Did I make a mistake with Sarah?

I called security away from the house to fight a war over my brother as he froze to death in the back of a truck, hallucinating a song about Junktown. Leaving her with only Benny, I would trade myself for Nico, trusting I had time to negotiate while he warmed up.

Stupid. I killed Peter Colonia.

Was there ever a trade to be had?

Massimo isn’t in the underground garage. Why?

Sergio Agosti isn’t one of them, but he has a stake in their cause. I should burn in hell for being this fucking stupid. I took my eyes off her. I saw my brother in pain and forgot that I couldn’t trade my life for anyone’s. She’s dead without me. She’s hollowed and sold.

Let him go. Memory-me sounds so sure of himself. Take me instead.

Put down the guns. All of them.

Nico for all the guns.

I lay down mine. I can kill Sergio after I save my brother

There was never enough luck, time, or speed to save Nico’s life.

The second after Sergio’s demand, the Junktown song stops. My sense of proportion gets sucked into the vacuum where my brother’s voice had been.

I take my eyes off Sergio and put them on Nico—hunched in the corner of the truck. Some fucker stands over him and says, “He finally bit it,” and pushes him over with his foot. My brother lies still with skin the color of new snow. Michelangelo never sculpted anything so perfect.

Mistakes never arrive alone. They always come to the party with Miscalculation on one arm and Hope on the other.

The back of the freezer truck is slapped closed, my brother’s body still inside. It sounds like a gunshot, and that’s enough.

My men never disarmed. Connor wouldn’t surrender his revenge for Jesus Christ himself, much less one mortal man, so the song of cracking guns and whizzing bullets starts immediately. His first shot sends a man reeling back. The rest is a blur of pops and shouts.

I regain my gun. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. I hit some, but Luck is fashionably late to the party while Mistakes are dancing on the bar.

When pulling the trigger gets me click-click-click, I drop it and stand, scanning the chaos for a weapon whose use has outlived its owner’s.

Connor falls like a sack of shit. I choose to have a feeling about it later and go for his Glock.

I feel an intense pressure on the back of my head. The world is suddenly on a rocking sea. I keep conscious, but whatever hit me once hits me harder the second time with more sound than pain.

This battle slips through my fingers and the war along with it.

Sarah. The house.

She’ll be fine.

When I fall—and I will—she’ll be on her own.

The world spins like a blender. A crack in my skull.