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Dragging Marco by his jacket, I stumble over debris, my lungs choking on soot. I find an exit through a haze of orange and black.

Outside, the wind cuts cold against my skin. Marco wheezes as we dive into our ride, the tires spinning gravel into sparks as we zoom out of the lot.

Behind us, the warehouse collapses in on itself, flames clawing toward the sky like hungry fingers.

Marco groans, one hand braced against my side, the other on the wheel. When I take over providing pressure, his hand comes away red. “You’re bleeding badly.”

“Later.” My voice sounds distant.

Ahead, the city glows, indifferent as ever. The skyline blurs through my blood-smeared vision. I press my hand against my wound, warmth seeping through my fingers. The smell of smoke haunts us like a ghost.

Sophia’s face drifts behind my eyelids. I think of her laugh, her stubborn hope, the way she touches me as if she’s not afraid of what’s inside.

Can’t lose that. Can’t lose her.

Darkness creeps in at the edges, and my head lolls against the headrest. Marco’s voice ebbs like a tide, shouting my name like it matters. My thoughts scatter into the dark. Eventually, only instincts remain. Blood soaks through my shirt, hot against my cold skin. Marco curses under his breath, driving too fast through empty streets, the tires whispering over wet asphalt. My adrenaline fades, allowing pain to crawl in and settle deep.

Neither of us speaks. Nothing worth saying. Not after watching flames consume the warehouse. Not after realizing Vincent’s death came too soon, too conveniently.

Can’t say anything of the Russians yet.

By the time the villa gates come into view, dawn has started to stain the sky a dirty rose.

Marco slows. “You need a hospital.”

“Just get me back. I’ll deal with it there.”

He pulls into an alley two blocks from the villa. In the glow of a single streetlight, he digs out the first aid kit from the trunk. With steady hands, he packs the wound and wraps it tight. Field medicine. We’ve both done this before.

“That’ll hold,” he says. “But you need real stitches.”

“Later.”

When I get to the mini villa, I start climbing the stairs slowly. My shoulders ache, and my pulse throbs from where the bullet grazed me. Still, my body moves out of habit, every motion precise and controlled as I ignore the pain.

My bedroom greets me with silence. Not the soft kind either. This one’s cold and echoing. Wrong.

Normally when I come home, I find life here. A light on somewhere, music playing low, the scent of vanilla from whatever candle Sophia’s burning that she got from a neighbor because, apparently, mobsters’ wives shop at Bath & Body Works too.

But tonight, nothing. The air feels stripped and hollowed out, like someone stole all the warmth and left just the shell of a home.

“Sophia?” The name slips out before I can stop myself, rough and desperate in a way I hate, and the question bounces off marble and glass, unanswered, swallowed by the eerie quiet.

Each step through the place lands like walking through someone else’s memory instead of my own life. The kitchen’s empty, the balcony doors locked, her bed still made.

My fingers leave smears of red on the white walls. I didn’t even notice until now, too fixated on finding her to care about the shoulder wound that’s hurting like hell and the blood that’s dripping down my fingers.

But it doesn’t matter. The pain keeps my thoughts straight and grounds me when everything else spins out of control. A glint on the counter catches the first line of sunrise.

Her wedding ring. And beside it, Nonna Rosa’s ruby. Both abandoned.

For a second, my brain blanks and everything freezes, time stopping like someone hit pause on reality. She never took them off, not once, not even when she was digging through dirt to make a flower bed in the garden last week, getting soil under her nails and complaining about slugs.

Next to the rings, I find a folded white note with smudged edges, as if she’d held it for too long before letting go. I hesitate. Once I read this, whatever’s inside becomes real. The paper feels soft and fragile against my calloused, bloodied fingers. Delicate like her. The words blur at first. Focus comes slowly because my eyes refuse to cooperate and my brain refuses to process.

I’m sorry.

Those two words split the ribs open like a knife.