POV: Aria
I reversed.
Not because I had a plan. Because forward was blocked and Luca was on a phone call he wouldn't explain and my body made the decision before my brain finished the sentence. I hit reverse hard, tyres biting, and the bridge shrank in front of me as I pushed back the way we came and I watched those three sets of headlights in the windshield to see if they moved.
They moved.
All three pulled forward at once, not chasing but spreading, using their width to cover the bridge entrance behind me, which told me they knew I'd reverse and they weren't trying to catch me on the bridge, they were trying to push me off it.
I spun the wheel at the base of the approach and brought the car around and I was facing the right direction when the first shot hit.
It took out the rear passenger window. Clean through, glass across the back seat, and the sound of it was so much less than I expected that for half a second I thought it was something else. It wasn't something else. I floored it.
The city at that hour was half-empty and I used all of it. The first corner I took wide and fast and put a building between us and the bridge and then I was threading through the industrial blocks south of the water where I knew every turn and they didn't, and the headlights behind me were three now, all three vehicles following, which meant they had left the bridge unguarded, which meant they wanted me more than they wanted the position.
That was useful. I filed it.
Luca had his window down and something in his hand that hadn't been there sixty seconds ago.
"Don't," I said.
"They're gaining," he said.
"Don't fire from inside my car," I said. "You'll tell me every turn before I have to make it."
He looked at me.
"You know this city," I said. "Start talking."
A beat, shorter than I expected. "Left. Fifty meters."
I took it. We lost one set of headlights in the turn. Two left.
"Straight for four blocks, then the underpass."
"The underpass is a dead end on the east side."
"Not if you exit through the service road."
"The service road is gated."
"The gate is broken," he said. "Has been for eight months."
I didn't ask how he knew that. I didn't ask anything. I drove and he talked and we moved through the city like two people who had never done it together and were somehow doing it anyway, and somewhere in the back of my head I noticed that and did not look at it.
The underpass came up and I went through fast and low and he was right about the gate, it swung when I pushed it with the bumper and we were through and the two following cars were not built for the service road and I heard one hit the gate post as I cleared the far end.
One left.
Smaller car. Faster. It had found another way around.
It came up on my left side on the highway ramp and the second shot took out the side mirror and the third I didn't hear because by then I had the engine at a level where nothing else got through. I pushed past a hundred and the smaller car stayed with me, which meant they had something under the hood and a driver who knew what they were doing, and I felt the thing I always felt when someone could actually keep up, which was not fear but something more like attention.
I needed to end it.
There was a split ahead, highway bearing right, service lane bearing left and dropping under the overpass. The service lane was tight and badly lit and had a curve at the far end that was genuinely dangerous at speed. I knew that because I drove it once three years ago on a dare and lost a side panel and didn't tell anyone.
I took the service lane.
Luca grabbed the dash.
I didn't touch the brake. I let the car find the curve and gave it exactly as much steering as it wanted and not one degree more, and the wall on the left came close enough that I could hear the air change between us, and then we were through and the other car hit that curve too fast, went sideways against the barrier.
Not dead. I didn't think dead. But stopped.
I eased off and the engine dropped back and we came out onto a clear open stretch of road heading north and I held the wheel and breathed.
Luca said nothing for a long time.
"The gate," I said finally.
"What."
"How did you know it was broken for eight months."
He looked at the road. "I've run this city for Matteo for three years."
"That's not what I asked."
He didn't answer. I let it sit. The silence between us then was a different kind than the silence at the start of the run, less like a wall and more like two people deciding at the same time whether to say the thing they were thinking.
I decided not to.
He decided not to.
We drove.
I was three miles from the debrief point when the car told me something was wrong. Not dramatically, not all at once. Just a small change in the engine note, a hesitation so slight that most people wouldn't catch it, a half-second where the power delivery wasn't what I asked for.
I caught it.
I checked the temperature gauge. Normal. Oil pressure normal. RPMs holding steady.
Then the hesitation came again, longer that time, and that time there was something underneath it, a sound that didn't belong, low and irregular, the kind of sound an engine made when something inside it had been compromised and was doing its best to keep going anyway.
I thought about the shots fired on the highway. I had counted three. I accounted for two.
"Luca."
"I hear it," he said.
The engine hesitated a third time and that time it didn't fully come back, and I watched the power drop and felt the car lose its certainty underneath me, and three miles from anywhere I eased to the side of the road and the engine died and we sat in sudden complete silence on an empty stretch of road at two in the morning.
I looked at him.
He was already looking at me, and his phone was already in his hand, and whoever he was calling that time I already knew it wasn't Matteo.