Page 54 of Ruthless Silence
"Dangerous." He circles the room like a restless predator, fingers trailing along surfaces. "Truth breaks people. Shatters them into pieces too small to reassemble."
"She needed to know."
"Did she?" That terrible smile plays at his lips. "Or did you need to stop being her monster?"
The question cuts deeper than it should. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe I just got tired of carrying her hatred when I could barely carry my own guilt. My scarred throat aches like it's being cut fresh, phantom pain from swallowing words I can't sign, can't write, can't scream into the silence she's left behind.
"She came here with purpose," Luca continues, stopping at the window. "Kill Dante Rosetti. Avenge family. Very clear, very focused." He turns, those unsettling eyes finding mine. "Now what? What fills that hollow space where revenge lived?"
"She'll find something."
"Will she?" His laugh is soft, wrong. "Broken things don't always mend, brother. Sometimes they just stay broken. Hollow. Empty vessels making the right sounds but holding nothing."
The words hit too close to my own fears. I've watched her these three days through shadows and doorways. She moves through the house like a ghost, there but not present.
"You're afraid she'll leave," Luca states, reading me with that uncanny accuracy.
"I'm afraid she'll stay from obligation. Guilt. Because she thinks she owes me something."
"She won't stay from obligation," Luca states with certainty.
"Then I'll make her stay for other reasons." The words escape before I can stop them, dark and possessive.
Luca's smile widens. "There's my brother. The one who takes what he wants."
"Not by force."
"No.By making yourself necessary. Like oxygen. Like addiction." He moves closer, and I smell copper on him. Fresh blood from whatever he's been doing. "You're letting her fade when you should be making yourself unavoidable. Undeniable. The one solid thing in her collapsing world."
"That's manipulation."
"That's love." The word sounds strange in his mouth, twisted but somehow true. "Love isn't patient, brother. It's selfish. It demands. It insists on existing even when everything else burns. Be unavoidable. Be the gravity she orbits around until she remembers she's real."
Marco finds me after Luca leaves, bringing the weight of real-world problems.
"Detroit's moving again." His voice carries that particular tone that means violence is coming. "Three more of our shipments hit this week."
I force myself to focus, to be the tactician he needs. But my hands move almost without thought: "Double Ana's security."
His eyebrow rises. "She doesn't even know if she's staying."
"Triple it. And if anyone even looks at her wrong, I want their eyes sent to Detroit in a box."
Marco nods, understanding the message. Touch her and die screaming. "Luca visited."
Not a question. Of course he knows.
"His advice is usually wrong," Marco continues, settling into the leather chair across from my desk.
"This time he might be right," I sign.
About being present. About not letting her disappear. About love being selfish enough to insist on existing.
"The Detroit situation needs resolution," Marco says, shifting back to business. "Killed two of their runners this morning. Message needs to be clearer."
"I'll handle it."
"After you handle your own situation. A distracted enforcer is a dead one."
