7. Amara
AMARA
The sunlight hitting the velvet curtains is too bright, too loud, and far too domestic for a morning that should feel like a crime scene. The air in the bedroom is thick with cedar, sterile soap, and Alessio, the man who just got past every defense I’ve spent ten years building.
My skin hums with a low-voltage current that refuses to shut off. Every inch of me feels marked. Not with bruises—Alessio is too precise for that—but with the raw reality of letting someone get close.
The friction of the high-thread-count sheets sends a jolt of memory straight to the gut.
His hands. Those scarred, steady, devastating hands.
He didn’t just touch me; he found the wire I’ve kept wrapped around my life for a decade and made it feel breakable.
He shifted something in me I had spent ten years keeping locked.
I need to get out of this bed.
The reflex to bolt isn't a choice; it's a physiological response. It’s the itch in my heels that has kept me moving through three different states and a dozen temporary apartments since the day the dirt hit Curtis’s casket.
I don't do mornings after. I do vanishing acts. I’m the woman who leaves behind cheap motel shampoo and no forwarding address.
I’m not the woman who stays in a mafia fortress while a Costa doctor decides I’m his new obsession.
Alessio’s side of the bed is cold. Empty.
The realization hits like a bucket of ice water, followed by a traitorous pang of disappointment.
Relief should be the only thing I have, but if he were here, looking at me with those dark, knowing eyes, the door would stay closed.
He’d wrap an arm around my waist, pull me back into his heat, and I’d dissolve again.
"Get up, Amara," I whisper. My voice sounds wrecked.
Clothes are scattered across the floor—a chaotic trail of denim and cotton. I scramble out of bed, legs feeling like jelly, and gather my armor. No looking in the mirror. I don't want to see the flush on my neck or the way my eyes look different.
The bag is tucked in the corner of the walk-in closet—a rugged, black nylon duffel. It holds my entire life: three changes of clothes, a burner phone, and a single framed photo of Curtis wrapped in a t-shirt. I don't have much to pack. If you don't own anything, nothing can own you.
I move with the practiced silence of a ghost. I’ve slipped out of back windows while creditors knocked on the front door. I’ve vanished from job sites the moment someone started asking too many personal questions.
But as I reach for the mahogany bedroom door, my hand won't stay still.
It’s not fear. It’s the weight of the secrets. The ledger. The ghost financier. The man who spent six hours making me forget my own name is currently hunting a traitor who might be eating breakfast downstairs.
I can’t walk away from the case. Vane is the only reason I’ve breathed for a decade. If I leave now, the trail goes cold.
You’re leaving because if you stay, he’s going to swallow you whole, the cynical voice in my head snaps. You’re staying for the man, not the money, and that’s how people get killed.
I crack the door open. The hallway is silent, dim morning light filtering through the high windows. The house is a sleeping beast that could wake up and crush me at any second. I make it to the stairs, my pulse drumming a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Downstairs, the smell of wood smoke and frying garlic drifts up. It’s a warm scent that feels violently out of place in a house filled with guns.
I reach the bottom of the grand staircase, bag slung over my shoulder, eyes darting toward the front doors. I just need to find a side exit, a blind spot, and a way past the gate. I’ll go to a safe house and work the numbers from a distance.
I turn the corner toward the back of the house, heading for the secondary exit, and freeze.
Turi is sitting at the long, rustic wooden table off Matteo’s kitchen.
He isn't wearing a tailored suit. He’s in a thick, knitted cardigan, a mug of steaming coffee held between his weathered hands. He looks like someone’s grandfather—the kind who tells stories by the fire and always has a peppermint in his pocket.
"It’s a bit early for a hike, isn't it, Amara?"
His voice is gravelly with age. He doesn't look up from his coffee. There’s no edge to his words. No threat. Just a quiet observation.
I tighten my grip on the bag strap, grip tight enough to creak. "I need some air."
Turi finally looks at me. He doesn't look at the bag or the fact that I’m vibrating with the urge to sprint. He gestures to the seat across from him.
"The air is fresh in the garden, but the coffee is better in here. Sit. Please. An old man hates to eat alone."
My internal alarm system is screaming, but Turi knows things, and I need to know which ones he offers for free. It’s the same warmth from dinner, the kind this family seems built around. I don’t know yet if that makes him safe or dangerous.
