Page 101 of Break For Me
Alessandro stands at the end of the corridor. Killian is beside him—vertical, armed, his green eyes scanning the reclaimed hallway. Alessandro’s face is the mask—composed, controlled. But his eyes find mine.
Brother.
"Vincenzo?" he asks.
"Done."
Alessandro nods. The verdict. The sentencing. The closing of a chapter.
I turn. The corridor behind me leads to the east wing. Adrian is there.
He’s standing in the corridor with Elena in his arms. He carried her up from the basement in the dark. His face is white. His arms are shaking. Elena is conscious, her head against his shoulder, her bandaged arm cradled against her chest.
I walk toward them. The soldiers part again. I reach them. I take Elena from Adrian’s arms. She transfers—light, warm. Her right hand finds my shirt collar and holds on.
Adrian’s arms drop to his sides. His hands tremble. His legs fold.
He goes down. Not a collapse. He settles. He sits on the limestone floor with his back against the wall. His hands are in his lap. His eyes are closed. The adrenaline has left. The engine has run out of fuel.
I kneel beside him. Elena still in my right arm. My left hand finds Adrian’s face. His cheek is cold. His skin is pale. His pulse is rapid under my fingertips—tachycardic.
"I need a gurney," I say. To the corridor. To the soldiers. "I need a gurney and an IV kit. My surgeon is down. His sister needs stitches. I need?—"
I stop. My voice has broken. The fracture runs through the sentence.
Adrian’s hand—his left hand, trembling, exhausted—finds mine on his cheek and covers it.
"I’m not down," he says. His eyes open. Pale blue, red-rimmed. "I’m resting."
"You’re on the floor."
"The floor is where I am. I’ll get up in a minute." His fingers tighten on mine. "Give me a minute."
I give him a minute. I kneel on the limestone floor with Elena in my arm and Adrian’s hand on my face. The compound is lit and humming and breathing around us. I give the man who rebuilt my hand and my life all the minutes he needs.
The iron holds.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ROCCO
The basement smellslike cordite and old stone.
Morelli is dead at my feet. Gallo is zip-tied against the boiler, alive because I chose to let him live. The pistol in my hand is warm. My left hand aches—the rebuilt fingers protesting the sustained grip, the repaired nerve sending a low, persistent hum of objection through my palm.
I stand in the dark and wait for the feeling.
It used to come like clockwork. The kill, then the nothing. The hollow space behind my sternum that opens up after the body drops and the adrenaline recedes. The void that confirms what I already know: I am a weapon. Weapons don't grieve. Weapons don't hesitate. Weapons cycle the slide and wait for the next target.
The feeling doesn't come.
Instead, there is something heavy in my chest that I can't name. It sits behind the sternum where the void should be. It has weight and heat and it presses outward against my ribs the way a second heartbeat would press if a body could hold two at once. I don't know what to call it. It doesn't feel like guilt. It doesn't feel like the flat, mechanical nothing I've carried out of every basement and alley and prison yard for twenty years.
It feels like the moment in the gym when Adrian grabbed my shirt and pulled me down to his mouth and saidshield.
I holster the Glock. I flex my left hand. Close. Open. The fingers respond. The hand works. Not at a hundred percent. Maybe not ever. But it works well enough to hold a gun, and well enough to let one go.
I find Adrian on the east wing corridor floor.
