Chapter 6 – Nico
The garage is the kind of space that holds heat even when no one’s around to notice it—thick air, stale from too many nights spent working on engines that never roared again.
I lean against the hood of the Barracuda. She’s halfway gutted, wires coiled like veins across the floor. Outside, wind pushes faintly against the cracked garage door. Somewhere, gulls are screaming over the dumpsters near the docks.
I hear her before I see her.
Soft boot steps on the gravel. Measured. Not hesitant. Just careful.
The door creaks. Elara Ricci.
Blood still dried into the seam of her jeans. Chain glinting under her jacket. Hair damp from fog. Her eyes cut through the dark like she's used to finding threats in shadow.
She stops halfway into the space, doesn’t speak.
“Didn’t think you’d come,” I say.
“Didn’t say I would,” she replies.
Her voice is rougher than usual. Low. Edged like she’s been chewing on anger for hours and hasn’t had a reason to spit it out yet.
I reach back to the workbench, grab a wrench, and toss it underhand.
She catches it without thinking.
She stares at it.
“You think I fix cars now?”
I nod to the open hood. “Try something.”
She steps forward, her eyes never leaving mine until she’s standing beside the car. Then she shifts, looks under the hood, sets the wrench down on the frame.
“What’s the problem?”
“Cracked coil. Intermittent start.”
“Cheap fix,” she mutters, grabbing a rag and wiping her hands before they’ve touched anything. “Lazy diagnosis.”
I say nothing.
She digs into the engine. Fingers trail wires, checking connections. Methodical. She doesn’t ask questions. Just starts working like it’s second nature. I half expect her to swear at it, but she’s quiet.
Focused.
Her hands don’t tremble. Not even when she scrapes her knuckle and blood beads up.
I watch from the side, arms crossed. She’s not doing it to impress me. She’s doing it because it distracts her.
When she’s done, she closes the hood, tosses the wrench onto the bench, and wipes her palms down her thighs.
“Good enough?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
She leans back against the car next to me. The engine ticks from the residual heat of a half-hour test run. Neither of us speaks.
The silence stretches.
Then: “You killed him clean,” she says.
I look at her, but she’s staring ahead, toward the back wall of the garage where the shadows crowd around the toolbox.
“Yeah.”
“You meant for me to see it.”
“I did.”
She pushes off the hood, starts pacing in a slow line near the bench. Her fingers hook under the hem of her shirt, then drop. Restless.
“I hated that you were right,” she says.
“About what?”
“That I needed to watch him die to feel free.”
“You don’t need to hate that.”
She turns. The overhead bulb catches her face in slanted light. Her mouth is drawn tight, but her eyes—they’re alive. Alert. Furious, maybe, but at who, I don’t know.
“Vince said you like lost causes,” she says.
“I don’t.”
“Then what’s this?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She steps closer. Not aggressive. Not flirty either.
Just near.
Her eyes land on my hands, then my chest, then my face.
“You always stare at people like that?”
“Only when they do things I don’t expect.”
“What’d I do?”
“You walked in here.”
Her mouth twitches. “You’re hard to pin down.”
“So are you.”
She exhales, sharp.
I reach out, slowly, and hook a finger through the chain around her neck.
I don’t pull.
Just hold it between us.
“You keep this on like it’s armor,” I say.
“It is.”
“You ever take it off?”
“No.”
She steps in until our bodies are almost touching. The air between us feels charged, like metal catching sparks.
Her voice is quieter now. “You think you get me, Drago?”
“I think I get what matters.”
She lifts her chin. “Then tell me what this is.”
I answer the way I know how.
I kiss her.
Her mouth meets mine like she’s been holding back since the alley. It’s not gentle. It’s not sweet. It’s rough. Honest.
Her lips part. She exhales hard into my mouth, grabs my collar like she wants to rip it. I press her back against the car. She doesn’t fight it.
She kisses me like she’s angry at herself for wanting this—like it means giving up ground she swore she wouldn’t.
My hands find her waist. She grips my wrist.
Our teeth clash.
Her tongue pushes mine back. My mouth pulls hers deeper.
She breaks first—barely—just enough to breathe. Her breath hits my cheek, hot and fast.
“I hate this,” she mutters.
I press my forehead to hers. “No, you don’t.”
“I hate what it means.”
“Then don’t define it.”
I pull her back in.
This time, she groans softly. It’s not surrender—it’s tension breaking.
Her hands slip up under my shirt, dragging along my ribs. I press my body harder into hers.
Our hips connect.
Both of us feel it.
But we don’t move past it.
She kisses me again—slower this time. Her fingers flex at my sides, like she’s testing how much she can take.
I nip her bottom lip. She bites back harder.
Then breaks away, panting.
Her eyes are glassy with heat. But her hands drop.
She steps back, just one pace.
“That’s all you get,” she says, voice low. “For now.”
I nod.
“Fair.”
She turns, grabs the rag from earlier, wipes her mouth, then tosses it over her shoulder and walks toward the garage door.
She doesn’t look back when she says, “Next time you kiss me like that, you better be sure what you want.”
