Antigone in Heels

Read everything I've ever written before reading this one. To the few of you who already have... enjoy.

She never smoked, but she always lit one before a betrayal. It helped her think--gave her hands something to do besides tighten. The cherry flared in the window's reflection, too bright against the glass, like a wound pretending it wasn't.

Across the river, the harbor lights pulsed like dying stars. He'd be at the drop site already, hands in his coat pockets, heart full of questions he didn't know how to ask. Loyal men always died confused. She wasn't going to kill him, but it would feel like that. She'd watched enough confessions rot behind plexiglass to know the look: betrayal curling in the corners of the mouth, the stunned little breath that comes when they realize you were the one pulling strings the whole time.

She exhaled slow, a performance of calm. The case file sat open on the table--highlighted, stapled, damning. Every detail arranged like altar stones. It had taken a week to build, two favors to bury a witness, and three phone calls to remind a federal prosecutor just how many people owed her father their silence. All she needed now was the last piece. A loyal man with a clean record and a crooked conscience. The kind who'd go down if you told him the right story in the right tone at just the right hour of night.

She didn't bring a coat. Let him see the dress. Let him understand this wasn't a negotiation--it was a decision made hours ago, stitched into silk and lined with teeth.

He stood by the service door like a dog waiting to be let back in, collar invisible but obvious to anyone who knew how power worked. He straightened when he saw her, eyes searching her face like it might offer mercy. It didn't.

"Is it bad?" he asked.

"No," she said. "It's necessary."

She handed him the folder. He didn't open it. Just held it like something fragile.

"How long?"

"Plead to the second count. You're out in five. Sooner, with good behavior. We'll handle the rest."

"And the old man?"

She let the silence sit. Let it breathe. Then:

"He can't take another hit. You know that."

There it was. The hook. The thing that made the trap not just tight, but holy. His mouth pressed into a line. His eyes dropped. He nodded--once, sharp, like penance.

"I'll need to call my wife."

"You already did," she said. "She's expecting it."

He looked at her then. Really looked. Something like hurt, something like awe. Like he was seeing her for the first time, even though he'd known her since she had braces and bit the mailman for whistling at her mother.

"You're cold," he said.

"Efficient," she corrected.

She turned before he could answer. Walked back toward the car, heels clicking like punctuation.

In the passenger seat, she took off the cigarette-scarred gloves and sat still. The driver said nothing. He knew better.

"It's done," Carina Marie Delvecchio said. "Get me home."

And as the city swallowed her again, she didn't feel triumph. Just the echo of it. Something hollow, painted gold. Something that used to feel like winning.

Delvecchio Estate. 7 pm.

They ate in the old dining room. Long table, low chandelier, the kind of room where secrets soaked into the wood grain and stayed.

She always sat to Dante's right. Always had. Tonight was no different. The place settings were flawless--linen folded sharp, silver like polished bone. Someone in the house still remembered what formality meant, even if nobody believed in it anymore.

He poured the wine himself. Didn't ask. Just filled her glass halfway and set the bottle down like a statement.

"You handled it."

It wasn't a question.

She picked up her fork, turned it in her fingers.

"You would've done the same."

He grunted. Something between a laugh and a cough.

"I would've done it sooner."

Silence settled like dust. The meat was perfect. Of course it was. He never let the staff serve anything less. She cut it slowly, not out of courtesy, but because her hands hadn't stopped buzzing since the drop.

"You didn't have to do it yourself," he said, not quite looking at her. "There are people."

"There are always people," she said. "But not always the right ones."

He took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed like a man who hadn't choked in years.

"You think he knew?"

"Maybe," she said. "Didn't matter."

"It should."

"Why?"

He didn't answer. Just sipped his wine and stared at the candle in the middle of the table like it might explain his daughter to him.

This man's not dumb. He knows she's breaking inside. But he also knows she'd never let it show--not in front of him. And maybe that's the part he hates most: not what she did to save him, but what she's becoming because of it.

The door swung open too hard, bumped the wall. A purse clattered to the floor like it had been thrown, not dropped.

"Why is it so fuckin' quiet in here?" Angie snapped, kicking off her heels like they'd wronged her. "You two look like a goddamn wake."

She stepped into the dining room like it was still 2002 and she was twenty pounds lighter and running shit with a cigarette in one hand and a laundry basket in the other.

