Page 67 of A Madness of Crows

And I sink down again. Loose, and tingling, as if I am here but also nothere.

Perhaps I don’t exist at all.

Day 74 – Gio

The room is silent.

On the other end of the phone, Dante’s rage is its own entity. “Enough. I’m going in to get her. Both of them.”

Across from me, Marco shakes his head. His own grief lingers, grief for the daughter of the sister he loved so much. But there’s resignation there, too. Too much time has passed for him to believe we still have a chance.

“Then whatever happens to them as a result is on your head, V’Arezzo. They’ll be dead before you get anywhere near them.”

Beside me, Vincent shifts, swiping his hands over his face. “You’ve heard nothing at all? No sign of her?”

Dante’s voice echoes through the burner. “Why don’t we ask Fusco?”

I scrub my hands down my face. “We’ve been over this. I had to slip in and slip out, fast. You were in Vegas. There was no time—.”

“Then you should have made fucking time.”

He bellows those words, and if he was here I have no doubt that we would be rolling around on the floor right now. His fists would slam into my face, just as they did before.

And I would let him do it.

Perhaps it would ease the guilt that weighs on me, every second of every fucking day. For letting her walk back into that hellhole, for not throwing her over my shoulder andrunningwhen we had the chance.

Everyone looks away.

The plans we worked on so diligently in those first few weeks sit in the middle of the floor between us. Abandoned. Useless, without more information.

“Have you heard from Luc?” Nico, Luc’s enforcer, glances up at my question. And… he hesitates. Looks away.

“No.”

Another blow. I was so fuckingcertainthat Luc went in there to get Alessia out. But only silence since then. Our calls go unanswered, although with Matteo tracking our activity, we wouldn’t be able to risk speaking freely anyway.

No sign or sighting of Domenico either.

Nothing from Stefano.

And Caterina… Cat has vanished into the depths of that house.

Frankie Costa straightens. “Gio.”

I glance at her, at the scar that rakes her face. “We’ve been over this, Frankie. The sketches were enough.”

My words are not unkind.

And I try not to show her how desperately I wish I could sayyes, that I could exchange one life for another without thinking twice.

“No, they weren’t,” she says quietly. “But I’m not asking your permission this time. Any of you. I’mtellingyou that I am going home.”

Tony stays silent. But his face – it’s clear that they have already had this discussion. This argument. Perhaps many times.

She doesn’t look at him.

“You’re a Corvo soldier.” Vincent’s reply is sharp. The voice of an exhausted man trying to hold the Crows together in Cat’s absence. “You might not answer to Gio, but you do answer to me, Frankie. And I have already said no.”