Accidentally Yours (Merffy Kizzmet) novel Chapter 204

Accidentally Yours

Chapter 204

Dom

Dom had never been good with silence. Not the comfortable kind, anyway. This quiet had the ring of a gunshot’s aftershock–everything vibrated around it and nothing settled.

Nico should’ve been here. Leaning back with that half–grin that used to make Dom want to sock him and then laugh about it. Now there was only the table, the glow of the monitors, Dottie in her chair like an accusation, and the rest of them pretending to breathe normal.

He rolled his shoulders, like he could shake the ache loose. He wanted a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked in years. Grief made old habits crawl out of their graves.

Lola didn’t make speeches. Not now. She sat there burning quiet, the line of her mouth a blade, Enzo’s hand covering hers like a lock. Whatever Dottie had just dropped in the room–judges with blood on their oaths, men buying futures, kids turned into product–it had lit something in Lola that wasn’t going to go out.

Good. Let it eat. We’ll need that fire.

Dom’s gaze cut to Enzo. The boss wore stillness like armor, but Dom had known him since scraped knuckles and split lips; he saw the fracture lines held together by will and the girl beside him.

Nico had been the ballast. Dom’s counterweight. The voice that said easy when Dom only knew hard. Now the world felt a half–inch tilted.

“Academy,” Dottie had said, like spitting a tooth. Not a rumor. Not a bedtime story. A machine. The kind that takes children and returns assets with polished smiles.

Dom’s jaw worked. He looked at Lola again and didn’t see chaos. He saw aim. That scared him more than her jokes ever had, and it also, somehow, steadied him.

We don’t get him back. So we make this count.

He leaned back, chair groaning under his weight, and let the anger settle into something with edges he could hold. “So what,” he said, voice rough as gravel, “we go root–and–stem? Cut high before we cut low. Make sure nothing grows back.”

Lola’s eyes flicked to him. She didn’t blink. She didn’t have to answer; the answer was already in the room.

“Slow,” he added, quieter. “Careful. We don’t swing blind.”

Dottie’s cane tapped once against tile–approval or threat, he couldn’t tell. With her it was usually both.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, felt the sting behind his eyes, crushed it into bone. The screen glow turned the maps into autopsies. Somewhere in those lines were the hands that signed orders and washed them clean.

Alright, brother. I got you. We’ll make them taste your name and choke on it.

Dom leaned in, elbows on wood, the old rhythm sliding back into his bones. “Tell us where to look,” he said to Dottie without ceremony. “Courts, trusts, charities with pretty names–whatever feeds this thing. You point, we dig.”

He didn’t add the last part, but it sat there anyway, loud as a vow:

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11:28 Thu, Oct 9

Chapter 204

And when we find a throat, I’ll be the first to close my hand.

Gino

084

When Gino was a kid, grief made him loud–throwing fists, smashing bottles, picking fights with mailboxes if nothing else volunteered. Age taught him to close the furnace door. The heat stayed. It just burned quieter.

Nico was dead and the hinges on that door were screaming.

He sat a little off–angle from the table, where he could see everybody without being in the way. Jake’s monitors bled blue; the map looked like a body under bad lights. He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled slow. Stay steady. Stay sharp.

Dottie’s story had put a taste in his mouth he remembered from the old neighborhood–metallic, priest–cold. Judges made in cages. Bankers raised like wolves in suits. Kids–girls–sold because some rich bastard liked the convenience of owning a future.

He glanced at Lola. She wasn’t moving much, but the air around her felt thinner, like a room before a storm breaks. Enzo’s hand over hers. A lock. A vow.

You took his life to try and take hers. Bad math. Now you’ve got us.

He looked at Enzo next. Brother–cousin–boss. They’d had hands around each other’s throats and backs to each other’s backs. The look on Enzo’s face said he could clean an empire with a shoelace and patience.

Good. Because Gino needed targets more than he needed air.

He kept his voice even. “Jake.”

Jake didn’t look up. “Yeah.”

“Start deep. Not just shell companies–old money. Endowments with cute names, feeder schools, ‘leadership institutes‘ tucked under church umbrellas. Anything that smells like it launders people, not product. Put it on a wall.”

Jake’s fingers resumed moving–faster.

Gino rolled his thumb across the ridge of his palm until it hurt. It didn’t help. He made himself look at the map anyway.

He could still see Nico, clear as a photograph: hands loose on a steering wheel, driving like a hymn. That dumb apron he wore when he cooked. The way he’d sat on the back step one summer, head tipped and listening like the night had told him a secret.

I don’t pray. Not my thing. But if anything’s listening: watch her. Or help me hunt. Either one.

He turned a fraction toward Dottie. “You know the types feeding this. Give us lanes. Courts we should shadow. Banks that look clean on the outside. The names can come later. I want the shapes first.”

Dottie’s mouth tipped, not a smile.

baring of teeth. “You’ll get shapes,” she said. “And you’ll learn to love patience.”

He could do patience. He’d just do it with a knife in his hand.

His gaze slid back to Lola. Ink on her fingers. That sharp mouth. The first day she’d walked into the shop, Gino had thought Enzo’s in trouble. Later, he found out they all were. She made things matter. Even the cello.

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11:28 Thu, Oct 9

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