Hair big, lipstick a little smeared, bottle of rosé tucked under her arm like a hostage.

"Jesus Christ, is that lamb? I told Carmela to do chicken. What is this, a funeral? And why is it so dark? I can't see shit in here."

She squinted at the table, at Dante, then Carina.

"What happened? Somebody die?"

Carina didn't look up. Cut another piece of lamb, perfect and precise.

"Nobody died," she said.

"Yet," Dante muttered into his glass.

Angie pointed a finger at him, wobbled slightly.

"Don't start, D. You wanna fight, we can fight. I got a whole day's worth of grievances and half a bottle left. I'll throw hands and drink at the same time."

She poured herself a glass with the elegance of a raccoon raiding a picnic. Sat down two chairs away, loud, sighing like a stage actress. Her bracelets jingled like bells in a haunted house.

"This wine's too sweet. The room's too cold. My knee hurts. And Carina," she said, turning with sharp eyes that missed nothing, "you look like you just strangled a nun."

Carina didn't flinch. Didn't smile. Just tilted her head slightly.

"Don't drink so much if your knee hurts," she said.

"Don't gaslight your mother just because you got a law degree and your own corner of hell," Angie shot back. "I brought you into this world screaming, I can still out-argue your ass with a migraine and a broken heel."

Dante chuckled under his breath. That soft, dangerous sound that meant he was enjoying himself for the first time all night.

Angie swirled the rosé like it was worth something. Took a sip, winced.

"Tastes like fucking perfume," she muttered. "No wonder you people are all so constipated."

No one answered. She leaned back in the chair, kicked one foot up on the rung like a teenager.

"You know, I saw Teresa Iacovetti at the church pantry last week." She glanced at Carina. "Her daughter's got twins now. Real ones. Little faces, tiny hands, not just a LinkedIn and a dead stare."

Carina kept cutting. Chew. Swallow. No expression.

"Said she's got help from the husband's people, even after all the... unpleasantness. Not everybody has to burn down the world to prove they're useful."

Dante's fork paused halfway to his mouth. Just for a second. Then he resumed eating, slow and deliberate.

Angie wasn't done. She never was.

"Course, some girls just don't want that life," she said lightly, like she was talking about the weather. "Some girls would rather be gods than mothers. Queens instead of women." She smiled. "It's cute, until it gets lonely."

Carina didn't blink. Didn't shift. Just set her knife down with perfect control and reached for her wine like her hands belonged to someone else.

Dante watched her. Not the performance--the cost.

His eyes tracked the micro-movements: the jaw that didn't clench, the breath that didn't quicken. The war being waged inside her, quiet and clean.

"Ang," he said gently.

Just that. Her name, like a leash.

Angie waved him off.

"Don't 'Ang' me. I'm not the one who turned the kid into a fuckin' assassin with a Rolodex."

Carina finally looked up. Met her mother's eyes. Not with anger. Not with defiance.

With nothing.

And that's when Dante put down his fork.

Not because he was angry.

Because he'd seen that look before.

In mirrors.

In funerals.

In the faces of men who had nothing left to lose.

The penthouse was silent but not still. Streetlight bled in through the floor-to-ceiling glass, casting long, soft bars across the parquet floor. Somewhere in the city, a siren wailed. Not urgent. Just tired.

Carina stood in the doorway to her bedroom, naked, a glass of water in one hand and a line of sweat tracing her spine.

The girl in the bed was eighteen. Indian, pretty in a quiet way, all limbs and bangs and mascara smudged from the edge of a good time. Passed out in Carina's sheets like a pet or a dare.

She didn't know her name. Didn't ask.

Carina's body had changed over the years. Leaner now. Not fragile--surgical. Every angle sharper. The muscles in her back spoke in quiet language, not bulk but intention. She looked like someone who boxed for control, not pleasure. Someone who liked to feel pain on her terms.

Her breasts, though--still full, still proud, still the kind that made waitresses blush when she leaned too close. She caught herself staring at them in the glass, just for a second, like they belonged to someone else.

There was a tiny scar above her left hip. Clean, faded. Only visible when she twisted just so. No one ever asked. No one lasted long enough to.

She sipped her water and turned toward the bed.

The girl murmured something in sleep. Rolled onto her side. Exposed the back of her thigh, a hickey just beginning to bloom. Carina had no memory of putting it there.

God, she thought, she's a baby.

