Shards

Dante

I slump against the passenger’s seat, fighting for breath as Tony drives us back through the city streets. Standing up for a few minutes felt like running a goddamn marathon, and I can’t forget the burning in my chest anymore. Tony glances at me in the rearview mirror but doesn’t say anything. He said enough on the ride over.

As soon as he told me Eleni shot Uncle John, I was on my feet. When he told me it was the same day everything went down with Luca, I put together a picture in my head. I expected her to be grieving, just trying to hold the pieces together.

Instead, she doubled her kill count in a single day. The Eleni I met in The Greek Corner, the one who glowed while telling me about the after-hours gyros, would’ve broken down. That’s the Eleni I was racing for when I hurried out of Domino’s apartment while his wife yelled for me to lay back down.

But as we drove to the house for a change of clothes and then where Eleni was “working,” a new story took shape. A hardened,