I step out first, polished shoes on the gravel. Nothing at first but the hush of the cemetery, some distant city noise swallowed by the monuments. The air tastes like soil and old stone. I take another step, then turn back. Sophia’s beside me, hand warm in mine, fearless or foolish—maybe both. We move together.
Someone flips the switch on a bank of lights and hard, white beams slice the dark. I didn’t know you could make the dead stage their own theater, but suddenly the cemetery looks like an arena. From behind a tall, ornate tombstone a man steps out, the cigarlight throwing his face into a sickly orange. He moves like he owns every shadow he emerges from. For a second I don’t recognize him but then he smiles at me and I know it’s Mikhail Orlov, head of the Russian mob here in Miami.
My chest tightens. My men are an hour away. The edge of the night presses in. I don’t like numbers that don’t end in our favor.
He smiles, the cigar burning low, and it’s a gesture that says he expects the script. He takes his time, savoring the moment like he’s about to ruin someone’s life for the pleasure of it. This is the sort of man who thinks fear is a flavor to be sampled slowly.
I move before I think, because moving’s what I do. I step forward, hand tightening on Sophia’s.
My voice is already low, controlled. “Back up,” I say to him. “You don’t want this.”
He laughs, a dry sound, and the laugh spreads through the little ring of men emerging from behind stones—figures who know how to raise a cemetery into a battleground. They fan out, silhouettes between mausoleums, slow and deliberate. My gaze flicks to Sophia because she’s mine and because she’s the only thing in this place that matters the way air matters.
She surprises me.
She slips her hand from mine and lifts a gun I didn’t even know she had, holding it like it’s a natural extension of herself. The motion is fluid, practiced, nothing like the sheltered girl she was supposed to be. In a heartbeat, the weapon comes up to shoulder height—and she fires.
The sound cracks through the graveyard, sharp as a command. My breath catches—the shot is clean, strong, and it throws the nearest man’s shoulder back. Sophia doesn’t hesitate. She tugs at my arm and we move, ducking between headstones, stone biting our shins, the world suddenly a maze of monuments and shadow and the smell of cigar smoke and iron.
Her words come out like a grenade and hit me clean in the chest.
“Nuh uh,” she spits, pulling me deeper into the graves, her voice steady in a place made for silence. “I’m not dying a virgin. You are going to make love to me, give me more orgasms and the best year of my life, Raphael Costa, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll survive a year together. Until then, take my gun and kill as many sons of bitches as you can!”
She fires again, and the bullet’s kiss takes a man down. Adrenaline slams into me hard enough to make my vision narrow to her. My Sophia.
A grin spreads across my face, quick and feral, catching me off guard. Her hand fits into mine as I take the gun, a second piece of steel warming my palm. Force meets force—that’s who I am, that’s how I fight. The first shot cracks out clean, aimed where it counts, then another, and another. We move as one, me covering, clearing bodies from our path and cutting their numbers down.
Sophia is ridiculous and brave and utterly, perfectly herself.
We duck behind a ridge between two monuments, stone cold against my back. I steal a quick kiss against the side of her face. Bullets scream past us, striking marble and granite, ricochetingoff headstones with sharp, metallic whines. Shards of stone spit into the air, the cemetery itself becoming part of the fight. I lean out, squeeze the trigger, and send rounds snapping back. Men scatter near the largest tomb, the formation breaking as my shots land. The night erupts with ugly, decisive violence.
At a lull I press my forehead to hers, both of us panting.
“You really are my dream come true, Sophia Costa,” I tell her, because if there’s one thing I’m sure of in the middle of all this, it’s her.
Cupping her cheek with the hand that still wears the ring that binds us for now, a ring that means nothing against the math of bullets but everything for the ledger of my heart.
She elbows me. “Then act like it. Get us the fuck out of here.”
Her challenge burns in my blood, and the grin comes easy. Let the dead keep their silence. Graveyard promises aren’t broken, they are survived.
We push forward—two shadows slipping between graves, guns ready, lungs burning, hearts pounding. Beyond the stone and silence, the city keeps humming, blind to the war in its cemetery. Sophia Costa won’t go quietly, and this man sure as hell doesn’t back down.
We move forward, two shadows gliding between headstones, lungs burning, hearts hammering.
From the far side of a crypt, his voice drifts out—thick, heavy, every word rolled in that deep Russian growl.“Costa… you cannot run forever. The girl will not save you.”
The accent drags on the vowels, hardens the consonants. The sound rakes over my nerves, cold as the marble at my back.
Sophia and I stay low, silent, slipping from one patch of shadow to the next. The dead don’t complain about our trespass, but the living hunt us with intent.
Up ahead, through a row of crumbling headstones, I spot a gap in the fence—a way out. I catch her wrist, point toward it,then motion for her to go. Her face turns to me, defiance blazing even in the dark. Sophia shakes her head hard.
No.
Leaning closer, my breath brushing her ear. “Go. I’ll be right behind you… as soon as it’s safe.”
Her eyes lock on mine, wide, full of fire and hesitation. Indecision clouds her face for a split second before she grabs my jacket, pulls me in, and crushes her mouth to mine. The kiss is fierce, desperate, hungry—like a woman staking her claim in the middle of hell.
