“Of course,” Delfino said. “I understand.” His tone was even. Cool. There was nothing in his expression to suggest I might get even a hint of what had transpired between him and his employer. For most of the conversation, Delfino had replied with only noncommittal answers. He listened far more than he talked. I supposed it was a sign of deference.

And yet, as their call drew to a close, some unquantifiable variation in his tone made my pulse pound. I thought perhaps I sensed a note of resignation. A sigh of defeat, of failure. Clipped and professional, those four words were intoned in such a way as to remind me of a doctor issuing a terminal diagnosis. Get your affairs in order. It won’t be long now.

He looked at me, just a glance, as whoever was on the other end of the line continued to speak. He was standing now, near to the window, occasionally pulling aside the curtain and looking out over the street. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw—or didn’t see—he’d inevitably let go of the fabric and use that hand to card his fingers through his hair, pushing the silvery locks up and out of his ice-blue eyes. His forehead creased in a way that made him look even older than he was, as if every moment he had to remain on the line aged him exponentially. Delfino had never looked so ragged to me, so worn down.

It reminded me that mountains could be moved by inches and degrees, eroded over time, their façades crumbling into ash and dust. Maybe on some level it was satisfying to watch Delfino fall apart, but on another, the landslide that came with it would surely be devastating. I pulled on my fingers, wringing my hands so as not to let him see them tremble.

“Soon,” he rasped, looking out the window again. The half-light lingered on only one side of his face, casting the other in shadow. “I’m bringing the girl.”

Bringing? I thought. Just when I thought my stomach couldn’t fall any farther, it plummeted to unfathomable depths. Bringing me where?

Delfino’s boss must have said something he didn’t like, because the faintest twitch of a scowl pulled at his lips. “It’s non-negotiable,” he muttered. And then, seemingly without waiting for a reply, he terminated the call. The look in his eyes when he met my gaze—I wondered if he was going to terminate me too.

He said, “Pack your things. Whatever you can carry. There’s a duffel bag in my closet you can use.”

I gaped at him like a fish. “Pack? Where are we going?”

“One of Don Carliogne’s safehouses,” Delfino tonelessly replied. “We’re bugging out.”

My throat felt like it was going to close up. I was just dimly aware that I was sputtering as I spoke. My teeth were chattering that hard. “A safehouse? Where? When?!” And the unspoken question: Would we actually be safe there?

Delfino was already moving past me toward the stairs, undoubtedly aiming for his room. He had so few personal possessions I wasn’t sure what he’d take with him from this place. Maybe he wouldn’t take anything at all.

Except for me. Apparently, I was his personal possession. Cold dread skittered up my spine like a hundred spiders cascading over a xylophone.

“Delfino!” I shrieked, stopping him in his tracks. If there was one thing that could make this situation any worse for him, it would be me drawing attention to it. He turned his head slowly, staring down at me over the banister. “Answer me!”

“New Hampshire,” he said after a long moment. His voice was whisper-quiet, dead leaves grating against the sides of a gutter. Even in the silence of the house, I had to strain to hear him. “Now.”

My stomach rolled, the sheer force of it threatening to take me off my feet. “It’s the middle of the night…” I said around a tight, quivering swallow. It was a weak protest. We both knew it. The look in Delfino’s eyes was almost pitying.

“Just the one bag,” he reminded me. Then he turned away, down the hall. “I’ll bring it to your room.”

I covered my mouth with both hands, trying to keep myself from hyperventilating. In the span of a couple hours, I’d managed to lose everything. My dignity. My shot at freedom. The prison I’d called home. Worst of all, I had lost Leo, a grief I hadn’t even had time to deal with yet. And now… now I was going to lose my life. I was sure of it.

The hardwood slats beneath my feet felt like mud sucking me down, clenching around my ankles, rooting me in place. I was trapped, well and truly. There was no escaping my fate. Maybe there never was. I was sure that in time it would feel that way—like Leo had only ever been a dream. That was what had happened before, all those years he’d stayed away. Unable to deal with the loss, my mind had relegated him to a fantasy in order to protect me. To spare me that overwhelming pain.

