I swing my body toward the ledge, catching the dusty concrete edge. I scramble through the gap, tearing the knee of the oversized sweatpants I frantically pulled on before we ran, and tumble onto the floor. I roll onto my back, gasping for air.
Dante slips through the opening a second later. He turns and shoves the doors back together, cutting off the shaft. The metallic click of the broken latch settling back into place sounds deafening in the silence.
We are in a long, dark corridor. The tenth floor lacks the opulent velvet and rotting grandeur of the fourteenth-floor penthouse. It looks like a stripped-out corporate space. Bare concrete floors. Exposed pipes running along the ceiling. Pale moonlightstreams through floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the hall, casting long, geometric shadows across the dust.
Dante immediately goes into tactical mode. He ignores his bleeding knuckles. He ignores the grease coating his clothes. He raises his weapon, sweeping the corners, checking the sightlines.
"Clear," he mutters, pacing rapidly toward the windows. "No movement on the street. They are holding inside the perimeter. Waiting for us."
He paces back. His movements are sharp, jerky. The protector remains, but the ice is cracking at the edges.
He stops in the middle of the hallway. He takes a sharp, jagged breath.
The air on the tenth floor is stagnant. The ventilation has been dead for decades. But Dante brought something with him from the fourteenth floor. The scent of real, freshly fired cordite. It clings to his clothes from the gunfight in the hallway. It mixes with the copper tang of the blood drying on his black undershirt.
He takes another breath. A tremor runs down his frame.
His weapon lowers an inch. Then another. The muzzle points at the concrete floor.
"Dante?" I push myself up from the ground. My legs are shaking from the exertion of the climb, but the sudden shift in his posture demands immediate attention.
He does not answer. He stares at the empty concrete floor, but his dark eyes are unfocused. He is not seeing the Grand Continental. He is looking at something a million miles away, something buried twenty years deep.
The panic attack slams into him.
He drops the weapon. The gun clatters against the concrete. He doesn't even flinch at the noise. He stumbles backward, his broad back hitting the drywall with a thud. He slides down the wall, his knees pulling up to his chest. He grabs the sides of his head, his grease-stained fingers digging into his dark hair.
"The rain," he gasps. The sound is wrecked. It is the voice of a lethal man reverting to a terrified teenager. "So much rain. It was washing the blood away. Into the grate. I couldn't stop it."
He is spiraling. The real cordite triggered the phantom memories.
I scramble across the floor, ignoring the pain in my scraped palms. I slide onto the concrete directly in front of him. I grab his wrists to pull his hands away from his head, my fingers brushing the angry, blistered burn across his left palm.
"Dante. Look at me."
He stares right through my chest. His chest heaves in rapid, shallow bursts.
"The alley," he stammers, his dark eyes wide and frantic in the moonlight. "It smelled like wet copper and garbage. The brick was slick. I turned him over. I had to turn him over. My father. His eyes were open. He was looking at the sky."
A sharp ache blooms in my chest. He is describing the murder of his father. The brutal night that defined the entire Costa family war. The borrowed trauma he carries like a shield.
"I pressed my hands to his chest," Dante continues, his words tumbling out in a frantic, broken rhythm. "Trying to stop the bleeding. But there was too much. The rain kept washing itaway. It made the puddle so big. I called for help. I was yelling. The phone was right there. I heard Matteo's voice break on the line."
Wait.
The pieces don't fit.
I heard Matteo's voice break on the line.
I sit back on my heels. The cold concrete bites through the torn denim at my knee. I stare at the shaking man in front of me. My mind races, piecing together the fragments of the story he told me back in the penthouse before the attack. He told me Turi raised them. He told me Matteo took the call. He told me he became the guard because he had to protect the family.
"Dante," I say softly. My voice is steady in the quiet dark. "Listen to your words."
"Matteo was screaming," Dante whispers, rocking slightly against the drywall. "I was holding the phone. The cord was wrapped around my hand. I was sitting on the couch. The green couch in the living room. The rain was hitting the window."
The contradiction is glaring. A gaping hole in the center of his deepest trauma.
He is conflating two completely different spaces. He is in the alley, kneeling in the rain, turning the body over. And he is sitting on the green couch in the living room, holding a phone cord, listening to the rain hit the glass.
