Book 6: Strings Attached

Angelo

The ride back to Staten Island is cloaked in silence, thick and suffocating. After scolding Tatiana for what she did, I can’t trust myself to speak again without unloading everything I’m feeling—rage, fear, confusion. My hands grip the steering wheel like a lifeline, my knuckles bone-white under the overhead glow of passing streetlights.

Tatiana’s forehead is still streaked with dried blood. Just glancing at it sends a sickening twist through my gut. I don’t know what I would do if I lost Tatiana.

I stare hard at the dark stretch of highway ahead, trying to piece it together. Trying to understand how the hell we got ambushed. The Rominas—how did they find her? We hadn’t been followed, I was sure of that. No one knew where she went. She’d been driving alone, off the grid. So why did they show up in the exact spot she chose?

Coincidence? No. Too perfect.

Were they watching her all along? Waiting for an opening? That’s the only thin