But I didn’t want to forget him. Not this time. I didn’t want to forget the hope he’d given me, and I didn’t want to forget how good it had felt those too few moments I’d been free. In fact, I wasn’t sure I could. The impact Leo’s love had on me, the impact of his attempting to save me… those things had changed me. Maybe irrevocably.

Leo had come here with exactly one wish, one desire: to liberate me. He’d died for that dream. I couldn’t let his sacrifice go to waste. I had to make it a reality.

Or die trying.

I hauled in a few deep, shuddering breaths into my lungs. And then, while Delfino was still upstairs, I quietly made for the kitchen where the backdoor was. I wasn’t sure where I was going to run to, but I figured I could make it as far as the woods and then maybe disappear. It was cold this time of year. I wished I could grab a jacket. But there wasn’t any time.

All I had at my disposal was the knife block near the stove. I pulled out the biggest of the lot, glancing down at my reflection in the blade. The hollowness of my eyes. The shade cast around them by both exhaustion and grim determination. There was a wild look about me, something not altogether human. This, I thought, was what a person became when they had only one thing left to lose. The only thing left that had any meaning to them whatsoever.

It was a sharp blade. A good blade. I’d used it many times before, though never to defend myself. Never to draw blood or to kill, if I had to. I wondered if I could do it. I wondered if Leo’s death had killed something inside me too, killed the part of me that might have hesitated. The part of me that could feel anything but completely and utterly numb.

I shifted the knife, and the glare of the track lighting off the steel momentarily blinded me. I squinted past it and found darkness—a shadow in the doorway behind me. I spun, fingers wound so tight around the handle it hurt. Delfino’s eyes were just as cold and metallic as that blade was. Just as deadly. Just as sharp.

I tightened my jaw. Leveled the weapon at him. He said, “You don’t want to do this, Lucy.” Like he knew. Like he could sense what I was planning. Like he understood what I was feeling at all, like he had the first clue what this was like for me.

I shook my head. My hand was trembling. Adrenaline, not fear. I wet my lips but found my tongue just as dry. “Yes,” I said with all the conviction I could muster. “I do.”

Delfino tried to talk me down no further. He simply moved, his stride quick and long, upon me in a single step. I slashed, broad and clumsy, and felt the edge of the knife connect with something. It might have been only fabric. I didn’t want to linger too long to find out.

I dashed as he recoiled, slipping under one of his arms and running for the door. My fingers shook as I turned the lock, grasped, and pulled it open. The night air hit my face in a frigid rush, a pins-and-needles slap that blurred my vision. I could smell the trees.

Delfino slammed his shoulder into the wood right next to my head. I yelped as the door snapped shut and tried to spin away from him again, but he grabbed the back of my collar and tugged. Hard. I reeled back onto my heels and he got his arm tight around my midsection, pulling me up off my feet. I kicked aimlessly, hoping to make contact with his shins.

“Lucy—” he began, and I remembered how he’d said, just a few minutes ago, that he wouldn’t kill me. Except he was squeezing so hard my ribs felt like they would crack, and I remembered too that there were things far worse than death. I was certain that getting in a car tonight with Delfino would be one of them.

This time when I used the knife, I jabbed. Hard enough that the tip sliced between the bones in the back of Delfino’s hand and nearly came out his palm. I was lucky it didn’t. The last thing I needed was to accidentally eviscerate myself.

He roared and let go of me, and I lost my knife in the process. It jutted from his flesh, wedged only an inch deep, but even that was gruesome. I tried not to let my eyes linger, tried not to get lost in the realities of what I’d just done—that I’d stabbed someone. That I’d stabbed Delfino. If I let myself think about those things—things like who Delfino was, especially to a man like Don Carliogne, who was waiting for us, expecting us—then this was all going to go sideways.

I had to keep moving. And that meant I had to stop thinking about it and just run.

I pushed away from him and sprinted, making for the front door now, but he was faster than me. He cut me off, the knife discarded, his ruined hand held tight in the clasp of his good one. Blood seeped from the gash, dripping between his fingers. Was I still willing to believe he wouldn’t kill me, now that he had such murder in his eyes? Now that I’d drawn first blood?

