Page 52 of Twilight Mask

“I’ll have to. I fucked up, Val. I should’ve told her who I was sooner, but I was too much of a coward, and I didn’t want to ruin what we had by taking off the mask.” I glance over at where the jackal face leans against the corner of the room on top of a table. “Now I have to live with that.”

“Maybe, or maybe you shouldn’t give up. You’re Marco fucking Vitale, the best computer guy in the whole city, and a dangerous motherfucker on top of that. You should get out there and take your damn girl.”

I snort and shake my head. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“Whatever. I’m gonna go purge now. God, Laura Bianco? Sickening. I mean, do you, so proud and supportive and shit, but gross.”

“There we go. That’s more like you.”

“Goodbye, loser, and finish the job before Gregory strangles me and does weird things to my corpse.” She leaves with a flip of her hair and a wave, and I sit alone in my office again before turning to my computer.

The connection is still alive.

After all this, Laura still hasn’t gotten rid of me. Not entirely, anyway.

There’s a glimmer of hope, and Valentina’s right, I’m one stubborn bastard.

I walk over to the mask and pick it up.

The game doesn’t have to be over—it’s just the rules that have changed.

Chapter 24

Laura

The camera stares at me with a dead black eye. Cables dangle from its back, raw and shorn through.

I might’ve gone a bit overboard and cut them with my chisel when I got back from Marco’s place.

But fuck it, whatever. I don’t want him watching me. I don’t even want him messaging me, which is why I haven’t reached out the few times his name appeared on my screen.

No, not his name.

Jackal’s name.

They’re the same person. Marco Vitale is Jackal. Marco Vitale is also dating Valentina Santoro, the daughter of my family’s mortal enemy. Or if they’re not dating, then at least they’re friends of some sort. Assuming I can believe anything that man says.

I spend five days trying to lose myself in work. Sometimes, I manage to pull it off, and the flow takes me as the simple motions of hammering and chiseling and sculpting drag me out of my body for a while. But mostly I’m stuck thinking about that morning, about seeing Jackal’s face for the first time, about wanting to kiss him and getting so close, about seeing Valentina standing in his doorway and hearing the pain in his voice as I left him behind.

No, I don’t regret what happened. I took my shot and it didn’t work out. He says I ruined the game, and that’s fine. I ruined the game. But he’s the one that kept something so enormous and important from me, and that’s a pretty big deal, too.

Except I didn’t want to know. I could’ve known—and chose not to. I’m as complicit in our situation as he is.

No, no, we don’t even have a situation anymore.

I miss him. I hate that about myself. It’s weakness, and I don’t do weakness, but it’s true. Every message that came through took immense willpower to ignore. I want to drive back to his place and throw myself at his feet. I want to beg him to meet me on Cage’s roof again, or in that weird warehouse, or anywhere he wants, if only to spend a little time with him again.

There’s nothing else in my life anymore.

I just have my hands, my sculptures, the basement, my silence.

“Laura? You alive?”

My silence, damn it. I grimace and look over at the stairs. The door to the basement is open, and Angelo’s voice rings down the steps.

“What do you want?”

“Good to know you’re still with us.” My brother comes down and looks at me with a smirk. “God, you look like shit.”

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