Page 122 of The Beautiful Dead

I laughed. Quiet, sharp, a knife’s edge. “Your word is worth shit to me right now, Ghost.”

Then, I yanked his head back, baring my teeth at him like the animal he should have never tried to cage.

Ghost trembled.

His pulse throbbed under my grip, fast, frantic, like a trapped thing desperate to escape. He was afraid.

Twenty minutes later, a sharp ding cut through the charged silence. The elevator doors slid open.

Salvatore stepped out.

His usual presence—calculated, immovable, impenetrable—was cracked. It was subtle, just a hairline fracture, but I saw it. Felt it in the way his shoulders weren’t squared like usual, the way his normally steely gaze darted, unfocused, his breath just slightly too shallow.

I leaned back against the arm of the couch, arms crossing over my chest, boredom plastered over my face like war paint.

“Salvatore,” I drawled, exhaling a lungful of smoke. “What a surprise.”

Remi remained where he was, leaning against the back of the couch, flipping his knife between his fingers, his lips curling slightly at the edges like he could already taste blood in the air.

Salvatore ignored the bait. Didn’t even look at Remi. His eyes locked onto mine like I was his sole focus. “Elio is gone.”

The words landed with a thud, heavy but hollow.

I blinked. Let the silence stretch, coiling around us like barbed wire. “So?”

Ghost shifted uncomfortably, like he could feel how fucking unnatural my reaction was. He didn’t want to be here to witness this but knew it wasn’t worth risking his life to leave. He had a lot to prove… this was just the beginning.

Salvatore clenched his jaw. “He was taken.”

“And?” I raised a brow, unmoved. Uninterested.

Salvatore exhaled sharply through his nose. “We can’t find him.”

I tilted my head, watching him with detached amusement.

We.NotI.His choice of words confounded me.

“Let me guess,” I murmured, pressing the cigarette to my lips, taking a slow drag before exhaling. Smoke curled between us, thick and suffocating. “You came here because I’m the only one who can.”

Salvatore’s throat bobbed.

I grinned, sharp and humorless. “Why the fuck should I care?”

A single tear slipped down his face.

It stopped me. Not enough to show it, but enough to notice.

Salvatore Gallo didn’t cry. Not when he killed. Not when he bled. Not when he lost. But now for a son—a brother—I didn’t know, he cried. I’d never seen a father show any hint of emotion for their children.

My grin soured into something sharp, something venomous.

“Because I know who took him.” His voice was gritted between his teeth, cracking under the weight of something unbearable.

I stared.

He inhaled shakily. “It was Federico.”

Remi stilled.

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