“Please don’t make me hurt you,” he growled—or was that thunder in the distance? It reminded me of the purr of his Chevy’s engine, of that sound I’d come to dread over the years I’d been kept prisoner. Cold sweat immediately beaded on my nape. “I don’t want to. But I will.”

“I’m not going with you,” I said, stalking in a half-circle toward the stairs, all the while trying to keep as much distance as possible between me and Delfino.

“You are,” he replied, taking a single step toward me. He’d shed his robe and stood now in only his white t-shirt and pants, barefoot and bleeding. “One way or another, Lucy. I’d prefer it if you chose the painless way.” He stopped. “But I have no control over that. Only you do.”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. No one has ever had any control here, except for you. And whether or not you hurt me—that’s your choice. Not mine. I’m sick of you blaming me for your violence. For your abuse.”

He blew an incredulous breath through his nose. “When have I ever struck you?”

“You didn’t have to!” I retreated from him one more step. The back of my ankle hit the first stair. I hoped my words would distract him, would keep him from lunging until I was out of reach. “Your words did enough damage. They always have! You didn’t need to bruise my body. All you had to do was bruise my spirit, tear down my self-esteem, render me incapable of even raising my voice to you. I could never object to the things you did because you’d made it crystal-freaking-clear what the consequences would be!”

“Lucy,” Delfino said very calmly. Very quietly. Even now, with so much at stake for him, he couldn’t be bothered to lose his temper. To yell or curse like any other man would. “We are running out of time. If you are not prepared to make the decision to get your things together and get in the car, then I will have to make it for you.”

I felt my lip curl. “Some choice you’re giving me.”

His eyes grew even more steely in a flicker-flash of lightning from outside. “Consider your alternative.”

Oh, I was. The way I saw it, if I didn’t get the hell away from this man and this house, I was as good as dead—either in body or in spirit. Maybe both. That meant I had to choose to live, or die trying. I had to swallow my deep-seated fears Delfino had spent much of my adult life planting and let all the anger I’d been pushing down, all that rage I’d been denying, finally bubble to the surface in earnest.

“Fuck you,” I said. And then I spun on my heel, running up the stairs.

My feet hammered against each step, the sounds echoing under the protestations from an angry sky. I could hear Delfino coming up behind me, taking the stairs two at a time whereas my stride could only manage one. As I reached the landing, he grabbed me by my elbow and wrenched my arm back. Pain bloomed in my shoulder and phosphor dots exploded before my eyes.

“Stop!” I shrieked, for maybe the first time ever. The word felt so powerful, so meaningful, that at the end of it my voice trailed into a sob. For just a moment Delfino hesitated, I think maybe out of shock, and I ripped away from him. It was a bad move—something tore in my shoulder and the phosphor dots burned brighter.

But it didn’t stop Delfino for long. He lunged a second time, draining me of my power. Denying my agency to say “no.” Stepping on my will, my autonomy as a human being, just as easily as one might crush an ant beneath their boot.

It’s difficult to articulate—to put into words—what it’s like to tell someone to stop and have them run right over you. To tell them they’re hurting you and have them keep doing it anyway. It seems like it wouldn’t have such an impact. On the surface, all it means is that you’re being ignored.

But the reality of it runs so much deeper than that. Words are just too small to describe the sensation of violation, of insignificance, that being forced into a situation like this breeds. The damage it inflicts. The trauma that endures long after the violence itself is over.

I knew that “stop” and “no” no longer afforded me any power, as far as Delfino was concerned. I also knew how true it was that actions spoke louder than words. And so, as he surged toward me, still nursing his bleeding hand, I moved forward instead of back—as he’d anticipated—and shoved him in the chest with all my might.

He teetered on the edge of the landing. His good hand grasped the rail. He caught himself, but his palm was so slippery with blood he began to slide. This was my shot. I couldn’t throw it away. Even if it was anathema to everything I’d always believed about myself, my character, and what I was capable of.

I looked into the eyes of the man who’d done nothing but torture and abuse me since the day we’d met. His pupils dilated and a sort of realization dawned in his gaze. One predator recognizing another. Recognizing that they’d become the prey.