And then, like always, nothing. No guilt. No warmth. Just the familiar vacuum tugging behind her ribs.

She didn't climb into bed. Just stood there, glass sweating in her palm, the city silent all around her. Watching her reflection. Trying to find the woman everyone kept mistaking her for.

Eventually, she whispered something. A name. Not the girl's.

It came out quiet. A slur of syllables. Slipped through her lips like a dream she couldn't shake.

And the moment she said it--

She felt watched.

Like something shifted, just slightly, in the corner of the room.

Like the timeline listened back.

Somewhere in Bridgeport. A diner with no name. Booth in the back, blinds drawn.

Three men, mid-level hitters dressed like finance guys who've spilled blood in a Lexus. One drinks tea. One eats nothing. The third stirs his coffee until the spoon rattles like a warning.

"I'm tellin' you--this wasn't supposed to fucking happen."

The speaker's name doesn't matter. What matters is the vein pulsing in his temple and the way his thumb keeps tapping the table like it's looking for a trigger.

"He was done. We had the wire. We had the chain of custody. We had the fucking tapes, for Christ's sake. Who the hell takes a plea when the Feds are lookin' for a head to mount?"

The one with the tea, older, grayer, leaned back with the slow detachment of a man who knows death doesn't have to be loud.

"The girl," he said.

"She's not a girl," the quiet one muttered. "She's a fucking animal in heels."

They all fell silent for a beat.

"No one saw her coming," said the first. "Everyone thought she'd be a mess. Closet-case Harvard dyke with a chip on her shoulder and too much to prove. But she's got the old man's teeth. Maybe worse."

The older man set his cup down, slow and steady.

"You think she did it without Sonny's blessing?"

"No," said the quiet one. "I think she did it without his knowledge. And that's worse."

Another silence. This one thick.

"Dante was supposed to rot. That was the fucking linchpin. No Dante, no loyalty. No loyalty, no Rossi muscle. Now he's back in the game, sharper than ever, and they've got her running legal cover like a fucking tank."

"So what?" the first snapped. "We wait around until she runs for mayor?"

The older one smiled, slow and dry.

"No. We burn the bridge."

"Dante?"

"No. Her. She's the brain. The edge. The one thing they never had before."

He leaned in. Fingers steepled. Voice like frost.

"We kill Carina Marie Delvecchio. The whole house collapses."

Late morning. West Loop. A flower shop that smells like rain and sweet rot.

Carina didn't belong here. She knew it the second she walked in.

Too much green. Too much light. The woman behind the counter had freckles and an apron dusted with pollen. Called her "hon."

Carina nodded once, cool and polite, and walked straight to the lilies. She didn't know why. Maybe because they were clean. White as teeth. Uncomplicated.

"Funeral arrangement?" the florist asked, chipper.

Carina didn't answer. She was already half a second behind the danger blooming in her periphery.

A man by the succulents. No basket. No flowers. Too still. Too wide in the shoulders for that jacket. He reached up like scratching his neck, but it was too stiff. Too practiced.

Carina didn't hesitate.

She pivoted on her heel and threw the vase. Full force. It caught him in the face--ceramic and water and peonies exploding into pink ruin. He staggered, gun half-raised, bleeding from the mouth.

She was on him before he cleared his vision.

Elbow to the jaw.

Knee to the groin.

He tried to aim. She grabbed his wrist and snapped it sideways--bone popping like a knuckle.

The gun fell. She kicked it across the floor.

"Not here," she hissed. "Not fucking here."

He lunged. Desperate. Stupid. She grabbed his lapel, yanked him off balance, and drove his head into the display counter. Glass spiderwebbed and sagged. He collapsed, groaning.

The florist screamed belatedly. Flowers rained down.

Carina turned to her, calm as a saint. Blood on her knuckles, dark petals in her hair.

"You should probably call the police," she said. "Not yet. But soon."

She stepped over the twitching would-be assassin and plucked a lily from the wreckage. Looked at it. Considered. Tucked it into the inside of her coat like a favor from a ghost.

As she walked out, sirens in the distance, her phone buzzed.

Blocked number. She answered.

"You missed," she said.

Silence.

Then: a man's voice. Calm. Cold.

"Not the only one coming, Delvecchio."

She smiled.

"Good. I was getting bored."

Delvecchio estate. Gated. Too quiet. Late afternoon.

