Page 32 of Beautiful Ruins
She studied me again, more carefully now.“You don’t seem afraid.”
“I am,” I confessed.“I just don’t find it productive to advertise.”
That earned a low hum of approval.
“I think,” she said thoughtfully, “you might be the most interesting thing that’s happened to my brother in a very long time.”
My stomach dipped.“That feels… ominous.”
“It should.”
I sighed into my mug.“Fantastic.”
She laughed again, warm and unapologetic, and something inside me eased—just a little.Not because I trusted her completely.Not because I trustedhim.
She sipped her coffee.“Raze doesn’t let people stay here without reason.”
“I gathered.”
“And he doesn’t keep people close unless he thinks it’s necessary.”
That sent a chill through me.I wrapped my hands around the mug, grounding myself.
“I don’t know what he thinks I am.But I’m not a threat to him.”
Tone’s gaze softened again.“No,” she agreed.“You’re probably not.”
11
Raze
Nathan Azzopardi.
I stared at the name on the screen longer than necessary.Not because I didn’t recognize it—but because I did.The kind of man whose confidence outweighed his competence.Small-time.Sloppy.Convinced proximity to danger made him untouchable.
A mule.Running product for the Nato family.
And, somehow, Izzy’s boyfriend.
I exhaled through my nose, like that might keep the irritation from cutting deeper.I couldn’t reconcile it—her sharpness, her honesty—with a man like that.A parasite with ambition and no spine.How she’d ended up tied to him at all felt like a failure of probability.
The word lodged in my chest anyway.
Drugs.
The reaction was immediate.Old.Instinctive.I drew the line there.Always had.Weapons were tools—clean, transactional, a language I understood.Currency.Leverage.A means to an end.Drugs were rot.They hollowed people out from the inside and turned neighborhoods into graveyards.I’d seen what they did to families, to children who grew up watching their parents disappear by degrees.I didn’t touch it.I didn’t broker it.I didn’t let it bleed into my operations.
Ever.
The Nato family knew that.They’d tested the boundary more than once.We’d had words about it—then bullets.Lines drawn via body count.
And now Izzy’s boyfriend was running product for them.
My enemy.
The irony wasn’t subtle.It was a perfect loop closing in on itself, dragging her straight into a war she hadn’t known she was standing in the middle of.Or had she?
I locked my phone and leaned back in the chair, jaw tight.Izzy Ferraro hadn’t lied to me.I was sure of that now.If she had known, there would’ve been cracks.Tells.Self-preservation instincts kicking in.Instead, all I’d seen was confusion and stubborn honesty that made no sense for someone playing a long game.
