He fucks me against the wall.
His hand goes to my throat the way it did in the warehouse when he was bleeding out, and I was deciding whether to keep him alive. He does not press. He just rests there.
"Whose are you?"
"Don't."
"Whose are you, Nadia?"
"Sean —"
"Say it."
I do not say it.
I do not say it because if I say it tonight, I will mean it tomorrow. And tomorrow I am supposed to walk into Alessandro Moretti's office and lie to him about the man whose hand is on my throat in this alley.
He fucks me through the not-saying, harder now. Like he is going to fuck the answer out of me one way or another.
I come with his hand on my throat and his mouth at my ear, saying my name in a voice I am going to hear in every quiet room I sit in for the rest of my life.
He comes a second after me.
I fix my jeans.He fixes his belt. The jacket goes back on my shoulders.
The alley goes back to being an alley.
"If you keep coming for the Morettis, I am going to be the one who buries you."
"I know."
"Then stop."
"I can't."
"There is no version of this where you walk out alive if you keep going. You think the Greek is one man. He isn't."
"There is a bottom to it. And I am going to find it. And I am going to find out why it has been there my whole life, waiting for me."
He turns it.
"What are you to the Morettis, Nadia? Exactly?"
I do not answer. He cannot survive what I would tell him.
"Walk away, Sean."
"Not from you."
"From the case."
"They are the same case."
"They are not."
"They are. You just don't want them to be."
He is right.
