Chapter Six
Luigi
We cut through the city like someone just tried to kill us, because someone did, and the lie of Valentine Week peels away fast once bullets start landing where they’re not supposed to.
The ceasefire exists so money can move cleanly, so routes stay predictable, so men who profit from violence can pretend they prefer order.
The Vendetta is the verse that tells my house and hers when to break that rule, and someone meant for me to be the one to break it.
I didn’t reach for the weapon taped beneath my chair, and the peace shattered anyway.
That is when I understood I was meant to be the stooge everyone could point at afterward. The unusual orders, the timing, the way Isabella’s fiancé kept her in the line of fire rather than pulling her back, all of it clicked into an ugly shape.
I don't have a weapon, and I don't have time to finish him once I have her, so survival is key.
Survival for us both.
We’re saved by back stairs, service corridors, and doors that open because men owe me.
Isabella keeps pace without a word. She doesn’t ask where we’re going.
She watches my hands, the corners I examine, the places my attention lingers, and she trusts the route the same way she trusts me.
That isn’t blind faith. That is recognition.
The place I choose isn’t the closest. It’s the one with the fewest eyes.
A shuttered restaurant on a narrow side street that still smells like steam and pepper even with the burners cold.
I take us in through the rear, kill the alarm, bolt the door.
I cut the back camera feed with a switch in the office drawer, the kind of small advantage you earn by being owed.
The kitchen is stripped down to steel and tile, a skeleton waiting for muscle.
The office is a box with a desk, a sink, and a couch too short for a man, perfect for two people who won’t sleep.
“Hands,” I say.
She gives them to me without hesitation.
I turn her palms up, thumb resting lightly on her pulse, and check each finger. No deep damage, only glittering cuts from shattered glass. I run cold water over her skin. The sink blooms pink and then clears. I tease out two slivers with the corner of a bar towel, rinse again, and pat her dry.
“This will sting,” I tell her, then swipe alcohol across the cuts.
She breathes. That’s all. No flinch. No apology.
I tape each knuckle cleanly, bridge the shallow slice at her wrist with a neat butterfly, smooth it down with my thumb. My hands stay steady. Her breathing evens. A tremor passes through her once and leaves, as if it found no place to stay.
“The order?” she asks. “Say it.”
“End the truce by ending the Valentine heir.”
Her chin lifts by a fraction. Not shock. Confirmation.
“And you, a Moretti, chose me.”
“I chose you, Miss Valentine.”
Silence settles into the office. The hood fans tick as they cool. She removes her ring and places it on the desk without looking at it, like a snake she’s learned not to startle.
“Adrian has a way he hurts,” she says. “Never where it shows. High on the thigh. Under sleeves. He makes the lesson neat.”
I remember the faint marks I noticed at La Sirena and decide there are rooms I want her fiancé in with locked doors and no witnesses. I open a drawer and pull out a cheap phone buried under receipts, break the seal on the battery wrap, and pass it to her.
“New number. No names. Two rings if you can’t talk.”
She powers it on immediately, then picks up her ring with a scowl. Unclasping the diamond, she twists the setting and lets a tiny chip fall onto the desk. A tracker. No larger than a seed. Her mouth curves without humor.
“Engagement gifts,” she says. “He likes to know where I am.”
I drop it to the floor and crush it under my heel until it screams. She watches, then exhales like she’s been holding that breath since the first time he touched her.
“My father will want Moretti blood,” she says. “He’ll think you kidnapped me. Adrian has influence over him.”
“Then we need proof,” I say. “Something unmistakable that puts his hand on the trigger.”
She nods once. “The why is obvious.”
“Unchecked power. Get rid of you by my hand. The truce is finished. Then your family gets rid of me. My uncle then kills your father.”
“He’s using the Vendetta against us. Adrian is likely behind my brother’s death, too.”
“Perhaps. We need receipts.”
“He keeps things in three places. The office everyone sees. The condo no one does. The locker he forgets until tax season.”
“Which first?”
“The condo has the real things. But the office has a hard drive that mirrors his calls. He doesn’t know the mirror exists. His assistant made it after he docked her pay for a funeral she had to attend. She came to me. I doubled her salary and told her to keep it running.”
