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:

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

Gino

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

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.

His throat got tight. He swallowed hard and let the hurt settle where it could do the most good.

“Alright,” he said, quieter now, more dangerous for it. He looked around the table–Enzo, Lola, Dottie, Dom, Jake’s screens pulsing like watchful eyes. “We don’t rush. We don’t spook them. We start where they think no one ever looks.”

He nodded at Dottie once–old rules, new war.

Then he leaned forward, forearms on wood, ready to build the map that would break a machine.

“Where do we start?”