Chapter 8: The Attack

The walk to Isabella’s building took eleven minutes on an ordinary night. Tonight it felt longer, every doorway and parked car suddenly worth a second glance, every gust of wind through the wet streets enough to make Anastasia’s pulse jump. Lorenzo walked half a step behind and to her left, she noticed—not beside her, not in front, but positioned in a way that put his body between her and the street, an arrangement so deliberate she suspected he’d done it a thousand times before without needing to think about it.

“You keep watching the parked cars,” she said, mostly to fill the silence, mostly because the alternative was listening to her own heartbeat.

“Habit.”

“A habit most people don’t have.”

“No,” he agreed, without elaborating, and something in the flatness of his voice told her not to push, not yet, not while her legs still felt unsteady from adrenaline and the cold rain soaking through her coat. They were two buildings from home when she felt it—that same prickling awareness she’d learned to recognize this past week, the sense of being watched from somewhere she couldn’t immediately place. She slowed. Beside her, Lorenzo had already stopped, his whole body gone still in a way that made the hair on her arms rise.

“Keys,” he said quietly.

“Now. Which door.”

“Third one, the blue—”

“Move. Don’t run, just walk, quickly, straight to the door.”

She didn’t ask why. Some animal instinct in her recognized the change in his voice, the low urgency of it, and her feet were moving before her mind had fully caught up, her hand already digging for her keys with fingers gone clumsy from cold and fear. The shot, when it came, was quieter than she’d expected—a sharp crack that seemed to arrive from everywhere and nowhere at once, and then the brick beside her head exploded into dust and fragments, close enough that she felt the sting of it against her cheek before the sound had even fully registered. Lorenzo’s arm came around her like a wall, driving her sideways into the recessed doorway of the building, his own body angled outward, between her and the street, one hand already reaching beneath his coat.

“Stay down,” he said, and his voice had gone somewhere she hadn’t heard yet—flat, cold, utterly without the careful composure he’d worn in the flower shop that afternoon.

“Do not move from this spot.”

“Lorenzo—”

“Anastasia.”

Her name, sharp enough to cut through the ringing in her ears.

“I need you to trust me for the next thirty seconds. Can you do that?”

She nodded, pressed hard against the cold stone of the doorway, her whole body shaking now in a way that had nothing to do with the rain, and watched him move out from the shelter of the doorway with a controlled, deliberate speed that made her chest go tight with a fear that wasn’t entirely for herself. She didn’t see what happened next, not clearly—a shape breaking from shadow across the street, a second crack of sound, the low grunt of impact, and then silence, sudden and complete, broken only by her own ragged breathing and the distant, indifferent hum of the city continuing on around them, unaware that anything had happened at all. Lorenzo reappeared a moment later, breathing hard, a shallow line of red opening along his jaw where something had grazed too close. He crouched in front of her, his hands coming to either side of her face, tilting it gently toward the weak streetlight to check her for injury with a thoroughness that felt, absurdly, more intimate than anything that had happened between them so far.

“You’re not hurt.”

“I don’t—I don’t think so.”

Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to.

“Are you? You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.”

He didn’t look away from her face, his eyes moving over her with an intensity that made her breath catch despite everything.

“I need to get you inside. Now.”

Isabella opened the door before they’d even reached it, drawn by some instinct of her own, and the sight of her face—already pale, already frightened before she’d registered the blood on Lorenzo’s jaw or the way Anastasia was shaking—told Anastasia, with a cold certainty that settled deep in her stomach, that whatever had just happened on the street outside was not, to Isabella, a surprise.

“What happened,” Isabella said, and it wasn’t a question so much as a demand, her eyes flicking rapidly between Anastasia and the stranger standing protectively close beside her.

“Someone shot at her,” Lorenzo said, before Anastasia could find words of her own.

“I intervened.”

“Who are you?”

“Someone who’s going to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

He said it with a quiet, absolute certainty that seemed to land somewhere important in Isabella, some old fear finally finding its shape, and Anastasia watched her caretaker’s face go through several rapid transformations—fear, recognition, something that looked almost like relief, and beneath all of it, a grief so old and so carefully buried that Anastasia had never once glimpsed it before tonight.

“Inside,” Isabella said finally, her voice unsteady.

“All of us. Now.”

The apartment felt smaller with the three of them crowded into it, the warm domestic smell of the kitchen suddenly at odds with the cold fear still humming through Anastasia’s blood. Isabella pressed a damp cloth into Lorenzo’s hand without being asked, gesturing at the shallow cut along his jaw, and busied herself pulling the curtains fully closed, checking the lock on the door twice, movements sharp and economical in a way Anastasia had never seen from her before.

“Someone needs to explain what just happened,” Anastasia said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt, some core of stubbornness rising up beneath the fear.

“Right now. Both of you.”

Isabella and Lorenzo exchanged a glance—brief, wary, two strangers taking each other’s measure across a kitchen that suddenly felt far too small—and something passed between them that Anastasia couldn’t read, some silent question and its silent, reluctant answer. “Ana,” Isabella said finally, her voice breaking slightly on the single syllable. “Sit down. Please.” Anastasia sat, though every part of her remained tense, her hands still trembling faintly in her lap. “There are things I should have told you a long time ago,” Isabella continued, her eyes dropping briefly to the pendant at Anastasia’s throat. “Things I thought I could keep buried forever.” “Then tell me now.” Isabella looked toward Lorenzo.

It was only a glance, brief enough that Anastasia might have missed it if she hadn’t been watching them both so carefully, but something passed between them that she couldn’t understand—not trust exactly, but recognition, the silent acknowledgment of two people who had suddenly found themselves standing on the same side of a secret she had never known existed. “Not tonight,” Isabella whispered. Anastasia stared at her. “Someone just shot at me.” “I know.” “Then when?” Isabella’s eyes filled with something old and frightened, and for the first time Anastasia saw just how deeply whatever she was refusing to talk about had been buried. “When I can tell you everything without putting you in even more danger.” “That’s not an answer.” “It’s the only one I can give you tonight.” Silence settled over the kitchen, broken only by the rain against the windows and the faint, uneven sound of Isabella’s breathing.

Anastasia looked from her to Lorenzo, trying to understand what had passed between them, what they knew, what had brought a man like him into her life on the same night someone had tried to kill her. Her fingers closed instinctively around the pendant at her throat. Lorenzo’s eyes followed the movement, his expression unreadable. And suddenly Anastasia understood something that frightened her almost as much as the gunshot had. They both knew something about her that she didn’t. She looked from one to the other, the fear still there, but something harder beginning to form beneath it—the stubborn determination that had carried her through every unanswered question of her life. “Fine,” she said quietly. “If neither of you is going to tell me the truth, I’ll find it myself.” Isabella closed her eyes briefly, as though the words confirmed something she’d been afraid of hearing. Lorenzo said nothing.

Outside, the rain kept falling, and somewhere beyond the locked windows, the men who had come for Anastasia had left behind more than fear. They had left a question she could no longer pretend not to hear. Who was she, really—and why were people willing to kill her for it? For the first time in her life, Anastasia knew that the answers were not somewhere safely buried in the past. They were coming for her.