Lucas
The apartment doesn’t sleep.
It holds its breath.
Aria is in my room, wrapped in clean sheets, breathing shallow but steady. Lila is down the hall, the spare bedroom door cracked just enough for light to spill across the floor. Neither of them should be here tonight.
Neither of them chose this.
Theo and Darius are in the living room with me. Shirts off. Bandages half-done. Blood cleaned but not forgotten. The kind of quiet men share when words would only cheapen it.
I tape my ribs slowly, deliberately.
Pain keeps me present.
Theo drops into a chair with a grunt. “I swear, next time, I’m picking a hobby that doesn’t involve warehouses.”
“There won’t be a next time like that,” I say.
He snorts. “You say that like you believe it.”
After Liliana’s revelations we all knew what
