Chapter 6
Chapter six
Nicky
For the second time today, I sit on the edge of his bed for what feels like hours but is probably only minutes, watching him fall apart in slow motion. His shoulders shake with silent sobs, his face buried against his knees like he’s trying to disappear entirely.
I left him alone all day, only intruding to deliver beans on toast for lunch and pasta for dinner.
But now it is nearly time to leave, so I’m intruding again and reopening the wound for both of us.
“Liam,” I whisper. “Please look at me.”
But he doesn’t. Won’t. And I don’t blame him.
My phone buzzes against my leg. A text from Dante. Don’t be late.
The words feel like a death sentence. Not for me, though that’s possible too, but for us. For whatever fragile thing we’ve been trying to rebuild.
“I have to get ready,” I say, hating myself for the words.
Liam’s breath hitches. “How long?”
“What?”
“How long have you been killing people?”
The question sits between us like a loaded gun. I want to lie, to soften it somehow, but I’ve done enough lying.
“Three years,” I admit.
He lifts his head then, and the look on his face nearly destroys me. It’s not just horror or fear. It’s grief. Like he’s mourning someone who died.
Maybe he is.
“That’s nearly the whole time I was inside,” he says quietly. “The whole time I was... you were...”
“I was trying to build something for us,” I say desperately. “This apartment, the money, everything I have… it was supposed to be for when you got out. So we could have a life.”
“A life built on violence.”
The words hit like a physical blow. “Liam…”
“Don’t.” His voice cracks. “Don’t try to make this about me. Don’t make me responsible for your choices.”
He’s right. God, he’s right, and that makes it so much worse.
I stand up, my legs unsteady. “I have to go get ready.”
“What if they catch you?”
The question stops me cold. I turn back to look at him, and for a moment I see a flash of the old Liam, the one who used to worry about me getting detention, who used to wait up when I had to work late at the chip shop.
“They won’t,” I say, but we both know it’s not a promise I can make.
“What if you don’t come back?”
The naked fear in his voice nearly breaks my resolve. I want to crawl back onto that bed, wrap my arms around him, and never let go. I want to call Dante and tell him to go fuck himself. I want to be eighteen again, sitting under that overpass, believing we could be anything.
Instead, I force myself to walk toward the door.
“I’ll be back,” I say. “I swear to you, Liam. I’ll be back.”
But even as I say it, I can feel him slipping away from me, retreating back into that place where I can’t follow.
My hands shake as I lay out my clothes on my bed. Black jeans, black sweater, black jacket. The uniform of someone who needs to disappear into shadows. I’ve done this routine dozens of times, but tonight it feels like putting on a costume for my own funeral.
Down the hall, I can hear nothing from Liam’s room. No crying, no movement. Just silence, which somehow feels worse than the sobbing.
I shower quickly, mechanically, trying not to think about the last time I held him. How he’d whispered, “You smell like home,” against my neck. How desperately he’d clung to me, like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to the world.
Now I’m the thing he needs protecting from.
When I’m dressed, I check my gun. Clean the barrel, count the bullets, even though I know Dante won’t need me for the actual killing. I’m just the driver. Just the getaway. Just complicit enough to be damned.
My phone buzzes. Dante again. Thirty minutes.
It is not like Dante to repeat himself. Or to pester. It is like him to slide into your mind and know exactly all the doubts you are holding.
I walk back to Liam’s room. The door is still ajar, just like I left it that first night. But when I peer inside, he’s not on the bed anymore.
“Liam?”
I find him in the corner again, but this time he’s not just curled up, he’s pressed against the wall like he’s trying to push through it. His eyes are wide and glassy, staring at nothing.
“Hey.” I kneel down in front of him, careful not to touch. “I’m leaving now.”
He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even seem to see me.
“The door will be locked,” I continue, desperate to get through to him. “No one can get in. You’re safe here.”
Still nothing.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a spare key, setting it on the floor between us. “In case you... in case you need to leave. But please, please don’t. Just wait for me, okay?”
His eyes focus on me then, just for a moment. “What if you never come back?” He says again with even more feeling than last time.
The question once again hits me in the chest like a sledgehammer. What if I don’t? What happens to Liam then? He can barely handle the outside world on a good day. How would he survive completely alone?
“I will,” I say fiercely. “I promise you, I will come back.”
But promises are cheap things in my world. Easily broken by a bullet or a blade or a moment’s hesitation at the wrong time.
“I love you,” I say suddenly, the words tumbling out before I can stop them.
Liam’s eyes widen, and for a moment something flickers there, surprise, maybe. Or recognition. But then the shutters come down again.
