All Chapters of The Cost of Saving Him: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

-Mina-The morning after the rescue came with a silence I didn’t trust. It wasn’t peace, just the thin layer of calm that forms before rot sets in. Frankie brewed coffee that no one drank. Tony slept on the couch, stitched and pale. Luca hadn’t come back since the argument, and the house felt wrong without the weight of him pacing the floors.Frankie handed me a mug and watched me over the rim of his own. “You should try to rest.” I shook my head. “If I close my eyes, I’ll see it again. Marco, the knife, Tony’s face. Rest doesn’t fix that.”“Neither does walking around like you’re waiting for a bullet.” He took a step closer. His shirt still smelled faintly of gunpowder. “You don’t have to carry this one alone.”“I dragged it into existence. That makes it mine,” The words cracked in the air between us. Carrying a weight I never knew would be mine to carry. He sighed and brushed his thumb against the side of my neck where a bruise was forming. The touch made my throat tighten. “You don’

-Mina-The message glowed on the cracked screen of the phone. DIG HIM UP.Frankie didn’t ask questions. He grabbed the keys, threw a rifle in the trunk, and drove like he meant to break the road. Luca tailed us, headlights burning holes in the rain.We hit the cemetery gate and ditched the car before it stopped. The night guard shouted, then saw our faces and backed off. The ground around Corey’s plot had turned to black soup. Spot’s tin box sat crooked in the mud. A shovel leaned against the fresh wound. Someone had stuck a cigarette butt in the mound like the dead were a joke.I dropped to my knees. The mud clung coldly around my legs. Frankie dug with both hands, teeth clenched. Luca took the shovel and carved, fast, vicious, unblinking. Metal in dirt, the worst sound in the world.We hit the coffin lid. Luca pried it open with the shovel edge. Corey lay there, pale and wrong, wrapped like someone who left mid-breath. A folded envelope sat on his chest.Frankie snatched it with mud

– Mina –By the time I stood and was running toward the door, Frankie stumbled in, Tony behind him, holding Luca. “What the fuck happened? He just walked out.” That’s when I saw the blood pouring out of his chest as Tony lay him on the couch.“Jesus Christ.” I dropped to my knees beside him. The wound was nasty, in the center of his chest, at close range. His shirt was already soaked through. I pressed both hands against it anyway. “Stay with me.”Frankie tore open the med kit. “It was a sniper. We didn’t see the glint till it was too late.” His voice was shaking, not from fear, but from rage he couldn’t place. “Same caliber as the bullet from the box.”The smell of copper filled the room. Luca’s eyes rolled, unfocused, finding me. “Told you,” he muttered. “Shut up,” I snapped. “You’re not dying in this fucking kitchen.”Tony was already on the phone, barking orders for backup and a cleaner. “No more safehouses,” he said. “Whoever hit him knew our routes.” Frankie yanked the syringe

– Mina –I fell against the side of the boat, bleeding, and tried to climb in with Luca. Blood slicked my palm. The pain burned through my arm and leg like it wanted to name me. Luca’s face was pale and tight, eyes half closed. He smelled like metal and rain and the place between life and whatever was left.“Move,” Tony barked. His voice was a blade. He yanked a tarp over Luca and shoved Frankie toward the boat. Santo’s men were everywhere, hauling the stretcher, loading crates. The pier was a scene of chaos, with shouts, gunfire, and the wet slap of boots on wood.I tasted iron. The world narrowed to the damp boards under my knees and Luca’s breathing that kept finding me. My hand hovered uselessly at the wound until Frankie yanked me up by the shirt and forced me into the boat. I tried to step, and my leg stuttered like it belonged to someone else.“Stay with me,” Luca mouthed, and it sounded like begging and an order at once.I climbed. Santo shoved me onto the boat and slammed the

– Mina –I woke to the smell of bleach and cigarette smoke. The kind of mix that told you a room had seen blood before. My head was pounding in rhythm with the heart monitor beside me, a steady, mechanical sound that made my pulse feel borrowed.The light above me buzzed, pale and weak. My body ached in too many places to count. The bandages wrapped around my arm and leg looked like someone’s rough attempt to keep me from falling apart, not heal me. Whoever patched me up didn’t do it for comfort. They did it to keep me breathing.The TV in the corner whispered through static. Local news. Some anchors with too much hair gel are trying to look sincere. Words crawled across the bottom of the screen: Explosion at South Harbor. Two presumed dead, identities withheld pending investigation.Two.I tried to sit up, and the pain hit hard enough to make my stomach flip. I caught the bed rail and rode the wave until the room stopped spinning. The anchor kept talking, pretending to care, pretendi