I pushed him again just as he was pulling up. I only had to make contact with him for a moment, but in that span of a second—maybe less—I felt his heart shudder beneath my fingers. I felt his terror. And I had but one thought.

Good.

He careened backward, tumbling down the wooden steps, striking first his shoulders, then his spine on their edges. Whatever sound he made was lost to the thunderclap that rose to drown him, as if the heavens themselves were complicit in my vengeance. As if some higher power approved.

When he reached the bottom, he was little more than a crumpled heap of flesh and bones. Blood streaked the banister all the way down, smeared too across the stairs themselves where Delfino had tried to find purchase to stop his descent. I thought I saw a fingernail glinting in the half-light. My stomach dropped and threatened to revolt.

But beyond that, I felt nothing. No fear. No rage. Just a vast emptiness, a gaping chasm where some feeling—any feeling—should be. Instead, there was just a void. I wondered, through the din of adrenaline pulsing in my ears, just how much of that blackness would swallow me whole when this was all over.

And was it over? I stared down at Delfino’s body. He wasn’t moving. My mouth ran dry and a little tremble seized me. From this far away, I couldn’t even tell if his chest moved.

Had I killed him? I couldn’t be sure, and I sure as hell wasn’t getting close enough to find out. That question, though—it didn’t bother me nearly as much as the other one that floated through my mind directly after. The one where I had to wonder, regardless of whether or not I actually had taken Delfino’s life… had I meant to?

I turned away. Any part of me that wanted, or needed, closure was going to have to wait. I couldn’t get caught in the quagmire of a moral crisis now. Not when there was still so much at stake. The fact remained that even if Delfino never got up from the bottom of those stairs, someone else would be coming to check on him very soon. Don Carliogne’s men would want to know why he hadn’t shown up in New Hampshire. And once they found out, they’d be coming after me, wanting to tie up that loose end. I was going to have to protect myself.

I went to Delfino’s room. On his bed, there was a pile of folded clothes, some cash, and his passport. And next to all of that, there was a gun.

I didn’t know a whole lot about firearms. Just the important parts about where the safety was, how you were supposed point the end of it at the other guy and pull the trigger, and what would likely happen to them after you’d done it. I knew, too, that I should always assume one was loaded. My father had taught me that what seemed like a lifetime ago. And Delfino had reinforced it, albeit in a different way.

Don’t you ever touch one of these, he’d said to me whenever he caught me looking. Usually when he was cleaning one. They’re dangerous. You could hurt yourself. But he never said it with any sort of conviction. He was a man who’d used guns frequently in his line of work, the kind of man who knew exactly what they could and could not do, and the kind of man who knew enough to know that a gun was very unlikely to go shooting anyone or anything of its own accord.

What he really meant when he issued those warnings was that I could hurt him, if I so chose. A weapon like that would give me power. Control. And he couldn’t have that. As always, Delfino relied on fear to keep me in check, and to keep himself in a position of authority.

I picked up the gun. With some fiddling, I managed to eject the clip. Yes. It was loaded. I shoved it back in and made sure the safety was on, then tucked the gun in the waistband of my pants. I threw all of Delfino’s cash into the duffel bag on his bed, but left the clothes and the passport. Assuming he was alive, what did I care if he ran, just so long as he stayed away from me? And if he wasn’t…

Well, if he wasn’t, then it didn’t matter anyway.

I hauled the bag into my room. The storm was picking up outside. I could hear the tree near my window bending, its branches scratching at the pane. The wind keened and a few shingles flapped in reply. I set down the bag on my bed and went to my dresser, pulling out clothes.

I’d almost finished when another bolt of lightning split the sky so brightly it illuminated the room. Thunder roared at almost the exact same time, and at a volume that bordered on deafening. I jumped, the zipper on the bag caught funny, and the power flickered, then went out. Strange, iridescent after-images danced through my vision. I rubbed at them despite the searing pain in my shoulder, and I tried not to think too hard about what, exactly, Delfino had done to me. How bad the damage was.

I comforted myself with the thought that he’d never be able to do anything like that to me ever again. That soon, very soon, I’d be free of his influence forever.

