“That is weakness?” I ask. My voice comes out cold enough to cut glass.
He writhes against the concrete, breath coming in sharp, wet gasps, the composure finally stripped away and something raw and desperate underneath it. I crouch down in front of him so he has nowhere to look but at me.
“I should kill you right now.”
He forces his eyes up to mine. Even now, even broken and bleeding on a rooftop, there is something in his face that refuses to bend completely.
“Then do it.”
I smile at him. Slow and unhurried and completely without warmth.
“No.”
The word lands, and I watch it land. Watch it move through him like something cold, and I see the exact moment genuine fear finds his eyes for the first time. Not fear of the bullet. Fear of what comes instead of it.
There you are.
Nico steps up beside me, looking down at Ettore the way you look at something you are already done with.
“You are coming with us.”
Ettore’s mouth twists. “Go fuck yourself.”
Nico brings his boot down onto the wounded leg with his full weight behind it. The crack of bone is sharp and clean in the morning air.
The sound Ettore makes does not resemble anything human.
Ritchie and Rémy move in fast and efficient, securing his wrists with zip ties, binding his ankles while he thrashes, curses and accomplishes nothing. His struggling is useless, and he knows it and the knowing makes it worse for him, which is exactly the point.
“You cannot do this.” His voice has gone hoarse. “You cannot.”
I straighten up and roll my shoulders back.
I study the ruined, bleeding, screaming man zip tied on the rooftop and consider that.
Catch’s voice comes through the earpiece, clipped and even. “Police chatter picking up. Five minutes, maybe less.”
Perfect timing.
“He will look considerably worse in the torture chamber.”
Even Miff goes quiet for a moment.
Nico’s hand closes around my wrist before I can move away. Not hard. Just enough to stop me. I turn and find him lookingat me the way he sometimes does, like he is trying to read something written in a language he is still learning.
“You okay?”
The honest answer rises before I can dress it up.
No. Not even close to okay. Not yet.
But standing here on this rooftop with the sky going gold at the edges and Ettore broken and bound at my feet, something has shifted inside my chest. Something I have been carrying since I was fourteen years old, through every nightmare and every sleepless night and every year I spent running from a ghost, has gone quiet.
Not gone. But quiet.
For the first time, I feel like I can breathe all the way down.
“No,” I tell him, and I mean it completely. “But I will be.”
