My voice came out steady. Cold. The voice of a woman who had finally found the edge of her endurance and stepped over it.
"Take all your things and get out of my house."
His lips pressed into a thin line.
His hand gripped the recorder—still repeating goodbye, goodbye, goodbye—as if it were the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.
He walked past me without another word.
The door closed behind him with a soft click that echoed like a death knell.
My phone screen lit up one last time.
I'm sorry.
In the days that followed, I never saw Nico again.
But before I could disappear from Volpe territory for good, I had to return to the Family clinic to have my bandages changed.
The medical facility occupied the top three floors of a building the syndicate owned outright—a place where bullet wounds were treated without questions and loyalty bought silence more effectively than any bribe. I had spent enough hours in these sterile corridors to know every shadow, every whispered conversation that died the moment a door opened.
As I walked into the lobby, I looked up out of habit.
The wall of honored physicians on the first floor had been updated.