LOGINLenny’s Pov
I spent the next four days being extremely professional. I arrived at eight. I walked Shadow. I fed him. I sat at David's kitchen table with my laptop and applied for jobs. I maintained a clean and sensible distance from the man who had touched my face in the dark and told me nobody was taking me from him. I was doing very well. "You're avoiding me," David said on the fourth evening. He came in, set hiLenny's Pov I shook my head. "And then it changed." "Yes," he said. "It changed." I looked at the paper on the table between us. "Enforcer. Walk me through what that actually means." "It means I solve problems for the family that don't get resolved through conversation." "You hurt people." "When it's necessary." "And Rico." He was quiet for exactly one second. "Rico was a problem that needed solving." "Did you kill him?" "I told you he was alive when I told you he was alive," he said. "That was the truth." "That's not an answer to what I just asked." "No," he said. "It's not." I pushed back from the table and stood up and walked to the window. The street outside was completely normal and completely useless as a reference point for any of this. "How much danger am
Vincenzo's Pov The folder came through Luca on a Tuesday morning. He put it on the table in front of me without any introduction, which was the way he delivered things he already knew I wasn't going to receive well. I opened it and read. The men who had come after Lenny three weeks ago were not random. They were not a cartel with a general territorial interest in the building or the block. They were connected to a specific operation running out of the south corridor and the operation had a name woven through it from the beginning. Rico's name. "How direct is the connection," I asked. "Direct enough to be deliberate," Luca said. "He was feeding information about her movements to a contact on the south side. This goes back months, before you moved in." I looked at the page. "He was tracking her before I arrived." "Months before." "Why?" "Best current theory is leverage," Luca said. He pulled his chair closer and put his elbows on the table. "Someone upstream fr
Lenny's Pov When we got back home, he cleaned the cut above his eye at my bathroom sink while I sat on the counter and watched him. "You could have told me what tonight was before we got there," I said. "Would you have come?" "Probably not." "That's exactly why I didn't tell you before we got there." I handed him a piece of gauze from the kit under the sink. He pressed it above his eye and looked at me in the mirror. "You stayed the whole time," he said. "I did." "You didn't look away once." "No." He turned from the mirror to face me properly. "Most people look away, even the regulars. There's always a moment where they find the floor or their phone or anything else." "I'm not most people." "No," he said. "You really are not." He was standing close. Close enough that I could see the bruising from earlier layered underneath the newer marks from tonight. His knuckles were wrapped and swollen. He was looking at me with the same expression h
Lenny's Pov He didn't sit down. He stood in the middle of my apartment with his hands in his pockets and looked at me. "Everything," I said again. "Tonight." "I will tell you everything," he said. "Just not tonight." "That is the exact opposite of what I just asked for." "I know what you asked for." He took his hands out of his pockets. He was quiet for a moment. He looked around my apartment the way he sometimes did, like he was taking stock of everything in it. Then he looked back at me with something different sitting in his expression. "Come somewhere with me tonight," he said. "Come where?" "Somewhere I want to show you." "That is not enough information." "I know." He picked up my jacket from the chair by the door and
Vincenzo’s PovThe call from Dante came just after midnight.I stepped out into the stairwell to take it. Luca had the kind of decency that came from two years of working close enough together that he had learned when to look at the wall. But there were limits to how much I could ask him to sit beside me without it becoming a problem for both of us."Brother," Dante opened, with the warmth he only used when he was already three steps into something. "You've been very quiet lately.""I've been working.""Working." He let the word sit like he found it amusing. "There's a name circulating through certain conversations right now. I think you already know which name.""People talk," I said. "It's what people in this business do when they run out of useful things to occupy themselves with.""This particular conversation has your name sitting right beside it," he said. "And the question of
Lenny's Pov Sofia looked like she had not slept in two days.She was standing in my hallway in a coat she had clearly thrown on over pajamas. Her hair was half up and lying to the side. Mascara from what looked like the day before was smudged dark and heavy under both eyes. She had the look of a woman who had moved past the crying stage and was now running on something harder and considerably less stable."Where is he?" she demanded the second I opened the door."Good morning to you too, Sofia.""Lenny." My name cracked in the middle like brittle glass. "Where is Rico?"I stared at her, keeping my expression carefully neutral. "I don't know where Rico is.""He didn't come home." She pushed forward aggressively. I stepped back on instinct as she barged into my apartment uninvited, eyes darting wildly around the room like she expected to find him hiding behind the couch. "Two whole da
Lenny's PovShadow was already at the door when I knocked.I could hear him on the other side, that soft urgent whine that meant he had been waiting. Something about it loosened the tight thing sitting in my chest just slightly.David opened the door in a dark shirt and trousers, car keys already i
Lenny's PovI was down the stairs before the thought fully formed."Hey!" I shouted, running into the road. "Hey, stop!"The truck braked hard. I reached the dog and dropped to my knees in front of it, arms out, putting myself between the animal and the front bumper. The truck stopped close enough
Lenny's PovI woke up to a ceiling I didn't recognize for exactly four seconds before I remembered the motel.I sat up slowly. My head throbbed once. The jacket was folded neatly on the end of the bed and I stared at it for a long moment.The stranger from the bar.I had thrown up on him and then
Lenny’s PovThe karaoke bar was exactly the kind of place you went to when you wanted to forget that your life had gone up in flames.Sticky floors, neon lights that flickered every few minutes, and a lot of strangers who were all too wrapped up in their own misery to notice yours.Perfect."Anothe







