Page 77 of The Kingpin’s Bride

He refastened the watch around my wrist himself. The metal was warm from his hands.

“This is bad,” he said. “She’s out there alone. The kid is missing. Someone inside the structure helped Dario. And you’re walking around with a hole in your chest big enough to drive a car through. So I’m going to say this once. You find the girl. You put her in Morena’s arms. And then you do whatever you have to do to keep both of them. Even if it means being less of a bastard than usual.”

I looked down at the watch, then at him. “Got it.”

Santino clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to sting. “Good. Because if you fuck this up I’m going to let Aurora loose on you, and neither of us wants that.”

We spent the next two hours running the final plan for the ambush. Teams. Entry points. The operator who had helped scrub the cameras had a name now. We would take him after we had Dario and the little girl. One thing at a time.

At some point Aurora brought coffee and a plate of something sweet the girls had insisted on. She set it down, looked at the maps, and then at my face.

“The girls asked if it’s true you got married,” she muttered. “And if they can meet your wife.”

“Tell them I’ll set up a date soon,” I said.

Aurora held my gaze. “I will. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

She left us to it. By the time the sky started to think about turning gray at the edges, we had everything locked.

Three teams. Clean exit routes. A doctor on standby who was not the one whose house Morena had walked into. Santino checked his weapon one last time and looked at me. “You ready?”

I felt the weight of the watch on my wrist. The ring in my pocket. The open place under my ribs that had not closed since she walked out. “Yes.”

We walked out of the secure room together.

Upstairs, the house was quiet. The girls were finally asleep. Aurora stood in the foyer with her arms wrapped around herself, watching us go. She did not say anything else. She did not need to. Santino kissed her like a man who could not believe he got to come home to her, then followed me out into the pre-dawn dark.

The northern property was forty minutes away.

Dario Rizzo was there. Camilla was there.

And after that, I was going to find my wife and put her sister in her arms like I had promised.

Then I was going to bring her home.

Santino drove. I sat in the passenger seat with the pink jacket folded across my thighs. The ring in my pocket pressed against my leg every time the car took a turn. Pre-dawn dark slid past the windows. The teams were in position ahead of us, waiting for the final go.

For a few minutes neither of us spoke.

Then Santino’s phone buzzed once. He glanced at it, jaw tightening, and handed it over without comment.

The watch on Morena was active. She hadn’t moved in fifty-three minutes. The pin sat in a narrow alley three miles from the industrial district we had cleared earlier. Stationary. One of the men on her detail had added a short note.

Subject appears to be sitting on the ground. Possible exhaustion. Awaiting orders.

I stared at the screen until the words blurred.

Santino kept his eyes on the road. “She’s crashing. You know that, right? My guys can pick her up in under ten minutes. Quiet. Clean. She wouldn’t even see them coming.”

“No.”

He exhaled through his nose. “You’re really going to leave her out there like that.”

“She stays free.” My voice came out flatter than I expected. “That was the line she drew. I’m not crossing it again.”

Santino was quiet for a stretch of dark road. Then he said, “She’s probably holding onto whatever scrap of her sister she can find. Same way you’re sitting there gripping that little jacket like it might disappear.”

I looked down. My hands had tightened around the pink fabric without me noticing.