Tone
Hands were on me. I didn’t register them at first—just pressure, movement, something dragging me backward while my entire body fought to stay where I was. But they didn’t feel like Archie’s hands.
“No—!”
My fingers clawed at Archie’s shirt, slipping on blood, refusing to let go.
It was Atlas. His voice cut through the haze of my grief, but I only shook my head violently, tears blurring everything into angry streaks of red and grey.
“No, don’t—don’t—”
Strong arms pulled me up, moving me away from the only place I wanted to be. Away from him.
My hands reached for Archie, desperate, useless, grasping at air as I tried to get back to him.
“No—please—”
Medics rushed in. Fast. Efficient. They were too calm.
They pushed in around him, hands moving with practised ease—cutting fabric, pressing, working.
Working on a body I knew—I knew—
“Clear!”
The word cracked through the air.
I flinched as a sharp, artificial jolt ran through Archie’s body.
My breath caught.
Hope—stupid, desperate hope—flared for a fraction of a second.
“Again.”
There was another charge. Another violent jerk.
Nothing.
The machine beside him screamed—a flat, unbroken sound that seemed to slice straight through my chest.
“No…”
The word dragged up my throat, thick and reluctant, forcing its way out like it didn’t belong there.
I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t… I turned away, my body folding in on itself as the reality hit in full, brutal force.
Gone. He was gone.
The air left my lungs in a shudder, my hands shaking as I pressed them to my face, trying—failing—to hold myself together.
Everything inside me tore loose at once. Something vital had been hooked and ripped straight out of my chest, leaving nothing behind but an echo and a hollow that couldn’t be filled.
“T—Tone…”
Gianni.
His voice reached me through the wreckage, softer than I’d ever heard it. Careful not to add to my pain.
I didn’t pull away when he stepped into me. Didn’t fight when his arms closed around me. I didn’t have anything left to fight with.
My body just… folded.
His hold was solid, unyielding, the only thing keeping me upright as my knees buckled beneath the weight of my grief. His hand pressed firm against the back of my head, anchoring me there, forcing me to stay in a world that had just lost its center.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, low and steady, holding me together by sheer force. “I’ve got you, sis.”
A broken sound slipped out of me. It was too small to be called a sob, and it shattered the air around me. My breath came in jagged fragments, each inhale dragging over the raw and ruined pain inside my chest. I felt like I was breathing through glass.
“They’ll take him to the hospital,” Gianni went on, voice tight but controlled. “I’ll drive you. Come on—”
Hospital.
The word drifted somewhere just out of reach, meaningless. Useless.
Because I knew. God, I knew.
There had been a moment—one single, devastating moment—where everything inside me had gone still. Where something deep in my bones had whispered the truth before my mind could catch up.
He wasn’t coming back. Not this time. Not for me.
My stomach twisted violently, the thought slicing too deep, too final to even finish. It lodged there, sharp and unmovable, stealing the air from my lungs.
Gianni shifted, trying to turn me, to guide me away from the place where Archie had been—where he had fallen—but my body resisted in the smallest, most broken way.
I couldn’t leave him. Even if he was already gone. Because that was what this was, wasn’t it?
Gone.
The word settled over me, suffocating me. Oppressive. It pressed down on my chest until breathing felt like a task I was failing.
Gone. Archie was gone.
And something inside me went with him—something I knew, with a quiet, terrifying certainty, I was never getting back.
“I can’t—” My voice cracked, barely there. “I can’t—”
But the words didn’t matter. Nothing did. Because my world was ending.
Gianni shifted slightly, guiding me to turn, to move—and that’s when I saw the stranger.
Standing apart from the others. Just beyond the chaos.
Dark hair. Longer around the neck. Rough. Untamed. It fell around his face in uneven strands, shadowing eyes that were fixed on the ground where Archie had fallen.
He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, gun still hanging loose in his hand like he’d forgotten it was even there.
His face—it wasn’t hard or cold. It was… broken. Carrying the kind of grief that men didn’t show in public. It was a sad, lingering kind of grief.
I stilled.
Something in my chest tightened, sharp and instinctive.
“Wait,” I murmured, my hand coming up to grip Gianni’s arm, stopping him mid-step.
He paused immediately.
“What is it?”
I nodded toward the man, my voice quieter now. “Who’s that?”
Gianni followed my gaze. And for a second—just one second—something flickered across his face. Recognition. Respect. I couldn’t be too sure. This was the man who had shot Machado, but I’m sure he wasn’t one of ours.
“That’s…” he exhaled slowly and shot me a confused frown.“I don’t know who that is.”
My breath caught.
I looked at the man again. At the way he stood there like the world had just shifted beneath his feet and he hadn’t quite figured out how to stand on it again. At the way his shoulders were set—not rigid, not guarded—but… weighted. Like he was carrying something that had just become unbearable.
Something about him felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain—like a memory half-buried, clawing to the surface.
It settled beneath my ribs and pulled tight, sharp enough to make my chest ache.
I swallowed against it, my gaze lingering on him a second too long, searching for something I couldn’t name.
But my grief was too loud.
It rose fast and merciless, swallowing every thought whole, dragging me under before I could make sense of the strange pull he left behind.
So I looked away. Folded into my own sorrow like it was the only thing left for me to do. And even as the tears blurred my vision, I could still feel him there—like something unfinished standing at the edge of my life, waiting for the moment I finally looked back.