“Alessio, you need to sleep too.”
He looks too tired to stand, but his hand still settles on the gun.
He pulls the blanket over me with hands that linger only because they are finally shaking. He sits in the chair next to the bed, the one facing the door, his gun within reach on the side table. He looks like a guardian, a silent sentinel watching over the only thing that matters.
I close my eyes, the exhaustion finally pulling me under. The last thing I feel is the warmth of his gaze, a steady, unwavering light in the middle of the dark.
And the last thing I do—because ten years of alone is a hard habit to kill—is ease my injured arm against my ribs, hiding the tremor in my hand more than the bandage.
He kills for the people he keeps. I watched him do it tonight, quick and clean, and I didn’t look away. That should terrify me. What terrifies me is that, for one breath, it made me feel safe.
6
ALESSIO
The copper tangof her blood hits the back of my throat. It’s only a jagged slice along her upper arm, but on her, it looks like failure. Mine. I should have moved faster. I should have put my body between her and the explosion of shards. I should have been the one bleeding.
I thought I had cleaned the wound. Forty minutes later, listening to her breathing refuse to slow, listening to her try to out-stubborn a piece of glass, I saw the shard I’d missed. She didn’t argue. That’s how I knew it hurt.
“Alessio, stop. You’re gripping me too hard.”
Her voice is a low rasp, cutting through the static in my brain. I loosen my fingers immediately, but I don’t let go. I can’t. We’re in my private bathroom, the door locked from our side against the rest of the compound, the rest of the world. The air is thick with the scent of the antiseptic I’ve laid out and the faint, sweet heat of her skin.
I pull the stool closer and guide her onto it before my hands can shake again. I’m on my knees between her thighs, my hands trembling. A man who has spent years cutting into people without a twitch, and now I’m shaking because Amara Osei is bleeding.
“It’s just glass,” she says, her voice softer now. She reaches out with her good hand, her fingers grazing my jaw. Her touch is a brand. It’s a match dropped into a pool of gasoline.
“It shouldn’t be there,” I growl. The words are raw, stripped of the polished, silent mask I usually wear. “Not while I’m standing between you and it.”
I take a clean cloth, soaking it in warm water. I begin to dab at the blood smeared across her bronze skin. The white cloth comes away red, and the doctor in me measures depth, edges, glass. The man in me sees only her blood.
She broke into my clinic. She spent ten years hunting Vane. In less than two days, she has become the one person my hands can’t stay steady around.
The silence of the suite is heavy. Outside these walls, my brothers are arming themselves, the war is screaming toward a climax, and a traitor is breathing the same air we are. But in here, there is only the sound of her shallow breaths and the drip of water into the basin.
“You’re doing that thing again,” she whispers.
“What thing?” I don’t look up. I’m focused on a tiny sliver of glass still embedded in the edge of the wound. My vision is tunneled.
“You get quiet when you’re blaming yourself. I don’t know all your tells yet, but I know that one.”
My jaw locks. I reach for the tweezers. My hands are steady now, the instinct to heal taking over, but the fire in my gut is only getting hotter. I find the sliver. I pull it free with a sharp, clean motion. She doesn’t flinch. She just watches me with those eyes—smart, piercing, seeing too much.
“I brought you into that building,” I say, the words falling like stones. “A shard hit your arm. A bullet could have found your throat.”
“But it wasn’t.” She leans forward, her chest brushing against my shoulder. The heat of her is intoxicating. “I’m a big girl, Alessio. I’ve been taking care of myself a long time. I knew the risks when I followed the money. I knew the risks when I followed you.”
“He killed my brother for forty thousand dollars,” she says then, quiet, like the words have been standing at a door for ten years waiting for it to open. “That’s what Curtis was worth to him. A mid-sized sedan. A down payment on a condo.”
“He was twenty-two. He had a laugh that could wake the neighbors. He loved old jazz records and burnt toast. And Vane erased him like he was a typo in a ledger.”
My hands go still on her arm. “I know,” I say, and it comes out raw, stripped of the surgeon. “I know exactly what it’s like to have your world reduced to a line item.”
I set the tweezers down before my hand can betray me. I look up at her finally. Her face is inches from mine. She looks tired, but she looks fierce. There’s a smudge of soot on her cheekbone and her hair is a mess, and I have never seen anything more beautiful. I have never wanted anyone with a force that hurts to look at.
“You don’t follow me,” I tell her, my voice dropping to a feral register. “You’re with me. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” Her gaze drops to my mouth.