The doors opened before she even touched them. One of the house men stood there, eyes wide.

"He's waiting in the study."

Of course he was.

Carina didn't speak. Just walked past him, the lily still tucked in her coat, blood drying on her cheekbone like war paint. Her shirt was ripped at the shoulder. Her hand was swelling. She didn't flinch.

She pushed open the study door.

Dante stood by the liquor cabinet, one hand wrapped around a tumbler of something older than her entire legal career. He turned when he heard her.

His jaw locked.

"Jesus Christ, look at you."

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"Not mine."

She walked in like nothing was wrong and poured herself a drink, slow and deliberate. Her hands didn't shake. He hated that. She was always calmer after violence.

"They sent someone?" he asked.

"At a flower shop." She smiled, bitter. "Classy."

"Fuck." He slammed the glass on the cabinet. "You should've told me. You should've--"

"Told you what?" she snapped, turning. "That someone's panicking? That they thought I was the weak link?" Her eyes burned. "You think I didn't plan for this?"

"I think you don't understand what happens when they stop being afraid of us."

"No," she said, stepping closer. "You don't understand. They're not afraid of us, Dad. They're afraid of me."

That landed. He stared at her. The blood on her cheek. The split in her lip. The calm behind her eyes. And for a moment--just a moment--he looked afraid too.

Not for her.

Of her.

"You're not bulletproof," he said, low.

"Neither are you."

"They should've gone after me."

"They tried," she said. "I wouldn't let them."

He turned away. Gripped the back of a chair like it might run if he didn't.

"This isn't what I wanted for you."

"You should've died in '98," she said softly.

He froze.

"But you didn't. So here we are."

Silence. Long. Awful.

She downed her drink in one swallow and walked past him, trailing the scent of lilies and someone else's blood.

The study had gone still again. Dante hadn't moved. Carina lingered by the door, glass in one hand, blood drying at her temple.

She didn't want to ask. But the words came anyway.

"Was it real? The guy in the alley?"

Dante didn't answer right away. Just turned the glass in his fingers, watching the light catch the rim like it might show him a way out.

"You weren't born yet. You'd arrive in a few days." he said.

"I remember Mom crying about it years later."

"Yeah. She did that."

He finally sat. The leather groaned under him like it didn't want the weight.

"We were heading out. Sonny was two steps ahead of me. I had my keys in my hand. I still remember the way the light hit the hood. Clean. Too clean. I remember thinking that."

"And then?"

"And then this guy--dark suit, cheap tie, didn't match his shoes--comes outta nowhere. Walks right up, says: 'Not this car. Not today.'"

"That's it?"

"That's it. Just that. No badge. No gun. Didn't yell. Just said it like a fucking fact. Sonny froze. I froze. And then boom."

He slapped his hands together once. Sharp. Sudden.

Carina didn't flinch.

"Tore half the lot apart. Fireball rolled down the alley. Took out three parked cars. If we'd been near it--"

He didn't finish. Didn't have to.

"Did you ever find him?"

"No. Cops didn't, either. Cameras glitched. Witnesses disagreed. Sonny thought it was divine intervention."

"And you?"

Dante looked up at her then. Eyes like chipped marble.

"I think someone cheated."

"Time?"

"Maybe. Luck. Fate. God. I don't fucking know. But that man wasn't normal. He knew something. He knew everything."

Carina looked away. The lily still tucked in her coat brushed her side, light and silent.

"You think he saved you so I could become this?"

Dante didn't answer.

But she saw it in his face.

The doubt.

The guilt.

The terrible, sick realization that maybe the man in the alley hadn't saved them.

Maybe he'd reset the game.

Put something worse in motion.

And maybe Carina was it.

Dante leaned forward, elbows on his knees, glass dangling from his hand like it was too heavy to lift.

"I think about it sometimes," he said. "What it would've done to you if I hadn't made it. What kind of girl you would've been, without a father."

Carina smirked, low and dry.

"What? You think I'd end up on a pole?"

"Don't joke."

"Why not? You're the one getting sentimental."

She sipped her drink, perched on the arm of the chair like it owed her rent. She didn't look at him when she said it:

"You know I'd make that life work."

Dante's jaw twitched. He didn't respond right away.

"Yeah," he said finally. "That's what scares me."

Carina laughed. Real, this time. Sharp and short and teeth-bared.

