Page 73 of Break For Me
I've seen him once before. In the mess hall. Standing too close to Marco Bellini, talking too low for the conversation to be casual.
I file it. The filing cabinet in my head is getting full.
A shard of glass crunches under my heel. It bites deep into the calloused skin. The sting is a small, bright pain. A familiar language. The only language my body fully trusts.
I leave a thin trail of blood on the hardwood as I cross the room. I stop at the dresser where I left my gear. I pick up the Glock.
The grip settles into my right hand. The right still works. Thickly calloused. The hand that has held weapons since I was sixteen years old. The Glock is familiar. The weight is correct. The feeling of holding something designed for violence is the closest thing to peace my nervous system knows how to produce.
I need to rack the slide. The motion requires two hands. I've done it ten thousand times in the dark, in the rain, under fire.
My left hand closes on the serrated steel. The pain detonates in my palm. A white flash travels from the suture line through the repaired nerve and shoots straight into my elbow like a live wire.
My fingers spasm open. The slide slips from my grasp. My hand is a traitor.
I set the Glock heavily on the dresser. I press both hands flat on the wood and lean my weight into my arms.
I look like a broken tool. A hammer with a cracked head. Still heavy enough to swing, but completely incapable of hitting the nail.
"Rocco."
His voice. Sleep-roughened. Careful.
I hear him sit up. The rustle of sheets. His bare feet touching the hardwood, avoiding the broken glass with the spatial awareness of someone who navigates operating rooms in the dark.
"Your foot is bleeding," he says.
"It's fine."
"You stepped on glass. Let me?—"
"I said it's fine."
He stops. I can feel him behind me, three feet away.
"Six weeks is a lifetime," I say. "It's how long it takes for every enemy I've ever made to figure out that the Falcone hammer can't hold a gun. I can't rack it. I can't reload. I can't clear a malfunction. Half a weapon is worse than no weapon because it gives you confidence you can't back up."
My voice is too loud. The room is too small. He is too close and too calm. His steadiness is a mirror, and what it reflects back at me is my total instability.
"Sit down," he says. His voice is ice. "I'm taking the glass out of your foot. You can hate yourself while I work."
Alessandro's study.
The heavy mahogany desk dominates the room. There's a book on the corner I haven't seen before—a slim paperback, cracked spine.Meditations. The title means nothing to me.
Killian is here.
He's sitting in a wheelchair—the first time I've seen him fully upright since the cabin. He's wrapped in a dark blue robe over standard hospital clothes. An IV port is securely taped to the back of his hand.
His green eyes are sharp, clear. The feral intelligence is fully restored. He looks like death warmed over, but he also looks like a man who would strangle you with the IV line if you underestimated him.
Alessandro sits behind the desk, looking like the king he just crowned himself. Adrian stands against the far wall, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He found a clean button-down in my closet. His posture is rigid. Defended. He hasn't looked at me since I sat down.
"The terminal is ash," Alessandro says. "Structural damage is total. Kazimir's northeast staging ground is gone."
He pulls up high-resolution images on a tablet. Aerial drone shots of the burned terminal. Blackened, twisted steel. Collapsed roofing.
I stare at the destruction. I should feel satisfaction. I feel nothing except the dull, pulsing throb in my left hand and the heavy weight of the gun I put back on the dresser because I couldn't rack the slide.
