When I finally flopped back, I saw the damp on his cheeks. I pretended not to see it. He pretended not to notice me noticing. I traced a slow line up and down his spine while our breathing recovered, and for the first time in days, my head actually felt clear. Like I’d burned off the static. Like my body, as battered and compromised as it was, still belonged to me.
When it was over, I rolled off and let him cover me with the sheet. He tucked the corners in with the old Moretti precision, as if the blanket itself could repel bullets.
I watched him. The scar on his jaw, the endless liquid dark of his eyes. I wondered what kind of father he’d be. I wondered if our kid would inherit the violence or the stubbornness, or just the urge to jump into things that could never be fixed. Probably all of it.
“You’re thinking way too hard,” he said, voice thick with the aftermath.
“I’m always thinking,” I replied. “It’s my only skill.”
He snorted. “I can name three more, and two of them involve your mouth.”
I smiled. “I’ll put that on my resume.”
He curled around me, hand splayed on my belly, and for a second I didn't feel hunted at all. Didn't feel like a pawn in someone else's game. Just felt like a person, about to bring a new person into the world, with the only man who’d ever made me want to stay in one place.
The glow lasted all of ten minutes before Dante’s phone chirped. He stiffened, then kissed my forehead and rolled to the side, thumb already unlocking the screen. I watched his face. At first, nothing. Then a twitch—a microfrown only I would have noticed.
He read the message, then closed it so fast I almost couldn't see the sender. But I did. Marco.
I sat up, pulling the sheet with me. "What is it?"
Dante glanced at the window, as if checking for snipers, then turned the phone so I could see. The text was short: "We need to move. Dad says they're bringing in outsiders. Black bag shit. I have a window in the loading dock. 15 min."
I let it sink in. "He means now."
Dante was already up, pulling on jeans, shirt, jacket, moving in that silent, predatory way he always did when adrenaline hit. I was slower, my body not quite ready to play fugitive again, but I found the energy. I jammed the laptop and burner into my bag, skipped the makeup, and was lacing my boots before I realized my hands were shaking.
"Do you trust your father?" I asked, voice low.
He gave a sharp shake of his head. "No. But I trust Marco. If he's scared, we move. They must have figured out Enzo Moretti is here.”
We didn't bother with checkout. Dante peered down the hallway, then guided me by the elbow past the elevator, down the fire stairs. We hit the second floor and slipped out the side exit,which spat us into a half-frozen alley stacked with dumpsters and bags of salt. The city was awake, but the alley was empty—just the faint reek of cigarettes and the distant clang of a delivery truck.
Marco was waiting by the car, hood up, engine already running. He looked like he'd been punched in the face while sleepwalking, eyes wild, jaw clenched so hard I thought he might break a tooth. "We got five minutes max," he said, not even looking at me. "Dad's guy said they've got uniforms and a badge for the front, but they're bringing two more in through the basement."
"Who?" Dante asked.
Marco gripped the wheel, knuckles white. "Didn't say. But if it's black bag, it's off the books. Not FBI. Not local. Private. Probably from the same people that hired the Victor guy."
I felt my stomach drop, not from fear but from the sick, cold certainty that this was the other shoe. "We have to get to the lab before they do," I said. "If they're pulling the plug, they're killing everyone in the building."
Dante didn't question it. He just told Marco to drive, then turned to me, jaw set. "We go in, we get your data, we torch the rest. No negotiations. No heroics."
“So we save the people? And then what?”
“Easy,” he said, and it didn’t sound like he meant it at all. “Then we go back to NYC.”
Chapter 22: Jade
Ispent the entire drive bouncing between terror and focus. Marco cut through city traffic with the finesse of a paramedic, dirty snow hissing off the tires as we streaked north toward the lab—our lab, I supposed, though it felt more like I’d been shanghaied into someone else’s war. Dante rode shotgun, his right hand white-knuckled on the dash, his eyes never leaving the rearview. I scrolled through my burner, double-checking the files I’d stolen, my brain already mapping the steps I’d need to blow up the project from the inside.
We parked on the third level of the lab’s parking garage, top deck exposed to the slate-colored sky. I watched the snow melt into gray, cancerous puddles. Marco cut the engine but left the heater running, his own nervous tick. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “Maybe less.”
“Don’t get out unless you see a sign from us,” Dante said, fixing Marco with a look that was half order, half prayer. “You seeanyone in a suit or a lab coat you don’t recognize, you drive. Don’t try to find us. Don’t be a hero.”
Marco nodded, then swallowed, and I saw the tremor in his hands even as he tried to light a cigarette. “I wasn’t planning on it,” he said. “Just… don’t be idiots. Okay?”
Dante said nothing. He just opened the door and stepped into the cold, and I followed, my boots skidding on the ice. The walk to the elevator felt like marching into my own execution, but at the same time, I’d never felt so awake. My entire body thrummed, all the way down to my fingertips.
