Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Kristen
Two weeks passed.
I grip Lily's hand as we walk home from kindergarten, her tiny fingers sticky from the juice box she demolished on the playground. She chatters about Maya's purple backpack and the worm they found during recess, but I'm only half-listening.
Because someone is watching me.
The feeling started three days ago. That prickling awareness between my shoulder blades, the sensation of eyes tracking my movements whenever I step outside. At first, I told myself it was paranoia. Residual anxiety from living in a mafia compound for weeks.
But I lived years with a man who made me doubt my own reality. I know when I'm being watched.
Today, I'm ready.
"Mommy, can we have mac and cheese tonight?" Lily tugs my hand.
"Sure, baby." I scan the street as we approach our building. Nothing obvious. A woman walking her dog. A delivery truck double-parked. An older man reading a newspaper on the bench across the—
There.
A black sedan, three cars down. Same one I noticed yesterday. And the day before.
My pulse kicks up, but I keep my face neutral. Don't react. Don't let them know you've spotted them.
We enter the building, and I guide Lily toward the stairs. But instead of climbing, I pause at the first landing. "Hold on, sweetie. Mommy dropped something."
Lily sighs dramatically but she waits.
I count to thirty. Then I peek around the corner toward the glass door.
And my blood goes cold.
Claudio.
He stands on the sidewalk, phone pressed to his ear, eyes fixed on our building. Same Claudio who works directly for him.
He put a man on me.
The rage hits like a wave. White-hot and blinding.
I grab Lily's hand and march upstairs, my jaw so tight it aches. The audacity. The absolute audacity. I left. I walked away from his manipulation, his control, his inability to treat me like a person capable of making her own decisions.
And he responds by putting surveillance on me like I'm a goddamn asset to protect.
I'm shaking by the time I unlock our apartment door.
"Mommy?" Lily's voice is small. "Are you okay?"
I force myself to breathe. Unclench my fists. Smooth the fury from my face before I look at my daughter. "I'm fine, baby. Can you do me a favor?"
She nods, those gray-blue eyes so trusting it breaks something in my chest.
"Go play in your room for a bit, okay? Mommy needs to make an important phone call."
"Is it about work?"
"Something like that."
Lily considers this, then shrugs. "Okay. But can Sir Floppington the Fourth and Princess Bun-Bun come visit soon? I miss them."
"We'll see," I manage.
She skips to her room, already singing something from Moana. I wait until her door closes before I storm into the kitchen, yank my phone from my pocket, and dial.
It rings twice.
Nico
My phone lights up on the desk.
Kristen.
For one pathetic second, my heart slams against my ribs. Maybe she's calling to—
I stop the thought before it fully forms. Crush it like a cigarette under my heel.
She's not calling because she misses me. She's not calling because she changed her mind. She's not calling to say come get me, I made a mistake.
That's not how this works. That's not how anything works in my world.
Still, my hand moves toward the phone like it belongs to someone else. Some desperate idiot who hasn't learned that hope is just another weapon people use against you.
I pick it up.
"Call off your dog." Her voice is flat. Nothing like the way she sounded when she was underneath me, gasping my name.
Don't think about that.
"Kristen." I say her name like it doesn't taste like broken glass in my mouth.
"I saw Claudio. Same black sedan, three days in a row. Did you really think I wouldn't notice?"
I close my eyes.
"You're having me watched." She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I can't believe you did this again. After everything. After I told you—"
"I know what you told me."
"Then why?"
Because I can't stop. Because the thought of something happening to you makes me want to burn this entire city to the ground. Because I'm exactly the monster you think I am.
"The Russians," I say. "They know who you are. They know where you live. Claudio stays."
Silence on the other end.
I want to yell at her. I want to tell her to stop being so goddamn stubborn and come back here where I can actually protect her instead of relying on surveillance footage and men parked on street corners.
Come back. Come back. Come back.
The words claw at my throat, but I don't let them out.
"This isn't about control," I add, and even I can hear how hollow that sounds. "It's about keeping you and Lily alive."
More silence.
She doesn't believe me.
Why would she? I lied to her about the debt. I manipulated her custody situation without asking. I kept her in my house under false pretenses because I was terrified of watching her walk away.