“I already am.”
She doesn’t answer.
Just pulls open the door and disappears.
I stare after her until the bulb above me swings again.
Still humming.
Still alive.
She’s barely outside when the door flies back open again.
It slams against the concrete wall with a metal shriek.
The runner is young—eighteen, maybe. Skinny, sweat-soaked, wide-eyed. His shoes skid across the floor.
“Drago!” he shouts. “Back door—they’re—!”
That’s all he gets out.
A second figure crashes through the back entrance. Wood splinters. Chain clatters.
A thug I don’t recognize. Mask off, face sweating, breath heaving, a Glock already raised.
“Found you!” the guy snarls.
I don’t speak.
Don’t think.
The blade is already in my hand.
I close the distance in one step.
One clean sweep—across the throat.
The sound is wet and sharp. Muscle, cartilage, skin—parted before his eyes can register what’s happened.
His body stumbles forward two steps. Then hits the ground like a sack of meat, blood flooding the concrete in fast, ugly rivers.
The runner stumbles back, nearly falling. Elara’s just outside, caught mid-turn, framed in the open doorway.
She doesn’t scream.
She doesn’t bolt.
She stares.
Breathing fast. Chest rising, falling. But no panic in her eyes. Just recognition.
I stand over the body, blood drying on my fingers.
The runner backs into the tool chest, rattling it hard.
“Shit,” he whispers. “I didn’t know they were on me—”
I don’t look at him. I look at her.
Elara steps fully into the garage, eyes flicking from the corpse to my hands, then to my face.
She exhales.
“You always deal with things that fast?”
“Only when there’s no time to think.”
Her mouth presses into a tight line.
She glances once at the runner. Then at the blood. Then back to me.
The runner finally speaks. “I came from the south lot—car was following me halfway down Bayview. Thought I lost them, then this guy broke off. Thought maybe he was just cutting through—”
“He wasn’t,” I say.
“No,” he agrees.
Elara crosses the room. Not fast. Not tentative.
She walks around the body like it’s a spill someone forgot to mop up.
When she reaches me, she stops. Arms crossed. Chain swinging slightly.
“This normal for you?” she asks.
“Lately?” I nod. “Yeah.”
She huffs once. “Then you’d better get used to having me around.”
That makes me stop.
Look at her.
Full.
She meets it. No flinch. No mask.
“Good,” I say.
The runner blinks like he’s watching a different kind of violence unfold. One he can’t explain.
I glance at him. “Clean this up. Dump him in the canal off 14th.”
He swallows. “You want a burn bag?”
“No,” I say. “Let them find the body.”
He nods fast, already heading toward the back wall to grab the tarp.
Elara’s still near me. Not touching. But close.
Close enough that I can feel the heat of her skin again.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Is that a real question?”
“Yes.”
She shrugs. “I’m not bleeding. So yeah.”
“Good.”
She reaches for the rag on the bench and wipes a spot of blood from the edge of my wrist.
She doesn’t hand it back. Just drops it into the trash can.
And then she sits.
Right down on the edge of the bench.
“I used to think people who lived like this were exaggerating,” she says. “Violence every night. Guns. Blood. I thought it was some dramatized bullshit.”
“And now?”
She looks at me.
“Now I think it’s not half as loud as I expected. It just… happens. And you decide if you keep breathing.”
I nod once. “That’s exactly what it is.”
The garage feels smaller now.
Like it’s just her, me, and whatever’s left on the floor.
She leans forward, elbows on her knees.
“This whole thing with Tommy. It started when I was seventeen. He told me I was nothing without him. And I believed it—until I didn’t.”
“You believed it too long.”
“I know.”
“I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
“Neither am I.”
She says it clean. No stutter. No shake.
“I don’t expect you to be okay overnight,” I say.
“I’m not broken.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
She nods. “Then we understand each other.”
A silence falls—not empty. Just... held.
She studies the back wall again, like maybe the shadowed tools can offer her something solid.
Then she says, “I’m not used to people doing things for me without a price.”
“There’s always a price.”
“So what’s yours?”
I step forward.
Rest a hand on the workbench beside her.
“I don’t want to own you. I don’t want to fix you. I want you in this with me. That’s all.”
She doesn’t blink.
“And if I walk away?”
“I won’t stop you.”
She stands.
We’re inches apart again.
“You always this honest?”
“No.”
“Why now?”
“Because it’s you.”
She exhales through her nose. Short. Disbelieving.
But she doesn’t leave.
Instead, she says, “What happens now?”
I don’t answer right away.
Because I don’t know.
But I say the only thing I mean in this moment.
“We stay alive. We take what we can. And when the war hits, we stand on the same side.”
She looks at me for a long time.
Then nods.
That’s it.
That’s the start.
It’s not romantic.
It’s not sweet.
It’s real.
And somehow, it’s enough.
She doesn’t walk out this time.
She stays.
We sit. We breathe.
And somewhere outside, the city gets a little quieter.
For now.
This isn’t just survival anymore.
It’s something else starting.
Just barely.
But it’s there.