“Luca.”
“Fine,” he pouts dramatically, finally letting himself be dragged away like a bratty demon who clearly needs sedatives and a leash. “But if you want to talk about it later, I’m a great listener. Or voyeur. I’m flexible.”
Kai skates backward with him in tow, muttering something under his breath in a language I don’t understand but fully assume translates toI regret every decision that led me here.
I stay on the ice, still hard, still hurting, still clutching the photo in my jacket pocket like a promise I don’t entirely trust but desperately need to believe.
18
RAFE
The motel stinks like mold and piss and something dead that tried real hard not to be found. One bed, one flickering light, and a mini fridge that groans every time the compressor kicks in like it’s got opinions about our presence. I sit on the edge of the mattress, scrolling through grainy traffic cam footage on my burner, while Misha paces shirtless across the room, bitching like a Russian housewife whose husband forgot the groceries.
“Fucking Corso,” he growls, jabbing a half-eaten protein bar at the ceiling. “He stares like statue. Never speaks. But then—then—I find three bodies dumped in alley, all with same wound patterns. Same blade. Same timing.”
I grunt. “And?”
“And!” Misha throws the bar at the wall. “He tells me it’s coincidence. Coincidence! Like he’s not carving his name into corpses and leaving them for me like flowers.”
“You like it,” I mutter as I drag the timeline forward two seconds, the grainy footage skipping before a blurry car rolls through the edge of the frame—a black sedan with tinted windows and plates scrubbed clean.
Misha stops pacing just long enough to look personally offended. “I hate it.”
I lift an eyebrow without looking up from the screen. “You fucked him yet?”
“Not yet,” he mutters, folding his arms. “He’s slow like glacier. I give it another week.”
I smirk—barely.
The screen glitches and jumps to the next clip.
And there he is.
Nathan fucking Grant.
He’s wearing a gray hoodie, sunglasses, and a cap pulled low, but he isn’t quite fast enough. The camera angle catches his jawline just long enough to confirm it’s him—the same smug mouth I’ve seen freeze-framed a thousand times now, the same face that haunts Julian’s eyes when he thinks I’m not watching, the same bastard who ruined everything and still walked away clean.
“Got him,” I say, leaning forward.
Misha is at my side in two seconds, crouched over my shoulder and radiating heat and murder. “Where?”
“Two towns over. Middle of nowhere,” I say, flicking the screen over to the GPS coordinates. “Gas station on the edge of a place called Florence Grove. Population barely cracks four digits, and the locals look like they wouldn’t notice a body unless it was on fire in their yard.”
Misha is already moving by the time I finish speaking, yanking on his boots like he’s been waiting for an excuse. “Then let’s light something.”
“No.” I stand slowly and crack my neck, feeling the tension shift into something colder and sharper. “We don’t grab him yet. We watch first, confirm the pattern, make sure he doesn’t see us coming.”
Misha scowls. “Why wait?”
“Because when I take him,” I growl, sliding the phone back into my jacket, “he’s not walking out, and I want him to know exactly why.”
Misha grins at that, wide and brutal. “You going to tell Jules?”
“No.”
He arches a brow. “Even if you bring him a present?”
I pause, just for a second, before answering. “Especially if I bring him a present.” Because if I tell him now, he’ll spiral, and if I give him hope too early he’ll start to need it. And if something goes wrong—if Nathan slips through my fingers again—it will kill him. And I’ve already promised that Julian only dies if I do.
