feeling. “I just... I can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong. That we’re not as safe as we think we are.”

Her expression shifted, concern replacing the warmth. “Did something happen in Chicago? Something you’re not telling me?”

“No. Nothing happened.” I pulled her closer, needing to feel her against me. “I’m probably just paranoid. Being back in that world, even for a few days—it messes with your head.”

She was quiet for a moment, her fingers tracing patterns on my back. “You know you can tell me anything, right? Whatever you’re afraid of, we can face it together.”

“I know.” I kissed the top of her head, breathing in her scent. “I know, baby.”

But even as I held her, even as I tried to convince myself that everything was fine, I could feel it.

The clock was ticking down.

The storm was rolling in.

The inevitability of whatever was coming.

That night, I dreamed of blood.

Not the clean, clinical violence of a business deal gone wrong. Not the calculated brutality of the underworld I had grown up in, where violence was a tool, a means to an end, something you deployed with precision and purpose.

This was different. This was something else entirely.

This was chaos. Pure, uncontrollable chaos. Screaming that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Madigan’s face, pale and terrified, her eyes wide with a fear I’d never seen before. Not even when she’d first learned the truth about who I really was. The baby, our baby, crying somewhere I couldn’t reach, the sound growing more desperate, more distant, no matter how frantically I searched. And blood, so much blood, pooling on the floor like spilled wine, spreading across white tile, staining my hands, soaking into my clothes, no matter how hard I tried to wash it away. I scrubbed until my skin was raw, but it kept coming back, darker and thicker each time.