Page 29 of The Vagabond

“I just need to breathe,” I whispered. “I need to remember who I am outside of all this.”

She nodded into my shoulder. “Okay.”

We broke apart.

Brando ran a hand down his face, defeated but listening.

He didn’t speak. Just gave one tight nod and walked out of the room.

And I swear, the air shifted. Lighter. Not entirely free. But for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was standing on my own feet.

And I wasn’t about to fall.

13

SAXON - TWO MONTHS AGO

Itold myself it wasn’t stalking.

It was protection. A precaution. Penance.

But even I knew that was a goddamn lie.

You don’t sit in a car for five hours—engine off, radio silent, heart hammering like a war drum—just for a single glimpse of someone. You don’t reroute surveillance feeds. You don’t memorize her shower schedule. You don’t breathe through the echo of her voice when she isn’t even saying your name.

Not unless you’re broken. And I was. Maxine Andrade shattered me. And I haven’t stopped bleeding since.

She slipped away from the Gatti compound in a single day—no fanfare, no goodbyes. Just a bag over her shoulder and that look in her eyes...like she knew it was a suicide mission and took it anyway.

She moved into a third-floor walk-up. Paper-thin walls. A busted lock I had already replaced without her knowing. She thought she was free. But freedom doesn’t look good on a girl like Maxine Andrade.

So I watched. That was all I let myself do.

Two blocks away, tucked behind a row of shuttered takeoutjoints and pawn shops, I watched her fumble with her keys like the world wasn’t waiting to swallow her whole. Rain streaked the windshield, each drop sliding down the glass like a countdown I couldn’t stop.

There she was.

Nervous. Fidgeting. Glancing over her shoulder like some primal instinct was still kicking, trying to warn her she wasn’t alone.

I wanted her afraid. Because monsters didn’t hide under beds anymore. They walked the streets. Wore uniforms. Carried badges. Smiled like old friends. Hell—I was one of them.

She disappeared inside, and I pulled up the feed. Grainy black-and-white. But she was there.

She paced her tiny living room like the floorboards were on fire. Barefoot. Messy bun slipping. Baggy t-shirt hanging off one shoulder like even fabric couldn’t figure out how to comfort her anymore.

The apartment was the size of a prison cell. And she paced it like she had never left the one I found her in.

I felt sick. Not because of what she was doing—because of what I hadn’t done. I hadn’t knocked. Hadn’t spoken. I stayed away from her and watched from a distance.

I watched her every move, learned all her routines. Inside and outside of the house. I watched as Maxine stood on a cracked sidewalk, waiting for a damn crosswalk light to change like she wasn’t the epicenter of my every goddamn earthquake.

She didn’t see me. She had her headphones in—white wires coiled like shackles, drowning out the world—and she was staring off into the distance like it was safer than looking back. Safer than looking at me, if she only knew I was there. My breath caught, and I hated that it did. Hated that after all this time, just one glimpse of her could wreck me from the inside out.

But I couldn’t help it.

She looked different. Not softer, and not healed. Just... lonelier. Like she had built her own kind of prison now, this one cloaked in vulnerability and half-smiles and silence.

And all I could think was—I did this to her. I kept a safe distance. And still... still, this was the closest I had gotten. The first time she had been within reach without her army. Without her safety net.

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