30. Casey
Jasper is devolving right in front of my eyes.
I can see it in the pacing first. The uneven turns, the hand dragging through his hair, the way he keeps checking his phone as if he expects the screen to give him back the life he burned down himself.
The warehouse is cold enough that my fingers have gone numb but sweat dampens his collar and shines faintly at his temples.
He looks like a man being chased by demons he still thinks he did nothing to deserve.
My wrists ache where the ties cut into them behind the chair. At first, the pain terrified me because it made everything too real, but after a while, it became useful. Pain gives you something to measure. Something to return to when panic gets too big.
My shoulder throbs where he shoved me earlier. My cheek feels tender from when he grabbed my face and told me to stop looking at him like he was a monster before back-handing me across the cheek.
I hadn’t realized I was looking at him like that, but that’s what he is. The funny thing is, I don’t think Jasper thinks he’s a monster. That might be the worst part.
“You know he’s not coming to save you because he loves you,” Jasper says, pacing past me again. “He’s coming because men like him can’t stand losing what they think belongs to them.”
My throat is dry. My voice hurts when I use it, but silence seems to feed him too much. “You don’t know him.”
He laughs, spinning toward me. “And you do?”
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
That’s the part hurting so much beneath the fear.
I know Adriano’s hands when they’re gentle.
I know his voice in the dark when he thinks I’m half asleep.
I know the way he kisses Letty’s forehead when he leaves for work.
How he pretends not to notice when she steals fruit from his plate, how he looks at me when he thinks I can’t see him watching.
But I also know he lied.
I know he made himself judge and executioner and decided I didn’t need the truth because he was handling it.
Both versions exist.
And God help me, I love him anyway.
Jasper’s phone rings again.
He goes still so abruptly, my pulse leaps. “What?” he snaps, answering.
I don’t hear the voice on the other end, but I watch the blood drain from his face.
“What do you mean they’re outside?”
Everything inside me stops.
Adriano.
I don’t need proof. I have hope. Some part of me knows it instantly, with a certainty that feels carved into bone. He came for me like I knew he would. I don’t know what Jasper’s plan is here but I have an awful feeling it involves me hurting in some way.
Jasper backs toward the grimy window, phone still pressed to his ear. “No. No, that’s impossible. There’s no way he found—”
A crash explodes through the warehouse.
The door at the side of the building bursts inward hard enough to slam against the wall, and voices flood the space all at once.
“Drop the gun!”
“Hands where we can see them!”
Then a voice that cuts through every other sound.
“Casey.”
Adriano.
My eyes find him immediately.
He steps into the warehouse like something lethal wrapped in rain and fury, hair damp, coat darkened at the shoulders, his face stripped of every mask I’ve ever seen him wear.
Nico moves beside him with a gun raised.
Matteo and Rossi spread out fast, controlled, violent in a way that feels practiced.
But Adriano only looks at me.
The moment his eyes land on my face, something breaks through him so visibly I almost cry out.
Relief. Fear. Rage. Love.
All of it is there, raw and awful and impossible to look away from.
“I’m okay,” I say quickly, though my voice shakes enough to betray me, and I’m sure I look like absolute hell.
Jasper grabs me before anyone can move.
His arm clamps around my chest and the gun presses against my side, cold even through my coat. My stomach turns over so violently I think I might be sick. His body is hidden behind mine like a human shield, but I don’t feel fear in the same way as before because Adriano is here.
“Don’t come closer!” Jasper shouts.
Adriano stops.
The room tightens at the sight of that gun against me. “Let her go,” he commands.
His voice is quiet, but lethal.
Jasper laughs, but his hand is shaking. I can feel it. “Or what?”
Adriano takes one careful step forward.
Nico says his name under his breath in warning, but Adriano doesn’t even blink. “Or I forget every promise I ever made about the kind of man my daughter deserves for a father.”
Jasper’s grip jerks tighter.
“Adi,” Nico says again, sharper this time.
“Don’t,” Adriano says, and that one word makes even Nico go silent.
I should be terrified of him in this moment.
Maybe I am.
But not for myself.
Never for myself.
Adriano is looking at the gun, at Jasper’s hand, at the place where his arm is locked across my body, and I can see the restraint tearing through him in real time. He isn’t calm. He isn’t controlled. He’s holding himself together for me by force.
“You took everything from me,” Jasper says, his voice cracking now. “Everything.”
“No,” Adriano says. “You lost everything because you thought consequences were for other people.”
“You think she loves you?” Jasper spits. “You think that makes you special? She’s nothing. She’s a cheap whore.”
Adriano moves.
I don’t understand how at first.
There’s distance, and then there isn’t.
The gun is suddenly skidding across the concrete. Matteo’s arm hooks around my waist and drags me back so quickly that the breath leaves my lungs. Jasper hits the floor hard, and Adriano is on him with a violence that makes the entire warehouse seem to shrink.
“Don’t say another word about her,” Adriano says.
His fist connects with Jasper’s face and I flinch.
Not because Jasper doesn’t deserve it.
Because Adriano looks like grief has become a weapon in his hands.
“Adriano!” I shout.
He doesn’t hear me.
Or maybe he does and can’t stop or won’t stop.
Nico grabs his shoulder. Rossi moves toward the gun. Matteo keeps one arm around me, his body between mine and the chaos, murmuring something low I don’t catch because all I can see is Adriano kneeling over the man who took me apart with fear and lies and a gun.
“She was too good for you,” Adriano says, voice shaking now with something worse than anger. “She was always too good for you.”
Jasper laughs through blood, broken and wet. “And you deserved her?”
Adriano freezes.
Just for a second.
Long enough that the question lands.
And I hate Jasper for finding the one wound sharp enough to cut through him even now.
“No,” Adriano says, quieter. “But I know what she’s worth.”
Emotion breaks through my chest so suddenly I almost double over with it.
I love him.
I hate that he lied.
I love him.
I hate that he made decisions for me.
I love him so much I can barely breathe around it.
And I cannot stay here. Not with the adrenaline turning my limbs strange and light, not with Jasper bleeding on the floor and Adriano looking at me like he has nearly crawled out of his own skin to reach me.
Matteo’s grip loosens for half a second when Nico pulls Adriano back.
And I take my opportunity. I run.
I slip sideways, away from Matteo, into the deeper shadows near the stacked crates and concrete pillars.
“Casey?” Adriano’s voice cuts across the warehouse moments later, broken enough to hurt.
I step out where he can see me.
The relief that hits his face is unbearable.
He starts toward me immediately and everything in me wants to soothe the agony I can see on his face, but I step back.
He stops so quickly it nearly breaks me. Like, my moving away is a slap to the face.
The gun is gone. Jasper is down. The danger is over.
And somehow this is the part that hurts most, because it doesn’t change the facts. “You lied to me,” I whisper.
Adriano’s face changes, all the violence draining into something raw and helpless. “I know.”
I shake my head because if he says anything else, if he apologizes here with blood on his hands and terror still beating through my body, I might forgive him too quickly just because I’m alive and he came for me. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Casey—”
I turn away before he can finish.
Before the part of me that loves him crawls back into his arms and forgets that love without trust can ruin you just as thoroughly as hate.