Chapter Eleven — Run #2
Chapter eight — Run
Vinny didn’t leave.
That should’ve comforted Avery.
Instead it terrified her.
He sat against the wall beside her apartment window while candlelight burned low around
them, one arm draped over his bent knee, blood drying dark against the collar of his shirt.
Outside, Poison City drowned beneath endless rain and flickering green emergency lights.
Inside, the air had started turning stale.
Avery could feel it already.
Her lungs burned faintly with every breath.
The ventilation shutdown had spread farther than expected.
“You should take one,” Vinny murmured quietly.
Avery looked over.
He nodded toward the Breath packet sitting untouched beside her on the counter.
“You’re getting pale again.”
“So are you.”
“That’s less surprising for me.”
Avery ignored him and stared back out the window.
Sirens screamed somewhere distant through the lower districts.
Too many sirens.
The city sounded wrong tonight.
Vinny watched her quietly for a moment.
Then:
“You’re thinking too loudly again.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“It’s true.”
Avery folded her arms tighter.
“You should sleep.”
Vinny huffed a weak laugh.
“I’m bleeding internally, Avery. I don’t think sleep’s the miracle solution anymore.”
“Stop talking like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you already gave up.”
Silence.
Longer this time.
Then quietly:
“I haven’t.”
The answer surprised her enough to turn fully toward him.
Vinny looked exhausted beneath the candlelight.
Not defeated.
That was somehow worse.
Because it meant he was still fighting this.
Still trying to survive her.
“Avery,” he said softly, “come here.”
Her pulse stumbled instantly.
“No.”
“Ave.”
“You say that like it’s simple.”
“It is.”
“It isn’t.”
Vinny’s tired gaze lingered on her a moment longer before he finally looked away.
Hurt flickered across his face too quickly for most people to notice.
Avery noticed.
Always.
Guilt twisted violently beneath her ribs.
Then—
boots thundered somewhere below the building.
Not rushing.
Organized.
That was the worst part.
Vinny heard them before she did. She watched his face change — that was how she knew.
The exhaustion vanished so completely and so fast that what replaced it looked almost
foreign on him. Something sharp and cold and ancient that had nothing to do with the
charming Moretti heir or the boy who left flowers outside apartment doors.
“Get your bag.”
His voice had no warmth in it.
Avery grabbed the leather strap automatically.
“Vinny—”
“All of it. Everything.”
He crossed toward the door without looking at her, pressing his ear briefly to the wood
while the building shook beneath the weight of organized men.
More footsteps now.
Multiple floors.
Multiple stairwells.
Surrounding.
“They found me?” she whispered.
Vinny pulled away from the door. His jaw had gone so tight she could see the muscle
working beneath the skin.
“I don’t know.”
Lie.
She heard it immediately.
“Vinny. What did you do?”
He finally looked at her then.
And Avery wished he hadn’t.
Because Vinny Moretti had eyes that could hide anything — except this. Whatever he was
feeling in that exact moment existed too large for performance. It filled every corner of his
expression at once.
Not fear for himself.
Terror for her.
“You need to leave,” he said.
“No.”
“The fire escape—”
“No!”
Her voice cracked through the apartment violently enough she heard it echo back from the
walls.
Vinny flinched.
Then a thunderous crash shook the building from below. Someone hitting the street-level
entrance.
Voices from two floors down cut off suddenly.
Silence was worse.
Avery forced herself to breathe.
“You can barely stand.” Her voice shook. “You are bleeding internally. You cannot—”
“Stop.” He cut her off quietly. “Avery. Stop.”
Something in his tone reached through the panic and grabbed.
Vinny crossed toward her carefully. Slowly. The way he always moved around her —
calculated, precise, never accidental.
But his hands were shaking.
She noticed.
He didn’t try to hide it.
“If they take you alive,” he said, “there is no version of what happens next that ends well.”
The words landed cold.
“What did you find?”
The stairwell outside erupted.
Shouting.
Running.
One floor below them.
No time.
Vinny reached into his coat with trembling fingers and pressed something into her gloved
hand.
A small black data drive.
Still warm from his chest pocket.
“The files,” he said. “Everything.”
Avery stared at it.
“Vinny—”
“Look at me.”
She did.
That was always the problem.
She always did.
His eyes were clearer than they’d been in days. The fever flush beneath his skin had
nothing to do with strength. He was spending the last of what he had on staying upright
long enough to say this.
“You are not what they call you,” he said quietly.
Tears blurred instantly behind her eyes.
“Vinny, please—”
“You are not a biohazard. You are not a monster. You are not the thing the city told you, you
were.”
The stairwell door slammed open one floor below.
“And I need you to live long enough to prove it.”
A sound escaped Avery somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
He smiled at that.
God.
Even now.
Even here.
Smiling.
“Fire escape,” he said. “Go.”
“I can’t leave you.”
The smile broke slightly.
There.
Pain.
Real pain.
But he kept it anyway.
“Yes,” he whispered. “You can.”
He swept the candles out with one arm, plunging the apartment into darkness.
Green city light bled through the curtains.
In the dark Avery felt him close — that familiar specific warmth of someone who had
learned exactly how near to stand without touching.
“There’s a crossing two blocks east,” he breathed. “Underground transit. You know it.”
She did.
“Go through Lower Vein toward Flood line. Lose them in the market corridors.”
Boots hit their floor.
The stairwell shook.
Avery reached out blindly in the dark.
Not for him.
Beside him.
Like he’d done in the café once.
Her gloved fingertips found the fabric of his coat.
Barely.
A ghost of contact.
Still enough.
She felt him go completely still.
“Vinny.”
“Go.”
The apartment door burst inward.
Avery went through the window.
She’d used the fire escape before — twice, for reasons that had nothing to do with House
raids. The rusted metal groaned catastrophically beneath her weight while freezing acid
rain hit her face and hands like needles.
Below, three floors down, green emergency lights strobed across the alley.
Two enforcers at the base.
She saw them the same second they saw her.
Not arms raised.
Just the particular stillness of men who had been told to expect her.
Avery grabbed the rusted ladder and dropped sideways instead of down.
The building had a connecting arch two feet over — old condemned infrastructure, still
solid beneath the acid damage. She’d noticed it three weeks ago automatically the way she
noticed all exits.
The first shot rang off metal above her head.
She landed on the arch badly.
Caught herself worse.