"I don't give a fuck." The words came out sharp enough to cut. "Can I see him or not?"
Andrei's jaw worked, but he gave a short nod. "He's sedated. Won't wake for hours. Maybe not until morning."
I was already moving. My boots hit the stairs hard, taking them two at a time. The second floor was quieter, darker, the only sound rain drumming against windows in a steady rhythm that matched my pulse. Three doors lined the hallway. Rafael's was half-open with warm light spilling out into the shadows.
I stopped in the doorway, and my breath caught.
Rafael lay on a narrow bed against the far wall, so pale he was barely recognizable. White bandages covered half his face, wrapped around his head in layers of gauze that Andrei had secured with surgical tape. His right eye was closed, lashes dark against bloodless skin. The left side was hidden completely.
An IV line ran from his arm to a bag hanging on a makeshift stand. The clear fluid dripped steadily, each drop marking time I couldn't get back.
I crossed the room on legs that didn't feel like mine and sank into the chair someone had placed beside the bed. I took Rafael's hand. His fingers were cold and limp against my palm.
"I'm sorry." The words were useless, empty. "God, I'm so sorry."
Rafael didn't move. The sedatives kept him under, away from the pain that would come when he woke up and realized what he'd lost.
Because of me.
I squeezed his hand, careful not to press too hard, and tried to remember how to breathe.
"Florica sent coffee." Diego said from the doorway. He moved into the room and set a chipped mug on the small table beside the bed. Thesmell of it was strong, bitter, mixed with something sweet I couldn't identify. "Andflaó. Cheese pastry. She says you need to eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"I know." Diego pulled over a second chair and dropped into it with a sigh. "She'll come up here herself if you don't at least try. Trust me, you don't want that. She's scarier than Jasper when she's determined."
I said nothing. My thumb moved over Rafael's knuckles.
Diego was quiet for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight.
"Mybunica—my grandmother—used to tell me stories about the war. She was just a girl when the Nazis came, maybe twelve, living with the Kalderashkumpaniathat moved through Spain and Southern France."
I didn't look at him, but I was listening.
"Her father was a smuggler. Moved goods across borders, helped people disappear. When the Nazis started rounding up Jews, he didn't stop. Neither did she." Diego's hands moved as he talked, painting pictures in the air. "They hid people in wagons, moved them at night through mountain passes the Nazis didn't know existed. My grandmother was small and fast. Could slip through checkpoints, carry messages, scout routes."
Rain continued its steady drum against the windows. I watched Rafael's chest rise and fall, each breath a small miracle.
"She saved seventy-three people," Diego continued. "She kept count by carving notches into a wooden box my great-grandfather made. When she died, she left it to my mother, and my mother left it to me."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked quietly.
Diego was quiet for a beat. "Because helping people run is in my blood. My grandmother did it. My parents did it during Franco's regime, smuggling dissidents and revolutionaries out of Spain when the regime wanted them dead. My father's family—they go back to medieval merchant castes, people who knew how to move goods and bodies acrossborders when borders meant death." He paused. "And my mother's people, the Romani, we've always been smugglers and storytellers. It's what we do. It's what I do."
I turned to look at him. Diego met my eyes, his hands relaxed on his knees.
"I can get you out," he said quietly. "Both of you. New identities, new life. The Kalderash have connections everywhere—Eastern Europe, South America, places Constantine will never find you. You could disappear. Really disappear. Rafael could heal somewhere safe, somewhere quiet. You could both just... stop."
Stop. The word hung in the air between us like a promise I couldn't take.
"You've done enough, Lorenzo. You saved those kids. You've bled for this. Let me do what my family does best. Let me get you somewhere Constantine can't touch you."
I looked back at Rafael, at the bandages covering half his face, at the IV drip keeping him stable. We could run. Diego would make it happen. We could disappear into some small town where no one knew our names, where Rafael could recover and we could pretend to be normal people living normal lives.
Together.
But I wasn't normal. Neither was Rafael.
