The moonlight hit the rocky beach like a cold, silver spotlight, making the wet stones glisten like the scales of some ancient, sleeping beast. But there was no magic in this place—only the suffocating smell of salt, the rhythmic, deafening roar of the surf, and the looming threat of the men standing between us and the black SUV parked at the edge of the harbor road. My heart was thumping against my ribs with such violence that it felt like it would crack the bone. Every breath I took was a struggle, my lungs still burning from the soot of the foundry and the freezing air of the tunnels.
Luciano pushed me back into the deepest shadows of the tunnel exit, his body a heavy, radiating wall of heat. He didn't look at me, but I could see the way his neck muscles were corded like steel cables.
