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LILY
There’sa dull ringing in my ears. Heat. The roar of a fire blazing. A sharp pain blossoming in the back of my skull.
What the hell just happened?
I roll over on the hard asphalt, groaning out loud. My breath has been knocked from my lungs, and when I press my palms to the ground, I feel the slice of broken glass digging into my skin.
Breathe. Think. Get the hell up!
My head is spinning, and I feel dizzy, but I pull myself into a seated position and look around. The wreckage of a car is blazing nearby, half the bodywork scattered around, smoking and smashed like rubble.
I squint at it, ears still ringing, and slowly, the fragments of the last ten minutes come drifting back to me.
I’m at the docks. I came here to warn Nero, about… Something.
I frown, still foggy, grabbing at strands of information.
He was meeting someone, with one of his mafia lieutenants… Vance…
The mole. He was here to find out who was ratting the Barretti organization to the FBI. But he had the wrong guy.
I get a flash of Vance clicking a ballpoint pen. The pen from the hotel where the FBI liked to meet.
It’s Vance.
The mole is Vance. That’s what I came here to warn Nero about!
I clamber to my feet and look around. “Nero?” I call, my voice scratchy from the smoke. “Nero!”
There’s smoke everywhere, flames billowing from the wreckage of the car. I can’t see him anywhere.
The car. Nero’s car.
I stop dead, the last pieces of my memory slotting into place. Watching as Vance snuck away and fixed a device to Nero’s car… Wondering if I should warn my husband—or let him burn… The war between my head and heat raging, until I finally lurched from my hiding place and raced to save him.
But I was too late.
“NERO!” I scream into the darkness, desperate.
But there’s no reply. Vance is long gone. I’m alone on the docks. I watch the fireball blaze, an inferno in the dark, and feel my heart rip in two.
Is the man I love dead?
I fight my way closer, shielding my face from the flames. The explosion has left metal and rubber burning in a hollowed-out shell, and fear stabs ice-cold in my chest as I scan the wreckage, looking for my husband.
There!
I spot a figure on the ground, thrown clear of the blast beside some trash cans. He’s facedown, and I rush over, kneeling at his side and heaving him over onto his back.
“Nero,” I plead, my voice thick with emotion. “Nero, wake up. Please.”
His eyes are shut, unmoving. There’s cuts and blood on his face. He’s not breathing.
Oh God, he’s not breathing.
I have no idea what I’m doing as I bring my hands together at the center of his chest and start compressions. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I have to try, tears stinging in my eyes as I desperately try to bring him back.
“You can’t die on me!” I yell at his lifeless body, out of my mind. “You can’t. Not when you made me love you, you bastard.”
