Chapter 30
LORENZO
She runs into the smoke before I can reach her.
“Isabella.”
Gone. Swallowed by the haze like she was never there at all.
I take a step toward the corridor. Then another. My lungs have stopped working. My legs are moving but I can’t feel them.
“Renzo.” Dante’s voice, sharp. “We need to move. The building is coming down.”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
“The extraction—”
“I said I’m not leaving.” Fuck leaving.
Dante’s hand lands on my shoulder. I should shrug it off. Should be moving into that corridor, finding her, dragging her out of the fire myself. But my feet are rooted to the floor and my chest is caving in and all I can think is not again.
I already lost her in this building tonight. I got her back.
The seconds stretch into hours. Nico has Sofia, guiding her toward the extraction point where Giada’s waiting.
Marco’s coordinating the final sweep. Everyone is where they should be.
Doing what they should be doing. And I’m standing here like a statue made of ice, staring into smoke.
Praying for the second time since Mama died.
Not again. I wasn’t there when Mama died. I can’t lose someone else while I’m standing right here.
Movement. In the corridor. A shape materializing through the haze.
I’m moving. Three strides and she’s there. Soot on her face. Eyes streaming. Coughing so hard her whole body shakes. But in her hand, clutched tight against her chest.
The rosary. Dirty. The chain broken in two places. But intact. Safe.
“Isabella.” Her name tears out of me. Ripped loose.
She takes my hand. Turns it palm up. Pours them into my palm, her fingers trembling against mine, her eyes steady despite the tears tracking through the soot on her cheeks.
“Your mother’s.”
My hands stop. Heat seeps through my fingers. My breathing evens.
I kiss her. Not careful. Not controlled.
Desperate and tasting of smoke and salt.
Her lips are cracked, her face streaked with soot, and I don’t care.
I cup her cheeks, holding her tight like she’ll vanish if I don’t.
She gasps against my mouth and then she’s kissing me back, fingers gripping the front of my vest, pulling me closer.
You’re alive. You’re here. I’m never letting go.
When we break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
Her forehead rests against mine. I pull her against me and hold on.
She presses into me. Her fists knot in the back of my vest. She’s shaking, or I’m shaking, and I don’t know how long we stand there in the corridor with the building groaning around us and the smoke getting thicker and the world falling apart.
I don’t care. She came back. She’s here.
Dante’s hand on my arm. “We need to go. Now.”
I don’t let go of her. But I move. We move together, her hand in mine, hers clutched in my other fist. Out of the corridor. Out of the building. Into the chaos of the extraction point.
The night air hits my lungs like a slap. Cold. Clean. Alive. Behind us, the Benedetti compound burns.
Sofia is loaded into an SUV, Giada already inside, already reaching for her. She goes willingly, following Isabella’s eyes to the vehicle, trusting that wherever her sister says to go is safe.
Nico is near the extraction vehicles. One of the rescued girls, the feral one from the residential wing, has her fists knotted in his tactical vest. Clinging.
He stands frozen. Arms held slightly out.
Looking down at the top of her head like he has no idea what to do with the weight of someone else’s terror. He doesn’t pull away.
She’s buried against him. Her shoulders shake. Nico’s hand hovers over her back for a long moment. Then, slowly, it settles. Barely touching. Just there. His expression is strange. Complicated in ways I can’t read right now.
Until the girl lifts her head and sees Sofia. They find each other across the chaos. Two broken girls. Two different kinds of trauma. Something passes between them that has nothing to do with me.
Later. Everything else is later.
“Renzo.” Dante. I turn. “We have Stefano. Nico’s men caught him trying to run.”
The world goes very quiet.
Stefano. Cazzo. The man who kept Sofia. Who had her since she was fifteen. Who touched her and broke her and turned a fifteen-year-old girl into the hollow shell we found in that basement room.
The coldness settles back in. Familiar. Welcome. My hands know what to do with information like this.
But before I can move, Isabella catches my arm. I turn to her. She’s already watching. Seeing the shift, maybe. Understanding what’s about to happen.
“Go.” One word. Permission.
“Isabella.”
“He imprisoned my sister in that place since she was fifteen.” Her voice is steady. Certain. “Go.”
I search her eyes for doubt. For fear. Nothing.
Make it hurt.
I go.
The details blur. I remember Stefano. The way he went pale when he saw me coming. The way he tried to bargain, tried to explain, tried to offer things I didn’t want. I remember my hands. The work they did. The sounds Stefano made. I remember Dante at my shoulder. Pulling me back.
