Page 134 of The Vagabond

But I don’t move. Because this — this is the price. This is the fucking price I have to pay.

I watch her reach the door, watch Mia pull her into her arms, see the way Maxine crumbles against her sister’s chest, shaking, breaking, trying to hold herself together while I sit here like a fucking ghost.

The door closes behind her, and it feels like the world slamming shut in my face.

I drag in a breath, jaw clenched so tight it sends a sharp ache up the side of my skull. My heart thuds a sick, heavy rhythm in my chest, each beat a hammer blow against bone.

I force myself to turn away from the house, fromher. To put my foot to the gas, and drive. Down the gravel path. Through the gate. Away from her.

My hands grip the wheel, white-knuckled, shaking, and for one brutal second, I press my forehead to the leather, eyes squeezed shut, and let the silent, gutted roar inside me tear me to pieces.

Because I’m not just leaving her.

I’m leaving the only thing that’s ever made me believe I could be more than the man I’ve become.

I don’t look back. Ican’tlook back. If I do, I’ll break.

But as the city rises up in the distance, as the lights sharpen and the weight of the world starts crashing down again, onething burns through the fog in my mind, clear and sharp and absolute: I will fuckingfightfor the right to stand beside her again. The only way I can be the man she deserves is if I face the storm alone.

Because everyone has a price to pay. And I’m ready to pay mine. For her. For us. For the future I refuse to give up on.

55

MAXINE

Istep out of the car on unsteady legs. I walk. The long stone path to Brando and Mia’s house stretches before me, neat and familiar and surreal as hell. The sun is warm on my shoulders, but it doesn’t touch the ice curling in my gut.

And then I see my sister. She’s already at the top of the stairs, one hand braced against the railing, her other cradling the swell of her stomach. Her eyes lock onto mine—wide, wet, disbelieving—and then she’s moving.

Waddling, rushing, weeping.

“Maxine!” she cries, voice cracking on my name. “Maxine!”

She half-stumbles down the steps, and before I can brace for it, she flings herself into my arms. I catch her. Her arms wrap around my neck like a lifeline, and she sobs into my shoulder—big, shaking, grateful tears that soak through my shirt like they’re trying to carve their way into me.

“I thought you were—” Her voice chokes. “I thought I’d lost you again.”

I hold her tight, swallowing the lump in my throat, trying to keep the tears at bay. But my stomach turns over, threatening to twist itself inside out. I press my face into her shoulder, fingersclutching the fabric of her dress like it’s the only thing keeping me from hitting the floor.

“I’m here,” I breathe. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

The Gatti compound hasn’t changed. Still guarded like a fortress. Still humming with quiet violence beneath polished marble and velvet drapes. The walls breathe power. The air tastes like money and blood. But when I step through the doors this time, I feel it.

A shift. The place hasn’t changed—but I have.

I walk like someone who knows she can survive anything. But inside? I’m a bruised thing, held together by spite and hope and the memory of a man who razed heaven for me.

Mia stays close. She doesn’t pepper me with questions. She doesn’t cry. She just watches me out of the corner of her eye like I’m a ticking bomb and she’s waiting for the moment I detonate.

That moment comes when we reach my old room. She closes the door behind us, slow and deliberate. The latch clicks like the cock of a gun. Every noise now sounds like violence and death to my ears.

“You love him,” she says.

She flings the truth at me like a blade to the chest—sharp, fast, and impossible to dodge. And that’s what guts me the most. Not the words themselves, but the fact that she had to hear them from someone else. That she pieced it together through someone else instead of me. Her own sister.

I should’ve told her. I should’ve owned it. Handed it to her in that way that sisters share secrets. Let her hold the truth instead of forcing her to dig through the wreckage for it. But I didn’t. And now here we are.

I stand there, frozen, breath catching hard in my throat. The guilt chokes me. It coils like barbed wire around my ribs, and I don’t even try to stop it. Because she deserved better thansecondhand truth. She deserved me. And once again, I failed her.

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