"Come on. Little Carrie Delvecchio, working the register at a CVS, maybe fucking the occasional woman in the walk-in freezer. I'd be fine. I'd probably smile more."

"Don't talk like that."

"Why not? I'm allowed to imagine the version of me who didn't need to break ribs to prove I belong."

That silence again. The one that grew teeth.

Dante stared into his glass, voice low.

"You're saying you'd trade me for peace?"

Carina stood, walked to the window, the skyline reflected across her bare shoulder like scars made of light.

"I'm saying maybe peace wasn't part of the deal. For either of us."

She didn't wait for a response. Just stared out at the city, breathing shallow, still blood on her from someone else's mistake.

Behind her, Dante looked older than he had in years.

He finished his drink and said nothing at all.

Carina's private study. Midnight.

She sat barefoot at her second desk--the one that didn't connect to anything official. No legal files. No contracts. Just dust, drives, and an encrypted archive she'd inherited from a source who died too fast to explain it.

The screen flickered. The interface was antique--bare bones, pre-UI. She liked that. Liked the ritual of it. The intimacy. The slowness.

She pulled up the file labeled "Detonation: March 2, 1998".

She hadn't opened it in years. Too many variables. Too many ghosts.

But something about the flower shop hit--something deep. A gut-tug, a thread that wouldn't unpull.

Click.

Click.

Deep dive.

Security footage from the alley. Static lines. Heat bloom.

She paused on Frame 1221.

A man.

Dark suit. Cheap tie. Shoes that didn't match. Exactly as Dante described.

She zoomed. Enhanced. Colorized.

And froze.

The same face she saw last year in a grainy surveillance photo from a cartel bust in Chiapas.

The same face in a bystander interview after the Boston airport bombing.

The same fucking face in a funeral crowd in Sicily. 2006.

Unchanged.

Unaged.

Impossible.

She whispered, just under her breath:

"Who the fuck are you?"

Her system shuddered. Glitched. Screen blinked once, twice--then snapped to black.

Somewhere in the rusted spine of the interface, a silent signal triggered.

A buried routine.

A forgotten protocol.

Location: A warehouse in 1983. Nothing works except the impossible.

Dust caught in a shaft of light like memory trying to settle.

Banks of decaying equipment lined the walls--CRT monitors showing blank static, reels ticking with no tape, oscilloscopes twitching without input.

And in the center of it all: a desk. Covered in maps, half-written equations, polaroids of people no one had ever officially met.

Crenshaw looked up.

He hadn't spoken in hours. Maybe days. Maybe weeks. What might have once been a cup of coffee had fossilized near his elbow.

The hologram above his desk danced. Four-dimensional algebra crawled across it like burning ants. He blinked it away with a thought.

The alert hovered in the air. Pulsing red. One word:

"Accessed."

He read the metadata.

Frowned.

Whispered:

"Delvecchio."

He stood slowly, brushing dust off his sleeve like it annoyed him on a metaphysical level.

"Didn't think it'd be her."

He moved to the side room. Opened a long-forgotten locker. Inside: a case.

He opened it.

Inside: a tie.

A pair of shoes that still didn't match.

A key.

And a photograph--Carina, age 12, holding a bloody ice pack and glaring at the camera like it owed her an apology.

He stared at the photo.

Then smiled.

"Fuck it. Let's go ruin her night."

Carina's penthouse. 2:17 a. m.

She felt it before she heard it.

A pressure shift.

A subtle wrongness in the air, like the power had blinked without going out.

She turned. Slowly.

He was sitting in her living room chair like he'd always been there.

Same cheap suit.

Same shoes that didn't match.

Same look on his face--somewhere between bored and divine.

"Crenshaw," she said, knowing his name for some reason as if they'd met long ago, but also just now. Voice flat. "I thought you were dead."

"I am," he said. "Most days."

She didn't move. Didn't blink. Just stared.

"You're not supposed to be here."

"Neither are you."

Silence stretched.

He gestured lazily toward the desk.

"Digging around in little time bombs. That wasn't part of your script, counselor."

She stepped closer. Deliberate.

"That wasn't a script. That was my life."

Crenshaw smiled without warmth.

"Cute. You think there's a difference."

Carina's jaw tensed. Her voice dropped.

"What was it? That day. The alley. Why Dante? Why Sonny? Why me?"

