Page 86 of Madness & Mercy

“Then why did you?” I ask flatly.

He hesitates. “I wasn’t supposed to. Wasn’t part of the plan. But when I saw your guy,Cross,I panicked.”

My blood stills.

“Why?”

The shooter laughs, or tries to. It comes out strangled and broken. “Because I know what he is. And if you weren’t so busyfuckinghim, you’d know it too.”

The words hit harder than any bullet.

Luca shifts beside me, but I hold up a hand. I want to hear this.

“What do you think he is?” I ask.

His smile is crimson and cracked. “You really don’t know, do you?”

I grab his jaw, force his head up.“Say it.”

“You think he’s just some P.I?” His voice drops, rasping. “You’re beingplayed,Vitale. He’s not who he says he is.”

I stare at him.

“Then who thefuckis he?”

The shooter licks blood off his lip, like it might buy him time. “Ask Braga. Hell, ask Cross. But I’ll tell you this: whatever mask he’s wearing, it’s not his first. And it won’t be his last.”

I let go of his face with a shove. He slumps, spent, soaked in sweat and blood, his hand mangled and useless.

I should kill him. Leave his body in the alley like a warning.

But instead, I nod to Luca.

“Keep him alive. I’m not done with him yet.”

Luca wipes his hands on a rag and steps forward to secure him.

I turn toward the stairs, but the words echo again in my mind:

You really don’t know, do you?

And the worst part is, Idon’tknow who the fuck Julian Cross really is, but I think I’m starting to get the picture.

The second we step out of the basement, something twists in my gut, and instead of fury, what rises in my chest is laughter. Low and bitter, crawling up my throat like bile. I don’t even know why. I should be fantasizing about peeling Julian’s secrets out of him with a blade, should be raging about how close I came to trusting him. Tolikinghim.

But I’m not.

Instead, I’m planning how to keep him close enough to burn. Keep him under my thumb until I squeeze the truth out of him, slowly, until there’s nothing left but wreckage and confession.

Beside me, Luca breathes in like he’s about to speak, and that alone pisses me off.

He knows better than to question me,but he opens his mouth anyway, then closes it.

I stop walking, tearing off my ruined shirt and tossing it aside.

Blood clings to my skin, drying against the scars and ink stretched across my chest.

I glance at him, fuming. “Got something to say, Luca?”