It is on the tip of my tongue to blurt something like, ‘No homo,’ or, ‘Like a brother.’ But Liam knows. He always has.
“No, you don’t,” he whispers. “You love who you remember me being.”
The words cut deeper than any knife Dante’s ever shown me.
I want to argue, to tell him he’s wrong, but there’s no time. My phone is buzzing again, insistent and demanding.
I stand up, my legs feeling like they might give out. “I have to go.”
Liam doesn’t respond. He’s already retreating back into that unreachable place, pulling the walls up around himself brick by brick.
I make it to the front door before I have to stop, my hand gripping the handle with white knuckles.
The metal is cold under my palm, solid and real in a way that nothing else feels right now.
Everything in my body is screaming at me to turn around, to go back to him, to choose love over loyalty for once in my goddamn life.
I could do it. I could walk back down that hallway, gather Liam in my arms, and run.
We could disappear, change our names, move to some small town where nobody knows our faces or our history.
I have enough money saved to last us years if we’re careful.
We could have that amazing life we used to dream about, far from the violence and the fear and the weight of impossible choices.
But even as the fantasy plays out in my mind, I know it’s just that, a fantasy.
Men like Dante don’t let you just walk away.
Men like Dario don’t forgive betrayal, no matter how long you’ve served them loyally.
They would find us eventually, and when they did, Liam would pay the price for my defection.
He’d die because of my choices, just like Olivia died because of his.
The parallel hits me like a punch to the gut. We’re both trapped by the weight of our past mistakes, both prisoners of choices we can’t undo. The only difference is that his cage had bars, while mine is made of obligation and fear and the blood on my hands.
My phone buzzes one final time, and I know there’s no more time for hesitation. Dante’s patience has limits, and I’ve already pushed them further than is wise.
I open the door and step out into the cold night air.
The walk to my car feels like the longest journey of my life.
Each step echoes in the empty street, bouncing off the elegant facades of buildings that suddenly look like mausoleums. The MX5 waits for me under a streetlight, its black paint gleaming like oil.
It’s the car I dreamed about as a teenager, the symbol of success and freedom that was supposed to make everything worthwhile.
Now it just looks like a hearse.
I slide behind the wheel, and the leather seat embraces me with familiar comfort. The interior still smells faintly of the expensive cologne I wear to impress people whose opinions don’t matter, mixed with something else, something that might be regret, if regret had a scent.
My hands shake as I start the engine. The familiar purr of the motor used to fill me with pride, but tonight it sounds like a death rattle. Everything that once symbolized my success, my escape from the poverty and powerlessness of my childhood, now feels like evidence of my corruption.
I pull out onto the empty streets, and London slides past my windows like a fever dream.
Neon signs blur into smears of color, and the few people I see look like ghosts, pale and insubstantial in the harsh light of the streetlamps.
The city that raised us, that shaped us, that offered us such different paths out of our circumstances, suddenly feels foreign and hostile.
As I drive, my mind keeps circling back to Liam pressed against that wall, trying to disappear into the very architecture of our apartment.
The way he flinched when I moved too quickly.
The terror in his voice when he asked if I was going to come back.
The broken certainty in his words when he said I didn’t really love him.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe the boy I fell in love with under that overpass really is gone, replaced by someone I don’t understand and can’t protect.
But as I navigate the bustling streets toward whatever fresh horror awaits me, I realize something that cuts through all my self-doubt and rationalization:
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter if he’s different now, damaged, harder to love. It doesn’t matter if he pushes me away or if he never forgives me for what I’ve become. It doesn’t matter if the boy with the cocky smile and the impossible dreams is gone forever.
I love him anyway. I love the wounded man who trembles at loud noises and finds comfort in cartoons about talking animals.
I love his courage in trying to step outside despite his terror, his gentleness even in his own pain, the way he still worries about my safety even when I’m the thing he fears most.
I love all of him, past and present, broken and whole, the boy he was and the man he’s become.
The realization settles in my chest like a weight, heavy but also somehow liberating. For the first time in years, I know exactly what I want, exactly where my loyalties lie. The only question is whether I’ll have the courage to choose love over fear when the moment comes.
The warehouse district looms ahead, all shadows and broken promises.
Somewhere in one of those buildings, Dante is waiting with his knives and his questions and his complete absence of mercy.
Somewhere behind me, in a penthouse apartment bought with blood money, the person I love most in the world is falling apart.
And I’m driving toward the thing that might destroy us both, knowing that I have no choice but hoping that somehow, against all odds, we’ll find a way through this night intact.
The city blurs past my windows, and I think about promises that might be lies, about love that feels like drowning, about the weight of choices we can never unmake.
Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower chimes midnight, and I know there’s no turning back.