Page 53

Behind us, it felt like Adriana had stopped breathing. I could feel her listening. The confession was not one I had wanted her to hear.

Zeno had tracked me to the church years ago. He had come close enough that I had sensed him before I saw him, the past breathing against the back of my neck. I had sent a message through another man.

Don’t come closer. Tell no one.

He had obeyed. Because some loyalties survived even the people who abused them.

“To this day,” Zeno rasped, “Tone doesn’t know where you’ve been. None of them do. They don't know about the church. They don’t know that you have spent ten years playing dead while they learned to live around the grave you left behind.”

My hands curled into fists.

“I didn’t come to discuss this.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Adriana needs protection.”

“You walked out on every man who would have died beside you, but the moment you needed help, you knew exactly where to find me.”

Zeno continued before I could answer.

“I will protect her. I will place men at every door, every road and every window between her and the Coccicos. I will tear apart every business Bruno Coccico owns and burn his family’s name out of Italy if that is what you ask of me.”

His hands tightened on the wheel.

“But do not mistake my loyalty for forgiveness.”

His anger was not the simple fury of a man who had been insulted. It was older. Heavier. The rage of a boy who had once known every corner of my life, forced to become a man around the space I had carved out and abandoned.

Zeno and I had been inseparable before we understood what our surnames meant. Our fathers had been brothers in everything but blood. Men who had built alliances through violence, loyalty and the quiet understanding that each would answer when the other called.

Zeno and I had followed them as naturally as breathing. We had shared classrooms, bruises and punishments. We had learned to fight back-to-back before either of us was old enough to drive. We had lied to our fathers with straight faces, covered each other’s mistakes and recognized danger in a room before anyone else noticed the air had changed. He had known me before I became useful to violent men. He had known me while I became one. And I had left him anyway.

“I came because she would die without help,” I admitted.

“You came because you knew I would give it.”

“Yes.”

“Because despite everything, you knew I would still do anything for you.”

The car seemed to narrow around us.

“I knew.”

Zeno stared ahead.

“I would have come for you,” he confessed. “Any hour. Any place. Any sin.” His voice had lost its anger, making the words unbearable. “You knew that. You have always known it.”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you leave me behind?”

For one terrible moment, he was no longer Zeno Orsini, the man commanding the convoy around us.

He was the boy beside me in an alley with blood on his lip. He was the brother I had chosen. The one I had abandoned without reason.

But now, sitting beside me, there was only Zeno. And my truth. It was the only thing I could give him.