“Not yet. Not here. He has information we need.”
My hands wanted more. But Dante’s right. Stefano has names. Locations. The network that fed girls into Flavio’s machine. We need what’s in his head before we empty it. So I stopped. Left him breathing. Barely.
When I come back, my knuckles are raw. Split in places. There’s blood on my shirt that isn’t mine. I’m blank. Still.
Isabella is waiting by the SUV. Alone. Sofia and Giada already gone ahead.
She sees my hands. My face. The blood. She doesn’t ask.
Doesn’t pull away. Her eyes track the blood on my shirt, the split knuckles, the violence written across every surface of me.
And something in her gaze shifts. Not revulsion.
Not fear. Recognition. The same look she gives me when I touch her.
Like she’s seeing the whole of what I am and the seeing costs her nothing.
The adrenaline still humming in my veins twists into something else. Sharper. Hungrier. She’s standing in front of me and my hands are bloody and I want her. Both things true. Both things hers.
She takes my hand. The one with the split knuckles. Holds it carefully, delicately avoiding the wounds.
“Thank you.” Two words. Enough.
Silence settles over the compound when we arrive.
Sofia is with Giada in the medical wing.
Being examined. Being held. Beginning the long road back from wherever that basement took her.
The other girl, Mila, is secured in a guest room.
Nico is stationed outside her door. Not guarding.
Just present. Whatever passed between them is none of my business tonight.
The rest of the family has scattered. Dante with Cassia. Marco debriefing the men. The compound settling into an exhausted, fragile peace.
Isabella and I, alone. My room. The door closed. The world shut out.
I'm still holding them. Haven't been able to let go since she put them in my hand. The beads are warm against my palm. Some of them are chipped. The chain is broken. But they're here. Mama's. Safe.
Because of her.
“She would have liked you.” The sentence pushes free before I realize. Quiet. Rough.
Isabella looks at me. “What?”
“My mother.” I stare into my palm. “She would have liked you.”
Silence. Then Isabella crosses to me. She touches my jaw. Traces the line of it, the soot I haven’t washed off, the exhaustion I can’t hide.
“Lorenzo.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
The world stops. I stop. Breathing. Thinking. Being anything except in this moment, these words, the woman standing in front of me with her palm on my jaw and her gaze unwavering.
“I know you locked me up,” she continues. Her voice is soft but her gaze doesn’t waver. “I know it was wrong. But I understand why. And I’m not going anywhere.”
My forehead drops to hers. Pressed between our palms. Her breath warm on my lips.
“I love you.” The words come out rough. Dragged from a place I had buried when Mama died. “I’ve never said that to anyone. Not since—”
“I know.”
“I love you, Isabella.” The words getting easier now. Like a muscle remembering how to work. “And I’m sorry. For all of it.”
“I know that too.”
She kisses me. Soft. Careful. Like I’m something that might break. I kiss her back, and I taste smoke and salt and her.
But when I pull away, I see the soot streaked across her cheeks. The grime in her hair. The exhaustion carved into every line of her. And my hands. Still covered in Stefano’s blood.
“Shower,” I say. “We need to.”
“I know.” She takes my hand. The bloody one. Holds it steady. “Together.”
The bathroom fills with steam. I adjust the water until it’s hot enough to burn, then ease her under the spray.
She tips her head back and lets it soak her hair, and I watch the water run gray as it carries the soot away.
Down her shoulders. Over her breasts. Pooling at her feet before swirling down the drain.
She’s stunning like this. Stripped bare.
I reach for the soap. Work it into a lather between my palms.
“Turn around.”
She does. Presents me with the curve of her back, the knobs of her spine, the bruises blooming across her ribs where they must have grabbed her.
Handled her. Hurt her. My throat tightens.
But I keep my touch careful as I smooth the soap over her skin.
Her shoulders. The wings of her shoulder blades.
Lower, to the small of her back where the muscles are knotted with tension.
She sighs. Leans into my touch.
She turns to face me. Takes the soap from me.
“Your turn.”
But she’s already lifting my hands. Holding them under the water. Watching the blood run pink, then clear.
“Does it hurt?” The knuckles. Split and raw.
“No.” A lie. She knows it’s a lie. But she doesn’t call me on it. Just soaps her hands and runs them over mine, careful around the wounds, cleaning away what I did. What I had to do.