And now she's gone anyway.
"Is there anything else you need?" The question tastes like ash.
Say yes. Say you need me. Say you made a mistake.
"No."
The line goes dead.
I stare at the phone in my hand. My knuckles are still healing from the mirror incident, the cuts scabbed over and pulling every time I make a fist.
No.
One word. That's all I get.
I set the phone down carefully on the desk. Then I reach for the whiskey bottle.
Pietro's voice echoes in my head: You're going to drink yourself into an early grave.
Maybe.
But at least graves are quiet. At least graves don't call you just to tell you they don't need anything from you.
I pour two fingers. Then three.
Claudio will stay. I don't care if Kristen hates me for it. I don't care if she never speaks to me again.
Liar.
I care. That's the whole fucking problem. I care so much it's eating me alive from the inside out.
The muzzle flash blinds me before the pain hits.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
I came here alone because I couldn't sleep, couldn't think, couldn't function without whiskey numbing the constant ache in my chest.
Tonight I traced the pattern. Warehouse 7, east side dock, 2 a.m. rotation gap. I should have brought backup. I should have waited for Dante. But the hollow space where Kristen used to be made me reckless.
Made me want to feel something other than this.
The bullet grants my wish.
It punches through my chest like a fist made of fire. The impact throws me backward into a stack of wooden crates. I hit the concrete hard, my Glock clattering from fingers that suddenly won't obey.
"Nico!" Dante's voice cracks through the warehouse, followed by rapid gunfire. Three shots. Four. A body drops somewhere to my left.
I try to count the Russians. Saw four when I entered. These aren't Baganovs—I'd recognize their men. These are new players. Freelancers maybe. Hired muscle moving in on our territory while I've been too busy destroying myself to notice.
Funny. I always thought getting shot would hurt more.
It doesn't compare to watching Kristen walk out my door. Doesn't touch the agony of her voice on the phone, flat and done with me.
"Stay with me!" Dante slides to his knees beside me, hands pressing hard against my chest. The pressure should be excruciating. I barely feel it. "Don't you fucking dare, Nico."
"How many?" My voice sounds distant. Underwater.
"Doesn't matter. Liam's cleaning up." Dante's face swims above me, features blurring at the edges. "Why the hell did you come alone? What were you thinking?"
I wasn't. That's the problem.
I was drowning in surveillance footage of Kristen walking Lily to kindergarten.
Yes, I asked Claudio to record. I stay there watching her laugh at something on her phone.
Seeing her look over her shoulder, checking for threats I'd put there.
I was drinking myself blind because the alternative was driving to her apartment and begging her to forgive me for being exactly what she escaped.
"Kristen." Her name scrapes past my lips.
"What?" Dante's hands press harder. "Nico, stay focused. Help's coming."
The warehouse ceiling spirals above me. Industrial lights blur into stars. My body feels heavy and weightless at the same time, like I'm sinking through the concrete floor.
"Tell her—" I can't finish. Tell her what? That I'm sorry? That I'd do it all again because keeping her safe mattered more than keeping her?
"Nico!" Dante's voice cracks. "Open your eyes!"
I didn't realize I'd closed them.
The darkness feels soft. Welcoming. Nothing hurts here. Not my chest, not the hollow space behind my ribs where she used to live.
This must be what dying feels like. This absence of everything.
Peaceful.
I always thought I'd fight it. Go down swinging like Riccardo, protecting something that mattered. Instead I'm bleeding out on a warehouse floor because I couldn't face another night without her.
"Kristen." Her name again. I can't stop saying it.
The word dies in my throat.
"Two minutes," Dante says. "Stay with me two more minutes."
I try to hold on. For Pietro, who doesn't need to bury another brother. For Vittoria, who's already lost too much. For my mother, who'd never recover from this.
But my grip keeps slipping.
The last thing I see before the darkness takes me is Kristen's face. Not angry. Not hurt. Just... looking at me the way she did that night in the living room, when she said she wanted to know me.
Before I ruined everything.
I'm sorry.
I'm not sure if I say it out loud.
Then there's nothing at all.