Page 135
Chilly, relentless rain greets me outside, coming down in sheets as a soldier escorts me to the curb, the umbrella useless against the wind.
His accent softens when he says, “We will be watching.” He might mean it as reassurance, but I take the statement as a threat.
I get back into the SUV, which whisks me away while splashing through puddles. The ride is silent as we roll back into the city.
The driver asks, “Where do you live?”
I give him an intersection three blocks from my apartment.
When I climb out, the ground feels unstable beneath my shoes. Streetlights smear across wet pavement, the world blurred by rain and adrenaline.
Home, or what’s left of it, awaits. I certainly wasn’t going to have them drop me off in front of my building and call my neighbor’s attention to some kind of mob Uber service treatment.
Though I’m sure they know exactly where I live and probably have my floor plan memorized. I head upstairs, click the lock twice behind me after getting into my apartment, then check it again because paranoia’s my new personality trait. The moment the danger passes, my knees buckle and strike the tile.
While I try to hold myself together, a traitorous sob sneaks out. Then another escapes, and another, quiet and ugly and unstoppable like a dam breaking in slow motion.
Tears pool between my palms where I’ve pressed my hands to my face, and they taste like metal, like fear, like a loss I can’t name properly because naming it would make it permanent, and I’m not ready for that yet.
My reflection stares back from the window. Shadows under my eyes. Lips pressed into a hard line. A sharpness where gentleness used to live. Miss Martinelli, the kindergarten teacher, would never recognize this face.
A drawer yields an old phonebook page. Jacob’s number is still pinned to my favorites list. His name glows faintly. Officer Jacob Callahan. A decent man who once called me Soph. The kind of man who believed broken things could be mended.
I form my message quickly, desperately. I need to disappear. Witness protection. It’s bad. My thumb hovers. Deletes.
Because running now is cowardice.
The soft, almost polite knock vaults my heart into my throat.
When I open the door, the scent of lilacs hits first.
Izzy.
She steps in like she owns the air, perfectly dry as if the rain doesn’t dare to touch her. She wears a coat the color of sin, and her heels click like judgment. “You’re a hard woman to find.” Her eyes sweep over my shabby apartment. “Fitting.”
Every instinct screams at me to retreat, but I hold my ground. “What do you want, Izzy?”
“Enzo,” she replies simply while pacing the room. “He’s unraveling. The man you knew is gone. You broke him.”
My laugh comes out cracked. “I think the Benedettis did that long before I arrived.”
“Maybe,” she pauses by the window, “but you finished the job. He’s back to what he was. Cold and efficient. A blade without mercy. The enforcer everyone feared.”
Her words strike like blows. Enzo, painted in blood and duty again. A man with no softness left.
“What did you do to him?” Her question is quiet but poisonous.
“I loved him.” The confession slips free without my permission.
Izzy’s face twists with a flash of jealousy, rage, and pain before the mask slams back down.
She gives me a pitying smile. “And look what that love cost him.”
She steps closer, her reflection flickering beside mine in the window. “He’s killing again. Men on both sides. Russians, Italians, anyone who whispers your name. He thinks you betrayed him.”
The room tilts. “He knows?”
She cocks her head, feigning sympathy. “Oh, he knows. He saw the footage of your little meeting with Daddy. And he knows you’re the witness who cost his brother his life.”
