The words landed harder than any bullet I'd ever taken. Because she was wrong. Completely wrong. The rooftophadbeen real. The grief was real. Angelo was real. The loneliness was real. That was the problem.
The Devil was the easier part.
I stepped closer. One step. Nothing more.
Jesus Christ. She was so afraid of me. The realization felt strangely violent. Like somebody had reached inside my chest and twisted. "You're wrong."
She laughed again. Humorless. "Am I?"
"Yes." The word came sharper than intended. Aurora froze. So did I. The wind whipped between us. For a second neither of us moved.
Then she asked quietly, "Which one are you?"
The question settled heavily between us. Which one? The Devil? The brother? The monster? The man on the rooftop? The man who laughed with her? The man who pulled the trigger?
I looked out toward the ocean. Toward the darkness. Toward everything I'd spent years pretending wasn't complicated. Then I answered honestly. "Both. All of them. Anyone. For you.”
Silence. Aurora stared. I continued. Because there was no point stopping now.
"The man who sat beside you on that roof misses his brother every day." My voice sounded rough. Raw. Uncomfortable. "The man who pulled that trigger protects what's his."
Her breath caught.
"The same man did both things."
The words hung in the air. Heavy. Unavoidable. True. Aurora looked away first. The movement felt like losing something. Small. But important.
Aurora's throat moved as she swallowed, her gaze fixed on mine. The wind coming off the ocean whipped through her dark hair, carrying the scent of saltwater and rain. Strands caught across her face, but she didn't seem to notice. She simply stood there staring at me as though she was trying to solve a puzzle that didn't have an answer.
Neither of us spoke.
The city lights glittered beyond the cliffs, scattered across the darkness like gold spilled onto black velvet. Under any other circumstances, it would have been beautiful.
Instead, all I could see was her.
The fear she'd worn in the holding room had faded, but it hadn't disappeared completely. I could still see traces of it lingering behind her eyes. It bothered me more than it should have.
More than the body downstairs.
More than my father.
More than the fact that she'd just watched me put a bullet in a man's head.
"You keep saying things like that." Her voice was quiet, almost lost beneath the crashing waves below.
I frowned slightly. "Like what?"
A humorless laugh escaped her. "'That you protect what’s… yours.'"
The word settled between us. Possessive. Dangerous. The kind of thing a sane man would deny. I didn't. Because denying it would have been a lie.
Somewhere between the rooftop, the motorcycle, the endless arguments, and the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn't paying attention, I'd started wanting things I had no business wanting. The realization irritated me. Worse, it scared me.
Aurora shook her head. "Do you even hear yourself when you speak?"
“I have people for that,” I said. The corner of her mouth twitched despite herself.
A small victory. One I took entirely too much satisfaction in.
