It didn’t fix anything.But it made a dent.
I told myself that was enough, knowing that it wasn’t.
I didn’t do it because I was good.
I did it because every time I saw it—every time I heard it—I saw my mother on her knees and my father standing over her as though he’d been appointed her judge and jury.
And I wanted to change the ending.
So I kept going.
Until the night I realized something I should have understood from the start—I wasn’t stopping it.
I was just getting better at surviving it.
And one day, that wasn’t going to be enough.
10
Tone
Ishoved my door open and stepped out of the car, anger hitting me fast and hot now that the adrenaline had somewhere to go.
“What the hell, Archie?”
Archie didn’t flinch.He slipped the weapon away with practiced ease, adjusting his cuffs like he’d just finished a business meeting.Which, in essence, he had.
“I told you to be careful, Antonella,” he said calmly.
I stared at him.
“You’re joking.”
His expression remained neutral.
“Am I?”
I took a step toward him, fury rising sharp and immediate.
“You just executed two men in the middle of the street.”
“They were following you.”
“And???”I roared.“You don’t just go around shooting people because they’re following someone.”
Archie glanced at the bodies.Then back at me.His tone didn’t change.
“Of course, Tone,” he said dryly.“They were most definitely joining you for tea.”
I clenched my jaw.
“That’s not the point.”
“It ispreciselythe point.”
“You don’t know who they were,” I snapped.“You don’t know what they wanted.Now we have two bodies and zero information.”
“We have two fewer problems,” he corrected.