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Ideally, I’ll never have to do this again. Just like they’ll never need to understand Luca Ferrazzo answers to no one.

After this, we’ll never have to worry about internal coups again.

Once my hands are numb and sore and I’ve dragged him through the mud, I carry Rennick’s limp body back to the wreckage.

My men move in, covering everything in cans of gasoline. I wait for it to get drenched before I borrow a lighter.

Boom!

Thick, black smoke curls high as the flames spread, flickering through orange, white, and blue.

We scramble to leave the scene before that fire gets called in.

A freak accident.

I don’t notice Inky until I’m in my vehicle again.

He’s just standing on the road, back to his normal size and blank cartoon black eyes, one flipper stuck out like a hitchhiker.

Fucking penguin.

High time you found a new ride.

29

CRAZY AFTER ALL (SYLVIE)

Ithought we were saved.

A lightning bolt of pure luck.

A minute into that weird tense call and the blank look in Gallagher’s eyes, he left the room.

Only to burst back in a couple minutes later, laying into Bufalo.

The traitor barely fired a single shot before they had him on the floor, binding his arms and legs with cords. The giants dressed in black cracked him across the head with one of those menacing rifles, so abruptly I gasped.

But now, as I’m lying on the floor, listening to Bone’s shallow, strained breathing, parked next to the closet where they threw Bufalo—dead or alive?—I wonder if it was ever luck at all.

I’m still tied up. Still helpless.

The house feels so quiet now, all the men who turned it into a theater for drama either dead or gone.

What the actual hell happened?

Did Rennick just use Bufalo to get to Luca? And once he got to my husband, he disposed of them both?

I don’t know, and it scares me.

I also don’t know why they’d leave me breathing, let alone Bone.

So many dark possibilities.

I have no clue who’s alive or dead, let alone the two men stuck in this room with me.

“Bone? Can you hear me?” I try again because I have to, my voice a dry whisper.

He’s breathing but unconscious.