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Wife. My chest constricts at the word.
Marco—loyal, reckless, the one man I call friend—sees right through me.
“That’s how I got dumped by my high school sweetheart. Thought you were smarter than that.” He scans my face as if he’s testing boundaries.
“Thought you were more interested in keeping your jaw unbroken.” Marco’s well aware that my subtle threat holds no heat.
He snorts. “She’s not like the rest of them, is she?”
No, she’s not, but I don’t deign to give him a response. Allowing Sophia Martinelli more space in my mind when I need to focus is a recipe for disaster.
Thankfully, the burner phone in my back pocket vibrates. I pull it up to answer while brushing past Marco, who spreads his arms wide to protest my silent treatment.
I focus on the call and how Gio’s voice stumbles over itself. “Boss, there’s been movement near the hospital. Same car, parked three days in a row. Same two guys. Slavic accents.”
Russians.
I hang up without responding. My fist clenches around the phone hard enough to crack the casing. They’re getting bolder. Elena’s room isn’t secure anymore. And Sophia…
No. She won’t be caught in any cross fire. Not this time.
I find Sophia crouched in the garden. Sunlight melts into her chestnut hair, and she has her fingers plunged into a pot of flowers. For one second, I remain rooted in place.
I just observe her soft, unguarded face and the small smile that plays at her lips. She moves like nothing in the world can touch her here.
I lean forward. “You’re seeing your mother.”
She twists around, her eyes sharp with surprise. “Why now?”
Because I can’t afford to wait. Because the Russians have mobilized. Because this might be the last time she’ll see her mother alive. “Let’s just go.” I head toward the car without offering an explanation.
She tilts her head. “You’re angry.”
Anger doesn’t even begin to cover the mix of emotions twisting together. Rage, fear, and guilt all knit so closely together that I can’t tell which is which.
In the car, I keep my eyes on the mirrors and the road. The twitch in my neck doesn’t go away. Sophia shifts in the passenger seat, watching me.
“You’re nervous.”
“No.”
She shoots me a skeptical look but says nothing further for the rest of the drive.
In a break from our usual routine, I chose not to send some boys ahead. I want this to be as normal an experience as can be for Sophia and her mother.
Nurses straighten when we walk through the front. One stares a little too long. I shoot her a glare, and she finds paperwork to focus on.
Elena’s room is dim, with the blinds drawn and the TV murmuring. Sophia glides like light toward the bed, all softness and breath, pain stitched into her bones. Her hand finds Elena’s, and her fingers curl around fragile skin.
“Mama.”
I stay near the door as my eye sweep the corners for any shadow or flicker of motion that doesn’t naturally belong.
Trusting nothing but my sixth sense and the weight of the Glock on my hip has kept me alive in precarious situations more than a couple of times.
Elena doesn’t wake, and she looks even worse than when I saw her a few days ago, as if the life’s draining out of her by inches, leaving behind just a shell of the woman who raised Sophia.
Fifteen minutes drag by, each one stretching out more than the last until I decide that we’ve stayed too long. Every second increases the risk.