I shouldn't sit. I should lie. I should tell him I’m going to the gym and then peel out of the driveway at eighty miles per hour.
Instead, my legs move. I drop my bag on the floor—the thud sounds like a confession—and slide into the chair.
Turi pushes a plate of toasted bread and a small jar toward me. “Matteo made this. The secret is the hint of almond. He pretends the secret is technique, but I think it’s attention. Food knows when it’s an obligation versus a gift.”
I stare at the bread. My stomach is in knots, but the smell is distracting. I take a piece to give my hands something to do. "You’re up early."
"Old bones don't like to stay still," he says, taking a slow sip. "And I like the house at this hour. Before the shouting. Before the boys begin carrying the world on their shoulders. It reminds me of how it used to be. Before the massacre."
The mention of the massacre hits the room with physical force. I think about Alessio’s silver hair, that Costa inheritance that makes grief look visible even when it isn’t.
"Alessio told me you’ve been with them since the beginning," I say, my voice softening.
Turi nods, a distant look entering his eyes. “Since they were knee-high. I knew Carlo’s boys since before they could walk. I was Carlo’s right hand, and Riza’s friend. Riza... she was the light of that house. When she walked into a room, the shadows simply gave up."
He looks at me, his gaze searching mine. "Alessio has her eyes. And her stubbornness. He’s spent eleven years trying to be a wall. He thinks if he’s strong enough, the ghosts won't be able to find his brothers. He’s forgotten how to be a man because he’s too busy being a shield."
The bread tastes like ash. I think about the way Alessio looked at me last night—the raw, desperate hunger for connection.
"He’s dangerous, Turi," I whisper. "He’s a lot."
Turi chuckles, a dry, rasping sound. "He is a Costa. But danger isn't always a bad thing, Amara. A storm is dangerous, but it clears the air. A fire is dangerous, but it keeps the winter at bay."
He leans forward. “I saw enough last night. I saw the way he looked at you at dinner. I haven’t seen that look on Alessio’s face in twenty years.”
A lump hardens in my throat. I want to argue, to snap back with something sharp enough to draw blood, but the words die on my tongue.
"I don't belong here," I say, my voice cracking. "I’ve spent ten years running from people like the Bellantis. My brother died because of people like this. I don't know how to be part of a 'whole world.' I only know how to survive the broken one."
Turi reaches across the table. He doesn't grab my hand, but he rests his own on the wood near mine.
“If men like these waited for the world to be safe, none of them would ever love anyone. Carlo and Riza knew the South Side was closing in. But do you know what they did the night before Carlo was taken?”
I shake my head, mesmerized by the cadence of his voice.
"They held each other in the kitchen. Right there," he points to the tiled floor. "No music. Just the sound of the rain and each other’s breathing. Carlo told me once that if he only had one minute left, he’d spend it holding her, because that minute made the whole cost of this life worth it.”
The weight I’ve been carrying—the memory of Curtis’s empty room, the cold silence of the morgue, the decade of sleeping with one eye open—it shifts. It’s not just grief anymore. It’s a void.
I’ve been so busy making sure I don't lose anything else that I’ve forgotten to gain anything worth keeping.
"Alessio is terrified," Turi says softly. "He won't admit it. He’ll growl and command and act like he’s made of stone. He’s terrified you’ll look at him and see only the things he’s lost. He thinks he’s only good for carrying the dead. He forgets he’s a doctor.”
A tear escapes. I wipe it away angrily with the back of my hand. "I came here to find Vane. That’s all."
"Is it?" Turi asks. “You’ve been chasing Vane so long you forgot the living can still ask something of you. But the living is right upstairs, likely waking up and realizing his heart is walking out the front door."
He stands up, picking up his empty mug. He looks older in the morning light—frail. The thought that someone could make himself look this harmless and still betray them makes my stomach turn.
"Stay for the coffee, Amara," Turi says, heading toward the sink. "Stay for the case. Stay because a man like Alessio only asks once, and he didn't even use words to ask you."
He leaves the room without another word.
I’m left alone in the sunlight. My bag is still on the floor. The exit is twenty feet away. The gate is guarded, but I’ve spent ten years finding gaps in systems people swear are airtight. I could be a ghost again by noon.
But I think about the way Alessio touched the bandage on my arm. The way he tried to fix the wound and saw the fear underneath it. I think about the eleven years he’s spent in that dark vault, carrying the weight of a traitor alone.