The fog had returned over London again, this time more thickly than previously, covering the city in secrecy.
Dante stood before his makeshift office window as gray fingers wrapped around street lamps like tendrils of smoke from a dying flame. Three days of observation had instructed him in Giovanni's routine minute by minute. But it instructed him in something else—something that soured his gut.
Giovanni Moretti was a good guy. Not innocent. Good. The kind of man who opened doors for elderly women, threw bread to the ducks in the park, smiled at strangers and didn't even attempt to pretend. The kind of man who'd relinquished power for love and never looked back.
Dante's phone buzzed. Another text from his father.
"Time's up. Report."
He stared at the message, his hands hovering above the screen. What could he write? That he'd been following a man who should be alive for three days? That every hour of watch had served only to reinforce Giovanni's innocence?
He typed: "Target confirmed. Routine established. Ready to proceed."
The response came back immediately: "Good. Tonight."
Tonight. The word dropped into his stomach like a rock. Tonight he'd kill or turn his back on everything he'd been trained to do.
He slammed the file down on his desk—Giovanni's bank statements, routines, and acquaintances. They all screamed the same thing: this man had left the darkness and built something beautiful in its place.
But the Don wasn't looking for redemption. He was looking for vengeance.
Dante held up the photographs again. The beach photo—Fianna, laughing, free, unaware of the shadows that would one day descend upon her life. The new photograph—Fianna with her father, happy and secure.
What would become of her if he killed Giovanni? Would she ever have the knowledge of why? Would she spend the rest of her life never knowing what her father had done to earn death?
The fog was getting denser, and Dante was walking. Not to Giovanni's apartment. Not to his hotel. But to the painting studio where he had first met her.
The house was quiet when he arrived, door shut, windows dark. But he could envision her in there—painted, creating, living the life that her father had preserved for her.
He stood across the street, in blackness, staring up at the empty studio. He could envision her there—brush in hand, unaware of anything, including the fact that death stood in the street below him, watching.
The phone rang again.
"Status?"
Dante did not respond. He disappeared. Into the fog, into the streets, into the ghosts that hunted him.
He waited in the park where Giovanni used to feed the ducks. On the same bench he'd sat reading his paper. On the same path he'd helped that old lady with her groceries.
There was something in this place that mourned peace. Normalcy. A well-lived life.
And Dante was here to spoil it.
He sat down on the bench, the wood cold against his skin, and pulled out the photographs again. In dusk, Fianna's face shone—her smile, her eyes, the way she danced with such uncompromising life.
She never saw him. Would never see him. But he saw her. Saw her in a manner that lay beyond sense or reason. Saw her in his bones and his blood.
The fog moved around him, and for a moment he could have sworn she stood there—approaching him, paint-scathed fingers, unkempt curls, eyes that always seemed to see to the very center of him.
She wasn't there, naturally. She was safe in her domain, happily unaware of the darkness in his.
His phone buzzed again. The Don's patience was wearing thin.
"Report now."
Dante stared at the note, then at the pictures in his hand. Fianna's face scowled back at him, defying all he believed about himself.
How would she see him if he were to tell her what he intended to do? Would she see him as a monster? A man who could kill a harmless man just because his father had commanded him to?
The answer was a breath in the fog: Yes. She would look at him and see only that.
And for the first time, that potential pained him not only—it terrified him.
For he was beginning to care what she saw. Care about what kind of man she would see when she looked at him.
Care about being the kind of person who would never be embarrassed to stand before her.
The fog enveloped him, and Dante sensed something that stole his breath: he was greater than a hired assassin on a contract. He was a man caught between two realms—the one from which he was born and the one into which he was now beginning to see.
And in the city, somewhere, Fianna lived without realizing that her existence was poised on the precipice of the forever.
He would decide tonight. He would become either one of the ranks of the killer his father had raised him to be or the man he was coming to pray he might be.
The photographs blistered his pocket like forbidden things too bad to conceal.
And the fog enveloped him like a shroud, hiding him from human creature—and human creature from him.