2026-10-21 15:49:14
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Chapter 11
The Valkyrie's engine roared inside the showroom and rattled the glass doors in their frames.Vittorio held the throttle one second longer than he needed to. His hands had found the wheel before his head remembered the car, and the narrow seat pressed against his bruised ribs. Eight years ago, he had driven this same car through a mountain pass at night with the headlights off.Robert hauled open the loading door behind the private room, and gray daylight rolled in with the smell of the harbor.Robert leaned in at the driver's window and raised his voice over the engine. "Your bike stays on Harbor Avenue for now, sir. I'll send one of the boys to ride it home to Mercer Street before lunch. If anyone asks, I'll tell them a client left it as a deposit."The bike was a secondhand frame with a dented fender, the first thing Vittorio had ever bought with his own pay. Teresa had held the receipt the way other mothers held a diploma."Thank you, Robert. Tell him the front brake squeaks, so h
Chapter 10
Robert slid a thick red folder across his desk toward Vittorio. On every page, the owner's name was the same single word, Zero.The office sat behind a glass wall at the back of the viewing room. Beyond the glass, the silver Valkyrie crouched under the lights, so low that its roof barely reached Vittorio's belt. Vittorio turned the pages slowly, and every signature on the registration, the insurance, and the service records belonged to Robert.Robert rubbed his thumb along the edge of the desk. "I started her engine once a month, sir, every first Sunday. I kept hoping you would walk in and complain that I had let the battery die."While Vittorio learned to walk again on Teresa's living room floor, this man had come in every month to start a car for a commander the whole Corps believed was dead. Vittorio had not even known the car existed."Did anyone else come for it? Anyone from the Corps?" Vittorio asked."Not one, sir. A few men called the first month to ask whether the car was sti
Chapter 9
Trent shoved Robert's shoulder. "Have you lost your mind? You're bowing to a guard!"Robert staggered and caught himself on the Ghost's fender. He did not straighten, and his eyes stayed fixed on the floor in front of Vittorio's boots.Vittorio watched the room take it in. The salesmen had frozen, the woman by the Bentley had lowered her sunglasses again, and Vanessa's phone hung forgotten at her side."Finch, I'm buying a Porsche from you today! Who is this nobody to you?" Trent's voice climbed too high on the last word.Robert opened his mouth, but Vittorio answered before Robert could speak. "He called me Zero. That name won't mean anything to you, Holloway."Vanessa burst out laughing and grabbed Trent's good arm for balance. "Nobody in Port Halden is called Zero, and zero means nothing!"She had called it nothing, yet in a hangar on the other side of the world, a hundred soldiers had once stood at attention for that word. Vanessa had slept beside it for a year without once asking
Chapter 8
"Don't hold your breath, babe. He's going to cry in a minute." Vanessa held up her phone and recorded Vittorio from three steps away.Vittorio looked straight into the lens. A year ago, the same phone had filmed him reading his wedding vows, and she had made him read them twice because the light was bad. He had meant every word both times."Say hi to the girls, Vittorio. Tell them how you were going to buy a Rolls-Royce with your coffee money, then tell them who's paying for your next sandwich."At Teresa's funeral, Vanessa had worn sunglasses and checked her phone during the prayer. Vittorio had told himself she was crying behind the dark lenses.Trent turned to the salesmen and lifted his sling. "You want to know what happened to my arm? This guard jumped me from behind last night and broke my wrist like a coward. I had to cancel a charity match because of him!"From behind? Trent had thrown the first punch, the knee, and the two kicks while Vanessa looked on from the bed."Should I
Chapter 7
"Look who wandered in. Did the guardhouse lose its guard?" Trent Holloway's voice rang across the marble floor of Prestige Motors.Vittorio stopped just inside the glass doors. On the way from St. Anne's, he had gone home to Mercer Street long enough to trade the torn uniform for his cleanest shirt and the slacks he had bought for Teresa's funeral. His electric bike now stood chained to a lamppost on Harbor Avenue, and the valet had pinched the chain between two fingers and asked whether it would be staying long.Inside, the air smelled of leather and expensive coffee. Under the white lights, twelve cars sat on raised platforms, and each one cost more than the whole building on Mercer Street.Trent stood beside a cherry-red Porsche 911 with his right arm in a white sling. Vanessa hung on his good arm, and the new diamond flashed every time she touched the car. Two hours ago, she had stuffed the divorce papers into her bag. Now she was stroking the hood of the car she had talked about
Chapter 6
The stonemason behind St. Anne's Church looked Vittorio's uniform up and down. "Our cheapest headstone costs more than you make in a month, guard."Vittorio had ridden straight from Mercer Street in his uniform, with the windbreaker still hiding the torn shirt, past the bakery and the harbor cranes, while the church bells rang half past eight.The message from S. still sat unanswered on his cracked phone.The stonemason had read the patch on his sleeve before he bothered to read his face.A month of his pay was a number Vittorio knew by heart, because for half a year he had counted it in twenty-dollar bills at the kitchen table.He took a creased envelope from his jacket and set it on the workbench between a chisel and a coffee mug. "I'm not asking for the cheapest, sir. I want the best gray granite in your yard, with her name cut deep enough that the rain can't wash it out."The envelope held five hundred and twenty dollars, one bill for every week since the funeral. On the weeks it
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