24. Alessio #2
Dominic gathers us in the dining room. There is no food, only maps of the mountains and property deeds.
“The first group leaves in forty-eight hours,” he says, his voice ringing through the empty room.
“Vincenzo has the transport secured. Natalia has the legal trail covered. We go to Pine Valley. We look back only when we choose to.”
My brothers murmur their agreement, voices tired but resolute. They want the quiet. They want to be men who aren't always looking over their shoulders.
I look at Amara. She’s standing in the doorway, hands tucked into the sleeves of her dress. She looks like a guest who has overstayed her welcome. She doesn't look like a woman about to move to the mountains.
“Amara,” I say, walking over to her. “The library. I need to show you something.”
She follows me, footsteps silent on the hardwood floors. The library is half-packed, shelves of books replaced by cardboard boxes. I lead her to the desk—the place where she found the truth about Turi. I reach into the drawer and pull out a folder.
I don’t give it to her. Not yet. I just hold it, the weight of it a promise I’m not sure I can keep.
“I’m endowing the scholarship,” I tell her. “The Curtis Osei Memorial Scholarship. For forensic students. Natalia has the paperwork ready. The first funds go out next month.”
She blinks, her eyes softening. She reaches out, fingers brushing the top of the velvet box. “Alessio... you didn't have to do that.”
“I did,” I say, my voice thick. “He was your brother. He was the reason you fought. He deserves to be remembered for more than a line in a ledger. He’s part of our story now, Amara. Not as a line in Vane’s ledger. As a name we protect.”
She looks away, her jaw tightening. Tears threaten to spill.
She’s a runner because weight has always meant trap to her.
She’s spent ten years light on her feet, carrying nothing but a laptop and a grudge.
Now, I’m trying to give her a home, a name, and a legacy.
It’s too much. I can feel it in the way she’s vibrating—a bird trapped in a room with too many windows.
“I need to pack,” she whispers.
“Most of your things are upstairs,” I say carefully. “But I know that isn’t what you mean.” “Everything you have is already in my room. You unpacked. You put your clothes in my dresser.”
“I need to... I need to see the mountain,” she says, words coming out fast. “I need to know what it looks like. I’ve always been in cities. Always in the noise.”
“It’s quiet,” I say, stepping closer, crowding her space.
I want her to feel that I’m here. That she isn’t alone.
That the door isn’t the only answer. “It’s so quiet you can hear your own heart.
It’s going to be good for us. We’ll build something real.
Not a fortress. Not a vault. A house with doors we choose to open. ”
I reach out, cupping her face. Her skin is like silk, so fragile under my scarred palms. I lean down, pressing my lips to hers.
It’s a slow, desperate kiss, a plea for her to stay, to choose me, to stop looking for the exit.
She kisses me back, her mouth hungry and searching, but there’s a desperate edge to it. It feels like a goodbye.
“I love you,” I mutter against her lips.
She doesn't say it back. She just clings to me, fingers digging into my shoulders, breath hitched in her throat.
The evening is a blur of logistics and exhaustion.
We eat a somber dinner of sandwiches on packing crates.
We drink too much wine. We try to talk about the future, about the MC in Pine Valley, about Lucia in Pine Valley, about the life she built beyond Chicago.
But the ghosts of Chicago are still in the room, hovering in the corners where the furniture used to be.
By midnight, the house is finally quiet. The brothers have gone to their rooms, the boxes are sealed, and the last of the wine has been drained. I lead Amara up the stairs, my hand at her waist, wound tighter than I know how to admit.
Wound up like a spring that’s about to snap. The war is over, and I don’t know who I am. I’m not a hunter. I’m not a keeper of secrets. I’m just a man with a woman who looks like she’s about to vanish into the night.
We get into bed, the sheets cold and crisp.
I pull her against me, limbs tangling with hers.
I want to sink into her, to lose myself in the heat of her body until the world outside disappears.
I want to touch her until the fear leaves both of us, but grief has made my hands too desperate.
But the grief is still too heavy. The trauma of the day is a wall between us.
I hold her until my arms ache. I listen to her heart until it slows into the steady rhythm of sleep. I watch the moon crawl across the floor, counting the seconds until the sun comes up and we leave this blood-soaked city behind.
I must have drifted off. A shallow, restless sleep filled with the sound of shovels hitting wood and the smell of gunpowder. I dream of the mountain, but it’s not peaceful. It’s a jagged, cold place where I’m calling Amara’s name and only the echo answers.
The realization drops through me with brutal certainty: I have no plan. No contingency. No next move. The surgeon has run out of thread.
I wake up with a start, heart hammering against my ribs. The room is still dark, the gray light of dawn just beginning to bleed through the curtains. My arms are empty.
The cold hits first. The side of the bed where she was lying is ice-cold. She’s been gone for a while.
I sit up, breath coming in short, jagged gasps. “Amara?”
No answer. Only the silence of the empty house.
I swing my legs out of bed, feet hitting the cold floor. I don’t bother with a robe. I just stumble toward the dressing room. The dresser door is open. Her side is empty. The three shirts she put in there, the single pair of jeans, the boots she wore to the funeral—they’re gone.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.”
I run to the hallway, heart in my throat. The bathroom is empty. The guest rooms are empty. I fly down the stairs, bare feet slapping against the wood. The foyer is a sea of boxes, but one thing is missing. The small, battered duffel bag that sat by the door.
It’s gone.
I rip open the front door, the freezing morning air hitting me like a gut punch. The driveway is empty. The security gate is humming, and the panel by the door still glows with the last entry: Amara’s code. 04:17.
I stand on the porch half-dressed, the wind cutting through me, looking out at the gray Chicago street. She’s gone. My runner ran.
For eleven years, I carried the world on my shoulders. I hunted the traitor. I protected the family. I thought that once the war was over, I would finally be free. But I was wrong. The war wasn't the burden. The hunt wasn't the secret.
She was the first thing that felt like a point beyond the war. The first shape of home I let myself want. And now, she’s gone.
I call her phone. Straight to voicemail.
I check the gate log again, then the driveway camera, then the street feed.
Her car is already gone. Then I fall to my knees on the cold stone of the porch, a jagged, raw sound tearing from my chest. It’s not a cry.
It’s a howl. The sound of a man who has lost everything he never knew he needed.
The vault is empty. The brothers are leaving.
And I am alone in a victory that feels exactly like a defeat.
The cold seeps into my bones, but I don't move. I just stare at the empty street, the place where she vanished, my hands clutching the stone railing until my knuckles go white and my palms bleed. I should have known. You can’t lock the road out of a woman who survived by following it.
“Amara,” I whisper into the wind.
But there is no answer. Only the distant sound of the city waking up, a world that doesn't care that my heart just stopped beating. The war is over. The Costa family is moving to the mountains. But I’m still here, standing in the wreckage of a life I don't recognize, waiting for a woman I am terrified will never come back.
The silence is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. It is not peace. It is the shape of everything I don’t know how to fix. I thought I was the healer. I thought I could fix the wounds. But I can't fix this. I can't suture a hole in my own soul.
I look up at the gray sky, the leaden clouds hanging low over the compound.
I’m a Costa. We don't give up. We don’t give up on the people we love.
But as the first flakes of snow begin to fall, dusting the empty driveway with white, for once in my life, I don’t have a plan.
I don't have a secret. I don't have a hunt.
I just have the cold. And the silence. And the memory of a woman who looked like home and ran like hell.