“Okay.” I turn to Lorenzo. “Let’s go.”
We move. Lorenzo takes point, gun up, clearing each corridor before we follow. Sofia clings to me like a lifeline, her steps unsteady but determined. Behind us, I hear Nico calling the all-clear, the sounds of extraction happening all around us. The compound is chaos. Smoke in the corridors, alarms screaming, distant gunfire that sounds like it’s getting farther away.
The Santoros are winning. The Benedettis are falling. And we’re almost out.
The stairs appear ahead, leading up toward what looks like light. Natural light. The outside world, waiting for us.
That’s when his hand moves. It goes to his pocket the way it always does. The reflex I’ve watched a hundred times. When he’s thinking, when he’s restless, when the noise in his head gets too loud. His fingers press against the fabric, feeling for the shape of the beads underneath.
His hand stills. Presses again. Then slides into the pocket and comes back out empty.
He turns it over like the answer might be written on his palm.
Nothing.
He goes still. But not his usual stillness. This one has edges.
I know what it is. I’ve watched him press his fingers against the pocket. Seen it when he thought no one was looking. His mother’s. Gone. Slipped from his pocket somewhere along the corridor we just cleared. Our path. The one I can still trace.
He’s going to keep moving. I watch the decision happen in real time, watch him shove the thought down and turn toward the stairs. Getting Sofia safe.
But that rosary is everything. Worn smooth from decades of fingers that aren’t his anymore. His only connection to who he was before all of this.
“Get Sofia out.” The words leave my mouth before I’ve finished forming the thought. “I’ll get it.”
Lorenzo turns. Looks at me. His brow furrows. Then his eyes widen, and his mouth opens but the words won’t come.
“Isabella, no.”
“You came for me.” I’m already stepping back the way we came, retracing our path through the smoke. “Let me do this for you.”
“It’s not safe.”
“It’s your mother.” I look back at him. Hold his gaze. “I’m not going to let you lose her twice.”
His face breaks. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see all the emotions underneath.
I turn toward the smoke.
And I run.
30
LORENZO
She runs into the smoke before I can reach her.
“Isabella.”
Gone. Swallowed by the haze like she was never there at all.
I take a step toward the corridor. Then another. My lungs have stopped working. My legs are moving but I can’t feel them.
“Renzo.” Dante’s voice, sharp. “We need to move. The building is coming down.”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
“The extraction?—”
