Page 146 of Twisted Vows

He exhales, his jaw tight. “That was my first conclusion. What do we do next?”

“What we’ve always wanted to do. We travel during the night.”

Even Rocco and Vito, who’ve spent the better part of a year as Gabi’s shadows, are here. I don’t ask why. Some men can just sense when a ship’s going down.

A couple of new guys stand by the vehicle that’ll take them to the front line, checking their rifles and whispering prayers they are most likely not convinced of. I tell them not to worry, to take the day off. But nobody obeys.

“If you’re dying,” Marco says, “we’re dying too.”

The old loyalty, stubborn and dangerous, cuts deeper than betrayal.

I almost tell him to stop caring. Then I decide it’s pointless. Men like us only know one direction.

Forward.

We spend the next few hours prepping gear. Lining bullets like teeth, cleaning blades until they gleam, pinning maps with red ink. Every motion feels like a ritual, each one deliberate and unhurried. Muscle memory carries me through.

Between tasks, Sophia’s face slips through my mind.

Marco catches my distant look. “She’s in your head again.”

“Always was.”

He shakes his head. “Women’ll get you killed.”

“She already did.”

He stares at me but says nothing.

Outside, thunder rumbles somewhere over the river. The storm—the kind that crawls under your skin before it breaks—builds slowly.

A message waits unsent on my encrypted phone, a line of text that feels like a will that only Marco can execute.

If I don’t make it, burn everything tied to her. She walks free. Billy will know how to clean any trace of her involvement.

It’s the biggest thing I’ll ever do to prove my love to her.

Because loving her now means deleting her from my world so completely that even my enemies forget she ever existed. It means ensuring my death doesn’t drag her down with me.

That’s what love looks like for men like me…erasure.

Marco heads out to brief the men. I go out for a jaunt. The streets below shine from the rain. The air has that fresh, clean scent of petrichor.

After my stroll, I find Marco by the SUV, loading clips. Rocco is with him, humming a low tune he said his father passed along to him, the same one he hums before each fight. Vito takes it easy, probably praying or counting kills with his eyes closed.

We climb inside the vehicle, and one speaks as the first raindrops hit the windshield. I scan the men’s unfazed faces. While I know their hearts are pounding like crazy and they have a million questions about this supposed suicide mission I’m taking them on, none of them say anything. In any case, they know it’s of no consequence.

I pull Sophia’s wedding ring from my pocket, thread it onto a dog tag chain, and loop it around my neck. The cool, familiar metal settles against my skin, reminding me that I let a good thing walk away because I didn’t know how to be anything other than the monster I am.

So now it’s time to be just that. The cold-blooded Enzo Ricci who strikes fear into his enemies.

“She’d be so mad at this,” Marco says.

“She was mad at a lot of things,” I reply. “Yet she did love me.”

The rain becomes heavier, drumming hard on the roof. Every drop feels like a countdown.

The men are silent, their faces carved into planes by the floodlights as they wait for my order.