Crenshaw leaned forward, elbows on his knees. For a moment, he looked almost kind.

"Because in one version of the world, you die screaming in the back of a CVS at twenty-three.

In another, you tear down empires with a briefcase and a pair of stilettos."

"You saved my father."

"No." A pause. "I spared him. You? I made."

Carina laughed. Low. Bitter.

"So I'm your fucking project?"

"You're the variable." His voice sharpened. "You're the reason nothing stays where it belongs. You're not supposed to be this effective. This dangerous. This... carved."

"And that scares you."

"No." He stood. "That interests me."

They stood there. Inches apart. Time warped gently around the edges, light pulsing wrong.

"Undo it," she said.

"Can't."

"Won't."

"Same thing."

She stepped closer. Close enough to smell the dust on his jacket. The static in his breath.

"If you'd let him die, I wouldn't be this."

"Exactly."

He turned to go. But paused.

"They're coming for you. Not because of what you've done. Because of what you haven't done yet."

Carina didn't ask what that meant. She just said:

"Next time you show up uninvited, I'm putting a bullet in your head."

Crenshaw smiled as he vanished, slow as a blink.

"If you can find one that works."

2:38 a. m.

The city had settled into silence again. No sirens now. Just the occasional wind humming through the glass like a lullaby that had forgotten its melody.

Carina sat on the edge of her bed, a tumbler untouched in her hand.

The girl was gone--slipped out without a word after waking to see Crenshaw in the hallway and knowing, instinctively, that she was nothing but a shadow in this place.

The penthouse was too quiet.

The air too still.

Carina pressed the cool rim of the glass to her forehead, closed her eyes.

Something pulsed behind them.

Not pain.

Not memory.

A pressure.

A shape.

A flicker of something softer than the rest of her life had allowed.

She opened her mouth before she realized what was happening.

"Gianna."

The name slid out like a confession. Barely audible. Soft enough to be mistaken for sleep-talking.

Her eyes opened.

Blank. Confused.

"What...?"

She didn't know a Gianna.

No one on her team.

No former client.

No judge, no rival, no ghost from law school.

But the moment she said it--

Her chest ached.

Not fear.

Not panic.

Something older.

Something like love that never got to bloom.

She set the glass down with shaking fingers.

In the mirror across the room, she saw herself for the first time all night--hair mussed, blood crusted at the corner of her mouth, silk robe hanging off one shoulder like something half-forgotten. She looked like someone else's reflection.

And in the air behind her--just for a second--she saw a girl.

Younger.

Brown eyes, full of fire.

Half a smirk.

Half a warning.

Gone in a blink.

Carina didn't turn. Just whispered:

"Who the fuck are you?"

But there was no answer.

Only her heart beating too fast.

And that name, curling like smoke inside her mouth.

Gianna.

22nd and South Street, South Philly. 2024. Summer.

The air's thick with heat and fryer grease and cheap perfume. The neon from the Wawa window hums like it's tired. Teenagers smoke on curbs. Somebody's blasting Rihanna out a car window. It's too loud. Nobody cares.

Crenshaw stands perfectly still, hands in the pockets of a jacket that doesn't match the year. Nobody looks at him twice. The city knows how to ignore the strange.

Across the street, under the flickering awning, Gianna DeLuca is holding court.

Nineteen. Loud. Glitter on her collarbone, hoops in her ears. Tight tank top, chipped nail polish, cherry Slurpee in one hand and a boy wrapped around the other.

She's laughing like she owns the sidewalk.

"Come on, Jason, damn, you can't even open the door for me? What are you, raised in a fuckin' parkin' lot?"

She bumps him with her hip, playful and lethal.

Her hair's long tonight. Loose. Like she hasn't cried in months.

Everyone calls her Gigi, and she likes it that way.

Crenshaw watches her the way an astronomer watches a dying star flicker just one more time.

She's real here.

She's alive.

Not a name echoing in a penthouse. Not a scar in someone else's timeline. Not grief misspelled.

Just Gigi.

She turns, briefly, to glance down the block--and for half a second, her gaze lands on him.

And sticks.

Not long.

Just enough for a wrinkle to form in her brow. Like something tugs at her.

Recognition that has no name.

Fate brushing against the wrong side of the skin.

Then she shrugs it off, grins at her friend, and dances backwards into the Wawa like life's a fuckin' mixtape and she's got the best song cued up.

