Page 60 of The Scars We Keep
“You really should stop following people, Lorenzo.”
Cold metal presses against the base of my skull.Positioned exactly where it needs to be to end me before I can turn around.
I smile before I can stop myself.Matteo has always been better at this than anyone.At turning the hunt back on the hunter before they even realize they have been made.
He may have gone soft, but he hasn’t lost his edge.His instincts remain.So does the ability to put a gun to a man’s head and mean it.
Respect flickers through me despite the gun to my head, because this is the Matteo I remember.And men die when they forget that.
Chapter Fourteen
Matteo
Ikeepthegunpressedagainst the base of Lorenzo’s skull and listen to the silence around us.
That is the thing people never understand about surviving this kind of life.It is not about how fast you can move when everything goes to shit.Not about how well you shoot, how many men you have backing you, or how much money you can throw at a problem until it disappears.It is the silence.
The ability to read it and feel its shape.To know when it shifts from benign to malignant in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
The wrong kind of silence has teeth.
Sharp ones.
The kind that sinks deep and doesn’t let go until you’re bleeding out on pavement that doesn’t care who you were.
I felt it the second I stepped out onto the street with Emery.That old, crawling shift in the air.That sense that something unseen has fixed its eyes on you and is deciding whether you are worth the effort to kill.Most men never notice it until it is too late.Until the bullet is already in flight or the blade is already at your throat.
I noticed it before I had my first body to bury.
My father made sure of that.He drilled it into me with the same ruthless precision he used for everything else.He taught me to feel danger the way other men feel rain, to trust my instincts even when logic said I was paranoid, and to act first and question later, because hesitation is what gets you killed.
It has saved my life more times than I can count.Today it brings me right back to the one thing I have known was coming since the day I walked away.
They have found us.
That fear is the only thing on earth that can still get under my skin.
Not for myself.
I stopped being afraid for myself a long time ago.Fear is a luxury men in my position cannot afford.It slows you down, makes you hesitate, and gets you killed.
But fear for someone else—for the woman carrying my child—that fear is sharp.It lives in my chest, reminding me with every fucking breath I take that I have something worth losing now.
Then when I saw it was Lorenzo that somehow made it worse.
Because Lorenzo is not some hired gun or a desperate soldier looking to make a name for himself by taking down Matteo De Luca.
“How the fuck did you find me, Lorenzo?”My voice is hard.It’s not a question but a demand.
His shoulders stay loose beneath the dark shirt stretched taut across his back.As if having a gun to his head were just another Tuesday.
He has always had that cold stillness in him.
Even when he was young, grief had hollowed him out so badly he looked too small for his own skin.Most children cry when they lose their family.Lorenzo learned how not to.He went quiet instead of breaking.He stood there with those watchful eyes, absorbing every lesson my father threw at him.He turned himself into something harder and more ruthless than anyone expected.
I tighten my grip on the gun.I feel its weight and the promise it holds.
“Answer the fucking question.”
