She swallowed.
Her words.
The air.
Those few final seconds ...
“Do you remember,” he asked her, “when I made that promise?”
She did.
Two months into her training at The League, swallowed by her fear, with bloodshot eyes, and tears that tasted like salt staining her lips, he promised she would feel nothing when she killed Allegra. Cree had bent over her in the darkness of a room that she never wanted to even smell again and told her she could have the thing she wanted the most—to feel nothing when it was finally the end.
“I was scared,” Penny told him.
Cree dared to smile, as tiny and fast as it was. “And then?”
“She was gone.”
“And you felt—”
“Nothing,” Penny said, her words a rushed ache leaving her lips. “Nothing at all.”
His expression softened even as he raised his weapon. His dark eyes met hers, and she found remorse there—waiting for her, though he wouldn’t offer it in words. That was okay.
“When you killed her, or two weeks—whichever came first,” he reminded her.
“Tell Dare I’m not sorry.”
Cree nodded once. “You shouldn’t be.”
Ever.
She was owed this.
“Dare made me a deal, too,” Cree said, his finger wrapping the trigger. “You only have to die, Penny ... and maybe then you can live.”
He pulled the trigger back. The last thing Penny remembered was coughing and the taste of blood thick in her clogged airpipe as she stared up at a bright blue sky, and rolling white clouds. She heard a click—a digital ding as her heart fought to keep beating.
She felt every single one.
And how they slowed.
Penny would have liked to say that she had no regrets at the moment of her death, but that was a lie.
She regretted not saying goodbye.
21.
Luca
THERE was nothing quite like the streets of New York City, mid-week, at the end of a long workday. Often congested, and yet fast-paced in a blink, driving in that mess could make a normal man insane. He kind of liked it.
Luca could thank his father for demanding he learn how to drive in downtown Manhattan during early Monday morning traffic when he hadn’t even known how to back a vehicle up at that point. And it was one of the only times that he couldn’t focus long enough to think.
At least, not too deep. That was better, lately.
Thinking led him down too many rabbit holes—Luca didn’t enjoy the helpless feeling he was left with every time he was reminded that Penny was ... somewhere.
Somewhere without him.
Luca let those thoughts drift away as he finally rounded onto the block where he had to meet up with a Donati capo. Being the go-between to pick up payments so the capos weren’t forced into the same spot when things in the city were tense was just one way Luca was helping to keep shit steady for Naz and la famiglia.
He didn’t mind.
It kept him busy, too.
And if this was the only way he could help to keep the streets of New York from becoming anymore bloodier than they already were, then this was what he was happy to do. Simple as that.
Before long, Luca was able to pull his car to the side of the street where temporary parking allowed him to sit for five minutes or less. He sent off a quick text—a confirmation that he was outside the coffee shop where the capo spent his evenings in a rear office handling paperwork.
Luca didn’t expect the capo to bring out the money—the dues owed to the new, sitting Doanti boss. He was right. A familiar family enforcer stepped out of the alley at the side of the coffee shop, telling Luca he had probably exited the business from a rear door. He didn’t linger at the open window of Luca’s latest buy—a new, two-door Mercedes that was blacked-out from the rims to the front windshield.
Money could make shit move in little time. He figured it was about time that he started spending some dollars. What good was it sitting there doing nothing, anyway?
It was also another way for him to distract himself from the giant hole in his life. A black space that seemed to be sucking all the good energy he had left with every passing second that he tried to pretend it wasn’t there.
He assumed this was what it felt like to be heartbroken—a little empty, lost, and too quiet. Not quite right.
“Thanks,” he told the enforcer when the man passed an envelope into the car. Luca packed it away in a bag on the passenger seat, and was already maneuvering the car out of the parking spot by the time the man had turned to leave. He gave the enforcer a two-fingered wave but didn’t glance the man’s way to see if it was returned.
Just as he pulled the car back onto the road, the Bluetooth in the car connected a call from the newest cell phone he had picked up to keep in contact with the important people who needed him. Or those he was paying to keep him up-to-date on information.
The number on the screen told him he was dealing with the latter.
“Keys,” Luca greeted when he picked up the call. “Tell me the good news, man.”
He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as the car came to a stop behind a white SUV at a red light. Good news was reaching—he mostly expected the same news Keys had been giving him for days when it came to Penny and any possible sightings or word about the white ghost.
“Where are you?” the hacker asked.
“What’s wrong?”
It wasn’t unusual for Keys to ask Luca about his position when the man called—he was convinced it was because the hacker just couldn’t help himself and everything was a challenge. Even finding Luca’s digital footprint down to the goddamn millisecond.
It was strange for the man to be so soft-spoken ... so unsure.
“Luca—”
He swallowed hard, his fingers wrapping the leather of the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white from the pressure. When was that light going to turn green? “Keys.”
“The bounty’s been collected, man. The bounty for the white ghost. It was just announced on a vanishing forum with digital proof—for a cost, of course.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Luca—”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a sealed file of a single photograph—it’s her; if she wasn’t dead, she would have been pretty soon after. Confirmed by a second witness on a another vanishing forum. The bounty is claimed—it’s been paid. She’s dead.”
He had a lot of questions. Details he would never have. A horn blared behind him because the light was finally green, it seemed.
His vision was blurry as wet lines made tracks down his cheeks to his clenched jaw. He really only wanted to know one thing more than anything else.
Why.
That wouldn’t be answered, either.
THERE WAS A STILLNESS in the darkness that Luca appreciated. The quiet looming of shadows when the sun finally started to fall beyond a treeline was one of his favorite sights to see. He tried to show respect to the end of every day by taking a moment to watch it go because it meant he would soon be given the gift of seeing another start anew.
Except he didn’t find the usual solace at the end of a day as he stared over the rear property of his family’s home. He wasn’t sure why Zeke and Katya’s home was where everyone—from Naz and Roz to even Cross and his wife, Catherine—gathered, but they did. Food was cooked as calls were made and hushed tones turned to angry yells. Between friends, fathers and sons ... shit, Luca even wanted to rage at himself.