I stared at him. At the idea that this was all so simple, so tidy. That you could just buy out the bad parts of the world, fire the monsters, and start over with a clean sheet. That you could be a Moretti without being a Moretti.
Marco shifted on the bed, like he wanted to say something, but the room was too thick with history. I glanced at him anyway. He looked older than he was, like the years of running and getting shot and trying to please a father who measured love in ounces of pain had finally caught up all at once.
He turned to look at Marco. “Don’t get shot again. It scares your mother, alright? She doesn’t need to deal with that stress in her life. Her doctor already wants her on pills for high blood pressure. They said cut the salt, can you believe that? She was furious.”
He stood, brushing imaginary lint off his lapel. For a second, just a fleeting one, he looked tired. Like he actually cared. Then he straightened, pulled the wolf-skin back on. "I’ll be in touch. Don’t fuck this up, Dante."
He left without another word, closing the door behind him with a click that sounded like a gun cocking. Marco let out a long, ragged breath and sagged against the mattress.
"That was fun," Marco muttered. "Can we do it again tomorrow?"
I ignored him. I was staring at the door, imagining my father on the other side, already dialing some ghost contact who’d have half the city staked out before the sun was up. I felt the old itch—a need to be moving, to be three steps ahead, to not be the one waiting for the hammer to fall.
But Jade was inside, asleep and dreaming of numbers and knives and the things she’d do if they let her out of the cage. Marco was bruised but alive. And me? I was suddenly, painfully sober.
And if I thought I had been afraid before, suddenly, I knew that I had just been wrong.
Chapter 21: Jade
Iwoke to the sound of silence. Not real silence—the radiator still hissed, and the old pipes above us ticked like a bomb with a faulty timer—but the kind that meant someone was thinking too hard to move. Dante stood at the foot of the bed, shirtless, still as stone, like he’d been watching me sleep for a while.
He must’ve felt me watching, because after a minute he met my eyes and gave this tired, half-crooked smile—the kind that meant he was trying to decide if it was time to let me in on the next disaster or let me sleep another hour. I pulled the covers up to my chin and glared at him, daring him to say whatever was next.
He sat down at the edge of the mattress, careful not to jostle me. “My father’s in Toronto,” he said, as if announcing we were out of coffee.
I blinked. “You’re joking.”
“I’m never joking about him.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He found us. Just walked into Marco’s room like he owned the place.”
The news should have spiked my pulse, but mostly it made me want to laugh. Of course Enzo was here. Of course the godfather of the Moretti clan would materialize just as we were about to blow up the world’s most expensive science project. The universe was nothing if not consistent in its commitment to stress testing my capacity for irony.
Dante watched me, reading my face for cracks. “He wants us to play along,” he said. “He thinks we can outthink everyone—run the scam, burn it down, and walk away with the prize.” I propped myself on one elbow, braid flopping over my collarbone.
“That’s what you want, too, isn’t it?” I asked. “That’s why you got into this. That’s why you got into the science in the first place.”
“Maybe that’s why I got into the science in the first place, but that is not what I want,” he replied.
“So it isn’t what you want?”
He hesitated, eyes slipping from my face to the slant of sunlight on the carpet. The pause lasted just a little too long.
“No,” he said finally. “I want to keep you and Marco alive. I want to keep the kid alive.”
He looked so tired saying it, like the admission cost him a tooth.
“And the project?” He flexed his hands, the knuckles whitening. “I want you to end it. Not finish it. I want you to scorch the earth so no one can chase you with it again.”
“You’re a romantic. Who knew you were a big softie under all those muscles and tattoos?”
“You did,” he replied. “You always have.”
I didn’t answer immediately. I was starting to feel the edges of the morning, the way my body wanted to come apart if I didn’t keep moving. I remembered the girl—Subject 5—and the way she looked at nothing through the glass. I remembered Heller’s voice, too bright, too hungry.
“I can do it,” I said finally. My voice didn’t tremble, but it felt like it should have. “I can break their protocol. But I’ll need at least two more days, and access to the full server. Not just the decoy logs.”
Dante nodded like he’d already mapped out the next twelve moves. “We’ll get you in.”
“Is Marco—”