Sometimes, the most comforting thoughts are the ones that turn out to be lies.

I didn’t hear him until he was at the threshold. Until he was already in the room. Until it was too late for me to do much more than fumble for the gun in the back of my pants. My hands were shaking again. Delfino wasn’t. He stood completely still. Unwavering, as if I’d never stabbed him. As if I’d never thrown him down that flight of stairs.

“I’ll shoot you,” I said breathlessly. I still felt numb all over, but I was aware of my heart banging an S.O.S. against the back of my sternum. “I swear, you bastard, I’ll shoot you where you stand.” It was a line I’d heard in one of those old Clint Eastwood films he liked. It didn’t sound quite as intimidating coming from me as it did from somebody like Tyne Daly, but it was the only threat I could think of.

Delfino must have got the reference, because he snorted a laugh. “I doubt that.”

I took the safety off. Pulled the hammer back. “Are you sure?” I asked him. “Think hard before you answer that. You’re always one step ahead. Able to see the myriad outcomes before they’ve come to pass. You calculate probabilities in your head better than most people can add single-digit sums, with or without the use of their fingers. You practically see the future, practically read minds. So look into my eyes, Delfino—look at my finger on the trigger and tell me: are you really, really sure?”

And for a moment—just a moment—he hesitated. For the span of a breath, maybe two, the surety in his gaze gave way to something more tenuous. His lips parted. The muscles in his face grew taut.

Then the window behind me shattered into a flurry of glass shards, raining down like the flakes inside a snow globe.

I turned, still holding the gun up, but a heavy hand wrapped around the stock and pulled me forward, off-balance. I shrieked and squeezed to hold onto the weapon and a shot went wild, piercing the upper pane of the broken window and careening into the night like a shooting star. The sound was deafening. That’s one thing I wasn’t prepared for… the thunderclap that followed pulling the trigger. The sheer magnitude of realizing that I’d fired a gun, even if I hadn’t hit anybody.

The momentary shock made me loosen my grip, and that, in turn, made it easy to wrestle the gun away from me. I swatted blindly and heard the gun hit the floor and skitter just as two sets of fingers dug hard into my upper arms, where I knew they’d leave bruises for me to remember them by. I tried to scream again, but a hand clamped down hard over my mouth, squeezing my cheeks into the sides of my teeth. Spinning me back around before I even had the chance to register the details of the stranger’s face.

All I could smell was oil and leather. Scents that reminded me of Leo. But I knew this wasn’t him. He’d never hurt me. He’d never put his hands on me like this.

And Leo was dead. There was that to consider, too.

The gun had slid across the floor, right at Delfino’s feet. Slowly, without taking his eyes off me, he bent to pick it up. No—his eyes weren’t on me. They were on the man behind me. And his expression could only be described as cold, monstrous rage.

“You’re Delfino, right?” rasped the man crushing me to his body. He chuckled when Delfino didn’t answer and yanked me up onto my tip toes, creating a human shield between himself and Delfino’s raised gun. “I’m thinkin’ you are. Which means you’re probably lookin’ to get out of Dodge right about now. You, and the girl.”

I felt his hot breath on my ear and turned my head to the side, but he wrenched it back into place so hard the muscles in my neck seared in protest.

“I can make that happen,” the man continued, rubbing his gloved thumb over my cheek. Bile rose in my throat. “And for a very reasonable price. We’ll all just… disappear into thin air. Nobody’ll come after us ever again. Hell, nobody’ll know we’re alive. All you gotta do is put down the gun, and we’ll have ourselves a nice little talk.”

Delfino did not, in fact, put down the gun. He kept it leveled right where it was. But there was an uncertainty in his eyes, a glimmer of intrigue, that made my stomach grow cold.

He was considering this man’s proposal. And if he took him up on it, I was consigned to yet another prison sentence. Some new town in the middle of nowhere, no doubt. Some new house that would become my jail cell. A life sentence with Delfino as my warden. Only this time… this time, Leo wouldn’t be riding in on his chrome stallion to save me.

I closed my eyes, letting the horror sink in. I never should have pointed that gun at Delfino. That was a mistake.

I should have used it on myself.