Nick
Liam makes it to the porch before he breaks.
I’ve seen this man take a knife to the ribs without flinching.
I’ve watched him walk into rooms full of armed men with nothing but his presence and his reputation, and walk out with exactly what he came for.
He built an empire from the ashes of his family’s destruction, and he did it with the kind of cold, relentless focus that made people afraid to even say his name out loud.
I would know, since I had a front seat to most of it.
Especially when it came to taking down Donavan Blackwell, the man who orchestrated the explosion.
It was personal. I wanted to see the bastard taken down as much as Liam did.
Years of careful planning, running through every possible scenario, spending countless dollars on the best equipment and the most skilled team Liam could assemble. He’s a patient, calculating man.
And now, he’s standing on the porch of his childhood cabin with his hands on the railing, his head bowed, and his shoulders shaking.
I leave the front door ajar in case Laura or Ivy or whoever she is right now decides to come out fighting.
Will she? I doubt it somehow. I’m not under any illusions here—she’s still determined to shut us down and will come up with any explanation she needs to prove she’s right, if only to herself. I mean, Photoshop? Talk about a reach.
But something in her has changed in a major way since the first night, when I opened the door and found an assassin with Laura’s face standing by my window. No, she won’t fight now, because fighting could mean robbing herself of the chance to learn the truth she’s searching for.
I don’t say anything once I’ve walked across the porch to stand next to Liam. There’s nothing to say. What words exist for watching your dead sister look at you like you’re a stranger?
“She has Mom’s jaw,” he manages after a while. His voice is raw and choked with the sort of emotion I haven’t seen from him in years. “Did you notice that? The way she holds it when she’s pissed off. Mom used to do the same thing.”
“I noticed.” She’s spent most of our time together pissed off.
“She doesn’t know me.” He says it as if he’s still trying to make the words real. Like saying them out loud might somehow change their meaning. “She looked right at me, and there was nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”
There I was, thinking he had given up on things like hope. Now, I know better. He knew in his head there was very little chance of his sister magically remembering him. Deep down inside, it was a different story. “I know.” It’s all I can say.
“Twelve years.” He straightens up, running both hands over his face, pulling himself back together the way I’ve seen him do a hundred times.
It’s a physical act. He literally reshapes his expression with his hands, pushing the grief down, locking it behind the mask.
“I thought she was dead, and now she’s alive and standing twenty feet away from me, and she’d rather be back in Europe killing people for the family that stole her.
” His fist comes down against the porch railing hard enough to make the wood vibrate.
“She doesn’t want to believe that’s what happened. Not yet. She’s starting to crack, though,” I tell him. Maybe I’m the one who needs to stop hoping. “The photos shook her. She’s trying not to show it, but I saw it.”
He turns his head and looks at me. His green eyes—Laura’s eyes, the same ones that just stared at us from across the living room with zero recognition—are bloodshot and bright. “The doctor said familiar environments could help trigger something.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we try something else. And if that doesn’t work, we try again. We don’t stop, Liam. That was the deal.”
He stares at me for a long time. I can see him weighing something, turning it over. Finally, he nods. One sharp dip of his chin. “Take care of her.”
“Always.” It’s the single truth I know. The one I keep closest to what’s left of my heart.
“I mean it.” He reaches out and grips my shoulder hard enough that I feel the bruise forming in real time. “Whatever she needs. Whatever it takes. I don’t care what it costs.”
I meet his gaze without blinking, staring at him as intensely as he stares at me. “I know.”
He lets go and steps back. Pulls his phone from his pocket and sends a text—probably to his driver, who’s been waiting in the SUV.
Then he looks at the front door one more time, and I watch him fight the urge to go back inside and try again.
To say one more thing that might unlock whatever’s sealed away behind those familiar, distant eyes.
He doesn’t. He knows better. Liam is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. Pushing her now would undo whatever fragile ground we’ve gained.
“I’ll call you tonight,” he says. Then he walks down the porch steps and gets into the SUV without looking back. The gravel crunches under the tires as the car pulls away, and I stand there watching until it disappears into the trees.
