The air in the garden was too still, the silence ringing like a funeral bell.
Gotti was a hurricane of muscle and fury as he tore through the back veranda. His lungs burned, not from the sprint, but from the agonising void where Anita's presence usually hummed in his mind. The bond—that golden thread they had forged in the gazebo—was frayed, vibrating with a dull, sickening ache.
He reached the secluded thicket behind the great oak, the place where they had shared their first real moment of heat.
"Anita!" he roared, his voice cracking the quiet of the morning.
He skidded to a halt. On the grass lay Nero's small backpack, its contents spilt out like a gut-wound. Beside it, a single, spent pressurised needle glinted in the sunlight.