Crenshaw stays outside.

Watching.

Waiting.

Not moving.

Eventually, he whispers--soft, almost sad:

"You were the tether."

And then:

"She remembers."

Somewhere above Market Street. Rooftop. Dusk.

The sniper had been in position since before sunset.

He was good--old school. No drones, no network. Bolt-action, hand-loaded rounds.

He didn't trust digital. Said the Rossi girl had eyes in everything.

He adjusted the scope. Checked the flags. Listened to the wind like it was gospel.

Carina Marie Delvecchio stepped out of the black SUV exactly when and where she was supposed to.

Black coat. High heels. Hair pulled back like a knife's edge. Alone.

She was always alone.

Carina felt it.

Half a second before it happened.

Not the bullet. The tremor.

That animal twitch in her spine--the sense memory of her South Philly life, the one where you ducked first and asked after.

But there wasn't time.

She turned her head--

Saw a flicker on a rooftop--

And the world shattered.

The shot ripped through the glass behind her.

Her shoulder exploded sideways. Bone, blood, heat.

She dropped. Hard.

Her breath caught like a snare drum.

People screamed--distant. Unimportant.

She tried to lift her head. Everything swam.

The air stank of iron and panic.

She looked down.

Blood. A lot.

Her hand moved--sluggish. Wrong.

Another round cracked past, splintering pavement inches from her ribs.

She didn't have time to run.

Didn't have time to think.

Her last thought wasn't a name.

Wasn't her father.

Wasn't revenge.

It was a face she didn't know--dark eyes, hoop earrings, laughing with a Slurpee in hand.

She didn't know why that mattered.

But it did.

Then everything slowed.

Light curled inward.

No flatline.

No rescue.

No closure.

Just the sound of sirens approaching from too far away, and the question that will never quite be answered.

South Philly. 2025. Carrie's apartment. 2:41 a. m.

The lights were low. The air thick with heat and breath and the sharp, musky tang of a scene recently concluded.

Zach was on the floor, arms splayed, chest heaving, one sock on, eyes half-closed like someone who'd seen God and begged for a second round anyway. His skin was flushed, slick, ruined.

Carrie stood over him, completely naked except for the obscenely large strap-on dildo jutting from her hips like a declaration of war. It gleamed, wet with lube and triumph. Her thighs were streaked. Her face? Glowing. Hair a mess. Lips bitten.

Her phone buzzed on the counter.

She let it go once. Twice. Then sighed.

"You better not be bleeding," she muttered, tugging the strap just enough to shift the weight of it as she padded across the kitchen tile, bare feet sticky with sweat.

"Gigi" lit up the screen.

She grinned. Picked up.

"Hey, babycakes. Lemme guess, you want fries at fuck-o'clock in the mornin'?"

But Gianna's voice was soft. Tight around the edges.

"You okay?"

Carrie blinked.

Paused.

"Uh, yeah? Zach looks like he lost a cage match with a rotisserie chicken, and I'm wearing a weapon of ass destruction. So yeah, I'd say I'm thriving."

"No," Gianna said. "I mean--are you really okay?"

Carrie's smile faltered. Just for a second.

"G, what's goin' on?"

"I don't know," Gianna said, voice small. "I just... I was asleep, and then I wasn't. Like I got yanked up outta something. I just--my heart's fuckin' racing, and I felt like you were gone."

Carrie looked down at herself.

Still here. Still standing. Still slick with power and sweat and joy.

"Well I'm not. I'm here. I'm standing in my kitchen with my tits out and a cock that could qualify for a Class C weapon license. So unless the afterlife has better lighting than I expected, you're good."

Gianna didn't laugh. That's what hit Carrie hardest.

"You sure?" she asked.

Carrie took a breath.

Looked over at Zach, twitching slightly on the tile, moaning something about mercy.

"I'm sure," she said. Soft now. Real.

"Okay," Gianna whispered. "Okay. Sorry. I just... I love you, y'know?"

"I know," Carrie said. "I love you too. Now go back to bed. I'll call you in the morning."

She hung up. Stood still for a beat. Just long enough to feel it--the weird echo in her chest. Not pain. Not fear.

Just something missing. Something she didn't know she missed.

Then she shook it off, slapped her thigh, and said--

"Alright, Zachy-boy. Round two?"

Zach whimpered.

Carrie grinned.

"Didn't think so."