The cabin is quiet when I go back inside.
Down the hallway, the bedroom door is still closed.
I give her space—she earned it—and get busy in the kitchen, opening cabinets, checking the fridge.
Liam had the place stocked, as promised.
The man thinks of everything, even when he’s falling apart.
The refrigerator is full. The pantry is loaded.
There’s enough food here for a week, maybe two.
I open a bottle of wine and pour myself a glass, then take it with me to the bathroom, where I find the first aid kit I requested during my text conversation with Liam.
The wine helps dull the pain of pulling my stitches before using superglue to hold my wounds closed.
Once that’s done, I return to the kitchen, where I wait at the table, staring out at the lake and remembering the way things used to be.
It’s almost an hour before I hear the bedroom door open.
Soft footsteps down the hallway. She shows up in the living room like a shadow, quiet and watchful, scanning the space the way she always does before settling.
Her eyes are clear. If she cried behind that closed door, which I think she did, it doesn’t show.
“He’s gone?” she asks.
“Yeah. He’ll be back, but not tonight. He wanted to give you time.”
She processes that with a slight nod. Her gaze drifts to the photos on the mantel, lingers for a second, then deliberately moves away. She’s not ready to look at them again. Fair enough.
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
“I could eat.”
“Good. Kitchen’s stocked. I thought we could make dinner.” I push off the counter and open the fridge, making a show of surveying the options. “Gives us something to do with our hands that isn’t fighting each other.”
The faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth when I look over my shoulder. Not a smile, not yet, but close enough that I’ll take it.
I pull out ingredients and start setting them on the counter.
Ground beef, onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, pasta.
The basics for a bolognese. Not just any bolognese, her mom’s bolognese, the recipe she made so often that the smell of garlic and simmering tomatoes is probably encoded in the DNA of anyone who ever set foot in this cabin.
Myself included, and I didn’t come here nearly as much as the family did. I was only a guest a few times.
“Your mom used to make this,” I explain, keeping my voice casual. “It was one of her staples. She’d start it in the afternoon and let it simmer for hours. The whole house would smell like it by dinnertime.”
She watches me from the other side of the counter, arms folded. “And I suppose I loved it.”
“Everyone loved it. It was one of those things you couldn’t help loving. Even Liam, and he complained about everything your mom cooked because he thought it made him sound tough. He’d clean his plate twice.”
No reaction to Liam’s name this time. Progress, maybe. Or maybe she’s just too tired to fight every detail.
I move to the small speaker on the shelf by the window and connect my phone.
I’ve had a playlist saved for months of songs Laura used to love, pulled together from memory and cross-referenced with Liam.
Old stuff, mostly. The kind of music a teenage girl in the early 2010s would’ve had on repeat.
When the first song fills the cabin, something soft and acoustic, I watch her face for a response.
Nothing obvious. But she doesn’t ask me to turn it off, either.
“No offense,” I say, returning to the counter and picking up a knife to start on the onions. “But your cooking skills were not your strong suit.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying. You tried. You had enthusiasm. But the results were... inconsistent.”
“I cook all the time,” she says, and there’s a sharpness to it that’s more defensive than hostile. “I learned from the Russo family cook. She was one of the best in Rome.”
“Then you’ve upgraded.” I slide a cutting board and a second knife toward her. “Show me what you’ve got.”
She looks at the knife, then at me. I can see the calculation; I just handed a trained assassin a blade, fully aware of what she can do with it.
The fact that I did it without hesitation isn’t lost on her.
Her expression changes, opening up a little.
It’s not trust, exactly. But something close to it.
She picks up the knife and starts dicing the onion with a speed and precision that puts my work to shame. Her cuts are uniform, mechanical, perfect. Of course they are. Everything this woman does with a blade is perfect.
“Tell me about it,” I urge, though gently, while browning the beef in a pan. I angle myself to keep her in my periphery, since I’m not stupid enough to turn my back on her while she’s holding a knife. “Your life in Italy.”
She glances at me sideways. “Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“You want to know about the life the Russos gave me? I thought you hated them.”