Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Maya
The FBI takes my weapon before I realize I am still holding it.
One of Raven’s agents touches my wrist, says my name twice, and waits until my fingers unlock around the grip.
I watch him carry the gun away as though it belongs to someone else.
The rain keeps sliding down the narrow walls.
Leon lies beneath a black tarp now, but the shape of him is still there beneath it. So still. Too final.
Raven stands a few feet away with blood on one sleeve that does not belong to her.
“Talk to me,” she says.
I laugh once. It comes out warped and wrong.
“What would you like me to say? Shit, I can’t believe we survived?”
Her eyes narrow. “Maya.”
I look past her toward the service door Stefano disappeared through.
The lock is still broken from the inside.
Agents have already checked the alley, the roof access, and the adjoining building.
Omar had a car waiting somewhere beyond the block.
Of course he did. Stefano does not leave a room without knowing where every exit leads.
“He’s gone,” I say.
Raven follows my gaze.
Around us, the operation keeps moving. Agents photograph the scene.
Someone bags Leon’s weapon. Another team takes his surviving guard into custody, one arm strapped into a sling, his face gray beneath the alley lights.
The club is still loud with turmoil beyond the door—shouting, radios, glass under shoes, people demanding lawyers before they have even been asked a question.
It should feel akin to a victory. Instead, I feel hollowed out.
Raven steps closer. “Leon was reaching for a weapon.”
“He was already down.”
“Yes.”
“He was alive.”
“Yes.”
“You had him.”
Her mouth tightens.
I look at her then. “You had him.”
The silence stretches.
Raven has spent enough years in the Bureau to know when arguing would only make a person bleed harder. She does not tell me Stefano did what he had to do. She does not defend him. She does not offer the clean lie that Leon’s death somehow makes the world safer in a way his arrest could not.
“He cannot undo what he did,” she says quietly. “Neither can you.”
My throat closes.
“That isn’t the point.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice rises before I can stop it.
“He took the choice from me. Again. Leon spent years making choices for Alice. He made choices for Erin and Heath. He decided what they could survive and what they were allowed to lose.” I press a hand against my chest because something there has started to ache too sharply.
“And Stefano looked at me, heard exactly what I needed, and decided he knew better.”
“He said he promised Leon would not touch them again,” I continue. “As if that was enough. As if I should be grateful he gave me the version of justice he wanted to give.”
“He’s a mafia don, Maya.”
“I know what he is.”
The words fall between us.
I know what he is.
The truth has always been there. In the way rooms go quiet when he enters. In the way Omar watches every door. In the gun beneath his jacket, the men who vanish when he tells them to, the silence he wears like something cut to fit.
I knew.
That does not make the grief feel less stupid. It only makes it harsher.
Raven touches my elbow. “Come inside. We need your statement.”
I let her lead me out of the rain.
The debrief lasts almost three hours, and all I want is to get through it.
I answer questions because I have too. When someone asks whether Savarese had warned me he intended to use lethal force, I stare at the table until Raven takes over.
“No further questions on that point,” she says.
By the time they release me, it is nearly dawn.
Raven drives me to the hotel herself. Boston is washed clean by rain, the streets empty except for delivery trucks and the first tired commuters. The city looks colorless through the passenger window. Buildings blur past in gray stone and wet glass.
“You can stay with the team,” Raven says. “Or I can have someone take you back to Chicago tomorrow.”
“Are the children safe?”
Her hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Your relatives’ house is secure. Omar’s people are still on the estate. The Bureau has people watching every documented contact Leon had in Florida.”
“Stefano’s people.”
“Some of them.”
I close my eyes.
Raven is quiet for a moment.
“The case still holds,” she says. “Leon’s death does not erase the records we recovered. The men we picked up tonight will talk. The accounts will lead somewhere. There are enough witnesses from Miami to keep building.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“No,” she says. “It isn’t.”
I look at her.
She does not apologize for saying it. She just drives, and I let the silence ride with us.
At the hotel, she walks me to my room and waits while I unlock the door. The soft yellow light inside makes everything look staged. Bed made too neatly. Towels folded. A tray of untouched room-service food against the wall. I just want to shut the door and be alone.
