The name Giovanni Lorenzo tasted like ash in my mouth. He was the man who had preached family values at Sunday dinners.

He was the one who had welcomed us when we were young and had nowhere else to turn. He was the man who Julian had trusted more than anyone.

Julian had left our home city because of Giovanni.

He believed in the old man’s vision of a world that didn’t have to be entirely dark.

Julian needed to believe that something good existed in our world, and Giovanni had played that hope like a violin.

And he sold us.

For a trading route. The specific worthlessness of that price was a special kind of cruelty.

A flashback forced its way through my defenses. I saw the warehouse from four years ago. I saw Julian’s face, what they had left of it.

The recognition had required effort because of what they had done before I could get there. I remembered his last words. He had apologized.

He had looked at me with what was left of his strength and said he was sorry. He had no reason to be sorry, except that Julian always found a way to take the weight of things that weren’t his fault.

I pulled myself back. The dock. The salt air. Emilio. Now.

I stood up, the movement sending a sharp protest through my bruised ribs. "Get up," I said, gesturing with the gun toward the yacht.

Emilio looked at me, a flicker of miscalculated hope sparking in his eyes.

He thought I was letting him go. He thought the yacht was his salvation. He struggled to his feet, clutching his ruined hand, and began to shuffle toward the end of the dock.

He moved with a pathetic, limping haste, the belief that he had survived this fueling his every step.

Crack.

The sound didn’t come from my gun. A shot rang out from somewhere in the dark, finding me.

The impact hit my left side, the already damaged side. My body registered the shock before the pain.

A second shot followed, tearing through my thigh.

A third hit me closer to center, the vest absorbing the worst of the force, but the impact felt like being hit by a sledgehammer. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

I tracked the direction instantly, dropping to one knee. I returned fire into the shadows of the shipping containers near the pier. One shooter went down. A second followed. Then, there was silence.

Emilio had turned around. He saw me hit, saw the blood soaking through my tactical gear. A jagged, ugly smile arrived on his face.

"Still think you had the upper hand, Wolfe?"

I looked at him. The blood was real, and it was pouring from multiple points now. My body was making a significant accounting of the day’s damage. But I was still moving.

Emilio turned back toward the yacht, moving faster now, his desperation turning into a frantic scramble. The boat was right there.

I raised the gun. The arm that should have been too heavy to lift, the arm that was shredded and grazed, did exactly what I told it to do.

I fired.

The first shot found Emilio in the small of the back. The second followed immediately. And then the third. He didn’t fall into the water; he went down hard on the wood of the dock.

He started to crawl. It was a slow, pathetic movement. He reached the edge of the dock, his good hand clawing at the timber. "Wait—wait—wait—" he gasped, his voice bubbling. "I’m sorry... I’ll tell you everything... Giovanni... I’ll tell you—"

I walked toward him. Each step cost me a price I wasn’t sure I could pay. My body was screaming, the invoice for the last few hours coming due all at once. I paid it anyway.

I stood over him. I looked down at the man who had traded a life for a shipping route. I looked at the dark water and the four years of ghosts that had led me here. I saw Julian’s face in the ripples of the harbor.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t need a confession. I already knew everything I needed to know.

The last shot was clean. Final.

Emilio Vincenti stopped moving.

I stood there for a moment, the world tilting. Then, the standing became an issue.

My body presented its full accounting. The adrenaline that had been holding me together evaporated, leaving behind the raw reality of the bullet wounds, the bruised ribs, and the sheer exhaustion of the chase.

The dock began to come up toward me. Or perhaps I was going toward it. The geometry of the world had become very unclear.

"Cassian."

The voice arrived before the wood did. It was a specific voice, one I had known since my days of captivity.

I smelled the perfume, cold, expensive, and unmistakable even through the scent of salt and gunpowder.

Arms caught me. The hard wood of the dock didn’t meet my face; something else did. Something softer, but just as firm.

"Stay awake," Cyan’s voice said. The performance was gone. The sarcasm, the airy boredom, it had all vanished. It was just Cyan. "Cassian. Look at me. Stay with me."

I felt the dock beneath us both. I heard the water lapping against the pilings, a sound so similar to the night Julian died that for a moment, the timelines blurred. I felt Cyan’s grip, heard his voice urgent above me.

Something inside me released. The thing I had been holding since that night four years ago, the tension, the promise, the weight, it all just let go.

The last thing before the dark took me wasn’t Noah. It wasn’t revenge. It wasn’t even Giovanni.

It was Julian.

He was back on that rooftop, the city lights a blur behind him. He had a cigarette in one hand and a warm beer in the other. He was looking at me sideways, that half-grin on his face.

"You look like you can’t decide," he said, his voice as clear as if he were standing on the pier.

But then, a different voice pulled me back. It wasn’t Julian’s memory. It was Cyan’s reality. It wasn’t the sound of loss; it was something else, something I didn’t have a name for yet.

The dark arrived before the name did.