The drive back to the villa was a descent into a beautiful, violent kind of silence. Rain lashed against the tinted windows of the SUV, blurring the lights of the city into jagged streaks of neon. Inside the car, the air was thick, saturated with the scent of Luciano’s sandalwood cologne and the lingering, metallic tang of gunpowder that clung to his charcoal wool coat. I sat beside him, my fingers interlaced in my lap to hide the fact that I was still shaking.
My father was dead. The man who had tucked me in at night, only to later sign my soul away as "collateral," was a ghost in a warehouse now.
Luciano didn’t say a word, but his presence was a physical weight. His hand, large and calloused, moved from the gear shift to my thigh. He didn't just rest it there; he gripped me, his finger
