Chapter 10 Laura
Laura
Iam held together by the heat of his hands.
Pierced through, stitched to this world by the length of his body pressed along my back, his breath stirring the wild of my hair.
The sheets are tangled and damp. I taste salt on my lips—mine, his, both.
His thumb glides in a slow orbit around my left shoulder blade, as if circling the jagged hole that nothing else can fill.
It’s almost peaceful. Almost. The danger, for once, is not a swelling force but a slow tide, a distant hum beneath the hush of our breathing, the gentle ping of the radiator, the chaos of our clothes flung across the floor.
We lie in the dark together, our bodies wrecked and wanting more, pretending the world outside the windows is just an absence—no father waiting, no death sentence ticking, no loyal soldiers in cars on the curb.
He says, “I missed you. So much it made me stupid.”
“Apparently not stupid enough,” I say. The joke lands softly—a skipping stone that forgets to sink. I shiver, roll, push my forehead into the hollow below his throat.
Pierce holds me tighter. “You scared the hell out of me,” he says. “I thought you’d shoot me, then I thought you’d run. You did both, in your way.”
“My way’s terrible,” I murmur. “It’s the only way I have.”
He laughs—bleak, but the kindest sound I remember. “Your way kept me alive,” he says. “Your way is—” He stops. His hand trembles a moment against my spine, and I wonder what he sees: the cracks, the cracks, nothing but cracks.
It’s my turn to fill the silence. I think about lying, but I can’t, not to him, not when everything is already so warped and ruined.
“My father sent me here to kill you,” I say, almost gently, like saying good night or naming a star.
“He thought I’d do it. Or maybe he wanted to see if I’d do it.
Or maybe he just wants to see what happens when I fail. ”
A pause—a real one this time, no attempt to cover or comfort. His body goes rigid. I feel the sharp edge of memory in his heartbeat at my cheek.
“Are you sure?” he says, but he knows.
“Gino’s outside,” I whisper. “He’s got orders not to intervene unless I ask. But there are others—my father wouldn’t risk just one man. By now, he already knows I didn’t pull the trigger. The only reason we’re breathing is that he’s still deciding which is worse: letting you live, or losing me.”
Pierce lifts my chin, tilts my face until I see him even in the dark. His eyes, always hungry, always shining with blue heat, are wet now. I hate that. I hate that I did that to him.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“So are you.”
He kisses my face. My mouth, my eyelids, the delicate seam of my jaw. “You don’t have to—”
“I know,” I say. “But I will.”
We’re quiet a while. There are words, but they’re nothing new. I love you. I’m sorry. Stay. Don’t leave me. I can’t. I already have. And so on. Our mouths have learned this language too well; our bodies know it better.
After a time, I get up and go to the window.
Put on his shirt—white, threadbare, sleeves too long—and look through the condensation.
Three floors down, illegally parked, Gino’s SUV squats against the curb like something malignant.
Behind the tinted glass, a cigarette ember pulses—patient, predatory, and awaiting instruction.
There’s more movement. A dark van, lights off, half a block down, its windshield reflecting the amber streetlights like a predator’s eye.
Two men near the deli, shoulders hunched against the cold, pretending to argue about the Mets’ pitching rotation.
Their gestures too precise, their stances too aware.
No one I recognize, but the cut of their coats—Italian wool, tailored at the shoulders to conceal shoulder holsters—is the kind my father provides to his most trusted soldiers.
The city is alive with watchers, all of them in love with their own reflection in the barrels of their guns, fingers tapping impatiently against triggers that ache to be pulled.
Pierce comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. His chest radiates heat through my borrowed shirt, his heartbeat a steady counterpoint to my racing pulse. He doesn’t ask what I see. He just watches me watch, his breath warm against my neck.
“Maybe we could run,” he says, but not like a question. His voice is a low rumble I feel more than hear. “There are protocols. I can call the FBI. Witness protection or—”
"No,” I say, and close my eyes against the kaleidoscope of streetlights and shadows. “It won’t work. Not for me.”
He leans his cheek against my shoulder, his stubble catching on the thin cotton of the borrowed shirt.
His palm smoothes over the back of my hand, tracing the blue veins that branch like rivers beneath my skin.
The weight of him anchors me to this moment, this room, while everything outside threatens to dissolve into chaos.
“Then what do we do?” he whispers, his voice vibrating through my bones.
“We vanish,” I say, the words hanging in the air like smoke.
There is a woman, Frida, who can make us disappear.
Frida left the CIA years ago and now trades state secrets for private ones.
She sells discretion at premium rates—and I’ve always been her most reliable customer.
I fish the burner phone out of my boot and dial.
The connection crackles, stretches across whatever dark corner she’s hiding in, until her voice materializes—cool and distant as if transmitted from another planet.
“Stasio,” she says, not a question.
“I need the package,” I say.
“Standard or deluxe?” she asks.
“Deluxe. Immediate.”
“Send me the information and your confirmation on the location we discussed in the past. Someone will be there in an hour. No mistakes, Laura.”
“That goes for you, too.”
The line goes dead, and I throw the phone out the open window, hear it shatter on the sidewalk below.
Pierce is watching me with a look that would be hilarious if it weren’t so close to terror. “Jesus, your bedside manner—”
“Don’t get attached,” I say, half-joking, but then he takes my face in his hands, and I am the one who breaks.
“I already am.”
The clock on the nightstand spits light.
2:21 AM. My father is a man who keeps banker’s hours, but his wrath never sleeps.
In my head, I imagine him turning an empty glass, judging by the way the ice melts whether I have succeeded or failed.
Maybe he’s known all along that I would choose Pierce over blood, or perhaps I am just another nail in his hands, a daughter he’s always meant to crucify.
I want to speak to him. One more time. I want to tell him what he’s made, and why it’s broken, and why I love it anyway. Maybe it’s fear. Perhaps it’s the final compulsion of the ruined child inside me who still longs for his blessing.
I take Pierce’s ancient iPhone and dial my father’s private line from memory. The rings are slow and deliberate, like a clock’s last ticks.
He answers: “Laura.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t do it?” I say, brandishing defiance like a letter opener.
“I knew you wouldn’t.” He sounds calm, but there’s a bruised undertow, a low cold fury that makes the hairs on my arm wake up and salute.
“Then why send me?”
“I needed to see where your loyalties lie.”
I laugh, but it’s a raw, red sound. “My loyalty lies with me.”
A pause. I try to picture him—his eyes, like stones pressed into wet paper, his hands braced on the edge of the desk.
He must be in his home office, the sanctum where my mother’s photograph presides, the one room in the house without a gun or a crucifix.
“Come home, Laura,” he says, and it sounds like a curse.
“No.”
“Think carefully.”
“I already have. If you hurt him, if you so much as touch him, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” There’s ice in it, glacier-thick. “You’re still sentimental.”
“Maybe. But I’m not stupid. If you want me back, come get me yourself. Otherwise, let it go.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” he says.
“Then we have something in common,” I say, and hang up.
My heart feels like a stone, dropped into a black pond. I want to scream, or sleep, or punch a hole in the sky, but instead I crawl back into bed, let Pierce wrap himself around me like armor.
Outside: engines turn over. Inside: the world narrows to breath and bone and the damp heat of shared skin.
When it’s time, I’ll take him by the hand, and we’ll run like the animals we are—desperate, afraid, and finally, finally free.