Normal things pretending the world didn't split open in an alley.
“Maya,” Raven says.
I turn.
“If he contacts you—”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
For the first time that night, my voice breaks, and everything I have held back starts to slip.
Raven’s expression shifts.
Not pity.
Something closer to regret.
“He left because he thinks that makes him better,” I whisper. “He thinks if he walks away after doing something unforgivable, then I get a choice.”
“That may be exactly what he thinks.”
“He should have asked me first.”
Raven nods once.
Then she leaves.
I make it to the bathroom before I fall apart.
The door closes behind me. I brace both hands against the marble counter and stare at myself in the mirror.
My hair is soggy from the rain. There is dried blood near my collar.
My mascara has smudged below my eyes, and for a second I look so much like Alice after one of Leon’s bad nights that I stop breathing.
No.
I grab a washcloth and scrub at my face until the water runs gray into the sink.
Leon is dead.
The thought should feel like relief.
Instead, it sits inside me like poison.
He is dead. He cannot hurt Erin again. He cannot make Heath offer himself up in the middle of a nightmare. He cannot ever touch another woman and tell her it is love. He cannot stand in a courtroom and lie through his perfect teeth.
But he is also gone.
No trial. No testimony. No moment when the world has to hear Alice’s name and understand what he did to her.
I sink down onto the bathroom floor.
The tiles are chilly beneath my legs. I pull my knees to my chest and press my face into my arms, trying to stay quiet as the first sob tears through me.
It is not graceful.
It is not controlled.
It is the kind of crying that comes from somewhere old and buried, somewhere I thought I had already emptied when Alice died. My sides hurt. My throat burns. Every breath feels like it catches on something sharp.
I hate Leon.
I hate Stefano.
I hate myself most of all for the part of me that keeps replaying the last seconds before he left.
His mouth against my knuckles. His forehead touching mine.
Go with Raven.
Not goodbye. Not I’m sorry. Not I love you, even though I know now that he does.
He left me in the rain because he believed that was kinder than asking me to live with what he had done, and that knowledge makes me hate him more. The bastard.
The bastard.
I put my hand against my mouth, but the sound still gets out. I don’t know how long I stay there.
Eventually, the hotel light shifts from night to morning. The rain slows. Cars begin moving below the window. Somewhere in the building, someone laughs in the hallway.
I force myself up.
I wash my face again. I change out of the clothes I wore to the club. I pack without thinking. Every motion is automatic. Fold. Zip. Lift. Breathe.
By noon, Raven has arranged my flight back to Chicago.
I sit next to the window as the plane rises over Boston, my head against the glass. Below me, the city grows smaller. Leon is dead. The twins are safe. The case is not over. And Stefano Savarese is gone.
The thought should be a relief. Instead, it feels like the one thing I cannot accept.
Alex is waiting outside security when I land. Erin sees me before anyone else.
“Aunt Maya!”
She runs before he can catch her hand, crashing into me hard enough that my bag slips from my shoulder. I catch her anyway. Her arms lock around my waist, and I hold her so tightly she makes a small sound of protest before pressing her face into my coat.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
“You were gone all night.”
“I know.”
“Alex said you were coming back.”
“I did.”
Behind her, Heath stands near Alex with both hands hooked through his backpack straps. He does not come closer until I hold out my hand.
Then he does.
Not fast. Not like Erin. He stops beside me, his shoulder touching mine while he stares at the floor.
“I told you I’d come back,” I say.
“You said that before.”
The words hurt because he is right.
“I did.” I crouch in front of him. “Sometimes I will have to leave. But you will always know where I am, and you will always be able to call me. If you call me, I'll come back.”
His eyes lift to mine.
“Even if it’s late?”
“Especially if it’s late.”
He nods once, then leans into me.
I hold both of them there in the middle of the terminal, Erin tight around my waist and Heath pressed against my shoulder, while Alex stands close enough to give us privacy but not leaving us alone.
For today, they are safe. For today, I am back. For today, that has to be enough.