I like her more for that. I like her enough already that I keep moving before I think about it.
“Eat,” I say.
I’m already at the lowboy cooler, finding cured meat and cheese that won’t kill us if they’ve sat two days.
I tear the bread with my hands. She takes a bite and her shoulders come down.
Food turns the sharpness in her face to something I want to see somewhere that isn’t an office with a dead neon sign in the window.
We don’t linger. I load a small bag with a compact first-aid kit, gloves, a tiny pry bar, a multi-driver, a roll of duct tape, and the burner phones.
She tucks the knife back into the lining at her waist and tightens the strap of her heel like a woman wins a war one small choice at a time.
I crack my knuckles and regret not keeping weapons here.
The office we need is five blocks away in a building that’s made of glass.
We take the freight elevator because the lobby has smiles.
Isabella moves like she belongs on every floor.
I take the hall cameras in with a single glance.
Two dead, one blind, one new. The new one points two inches low.
Amateur. I ignore it and wait for her to use the code she shouldn’t know.
Inside smells like leather and the kind of cologne that suffocates secrets.
The desk is a slab. The bookshelves hold more trophies than books.
A large print of the city hangs over the bar.
It’s hollow. It’s always hollow. The mirror behind the bar is glass with a brain.
I pull the panel and take the drive. It hums a little, a nervous insect. I pocket it.
“Computer,” I say.
Isabella’s already at the tower, kneeling in the dress that’ll stop my heart when there’s time for that.
She slides back the panel, finds the bay, and lifts a second drive from a cradle no one checks because they believe the desktop icon that says Backup does something useful.
The assistant who made the mirror thought like a thief. I’ll send her flowers if she lives.
The door clicks. A soft, stupid sound. The kind of sound a man makes when he believes rooms stay empty for him. He’s coming because he thinks she’ll do what she’s always done. Retreat to the nearest place her name can open.
Adrian walks in with a bodyguard who wears his suit like he borrowed it for a wedding.
The bodyguard sees me first. His mouth works before his hands.
Wrong order. I drop him with the side of the pry bar across the throat and a fist to the place under his ear where the lights go out.
He falls into the carpet like he’ll never get up again.
Adrian stops in the doorway. Recognition flashes and hardens. He lifts a hand toward Isabella the way a man calls a dog. She doesn’t move. He sees it and something ugly starts behind his eyes.
“Security,” he says, gaze on me, voice pitched for the desk mic. “We have trespassers.”
“No,” Isabella says. Her voice isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. “We have you.”
His smile tries to happen and fails. He flicks a look at her hand. The ring’s missing. His eyelid twitches. He should never play cards.
“You’ve made a mistake,” he says to me.
“Wrong,” I say. “I didn’t end her when your order came. I don’t take orders from you, and I don’t make mistakes.”
He steps in, slow and careful, like the room might break if he hurries. I clock the second guard in the hall before I hear him. Weight on the carpet. Expensive soles that grip wrong. I point to the print over the bar with my chin.
“Behind it,” I tell Isabella.
She peels the city off the wall. A small safe stares back. She grins at the model number like a woman recognizing an old enemy.
“Two one four. He never changes it.”
“Cute,” I say.
She drops her shoulder, works the dial, and opens the box. Inside is a stack of black cards, two passports, cash, and a small recorder the size of a matchbook. She holds it up like a relic.
Adrian moves then. He’s quick when he needs to be.
His hand comes up with a compact pistol he shouldn’t bring to a meeting like this if he believes in tomorrow.
I’m already moving. The pry bar meets his wrist. The gun clatters to the carpet.
Isabella has a hand in his suit, and her knife kisses the soft skin under his jaw before he can collect himself.
“Stay,” she says, holding the blade against his neck.
He stays, breathing through his nose like a man who’s never been told no in a room he pays for.
The second guard makes his mistake at the threshold.
He leans to see. I kick the door into his face and pull him through by the lapel so he bleeds on the inside and not the hall.
I put him down with a knee and a short jab that breaks a nose with a clean sound.
He curls. He’ll remember us in his mirror for a month.
“Take the drive,” I tell Isabella. “The recorder. The cards.”