But Here He Was

But Here He Was
Nico

The shot wasn’t a bang. It was a flat, perfect sound—someone out there had taken their time.

For a heartbeat Nico thought it had missed—just a whip of air past his ribs. Then heat bloomed under his shirt, sudden and savage, and his knees went. Asphalt rushed up to meet him.

Fuck.

It felt like falling into water you can’t see the bottom of. Everything slowed—sound stretched thin, colors bled together, and the one thing in focus was her.

Lola.

She was kneeling over him in a blur, hoodie falling loose, braid slipping forward, eyes wide in a way he’d never seen before. He wanted to tell her not to look at him like that. Not like he was already gone.

Her hands pressed against his chest, frantic. Warm. Small. He wanted to tell her it wouldn’t work, but he couldn’t—her panic was a lifeline, something bright to anchor to in the rushing dark.

“Hey, hey—Nic, look at me. Look at me. You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Her voice cracked, and it was the worst sound he’d ever heard.

He tried to answer, but his lungs stuttered around the hole. Air hissed, wet. Every breath tasted like rust.

Not here. Not in front of her.

He’d always pictured going down in a fight. Gun up, teeth bared, his brothers at his back. Not in a goddamn parking lot with her hands slick and shaking over him.

But if this was it—if this was the last—at least it was her face he got to see.

Trouble. Sunlight in a world full of smoke.

She was crying now, forehead pressed to his, whispering like she could barter with death if she just said it enough times. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

He tried to squeeze her hand. His fingers twitched weakly, but she caught them, gripped tight, refused to let him drift.

Good girl. Stubborn to the end.

Noise swelled—shouts, sirens, someone yelling for an ambulance. He didn’t care. None of it mattered except the weight of her over him.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die.

But all he saw was her.

Not just this moment. All of it. The first time she’d looked at him across a crowded room, ink on her hands and mischief in her eyes. Her head tipped back in his kitchen, laughing about cast-iron skillets. How he loved the way she loved to give human names to random things. Her voice when she talked about the cello—God, the cello—she made it sound like something holy. He’d never hear a cello again.

He wanted to tell her that. Wanted to tell her she was right, that she’d been right about a thousand little things he’d pretended not to care about. That he loved the way she saw the world sideways, like it was a puzzle only she could solve. That she’d made him want more than being Enzo’s second, more than being a soldier with blood on his hands.

But his throat wouldn’t work. His chest wouldn’t work.

Say it anyway.

He forced his lips to move. She leaned closer, desperate.

“I—” The word was a ghost, but her eyes caught it. She knew. She always knew.

Her tears dropped hot against his cheek. She kissed his temple, shaking her head like she could deny what was happening. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare leave me.”

God, he wanted to stay. He wanted to fight it. But his body was heavy now, every limb a stone. The dark kept pulling.

He found her eyes one last time. They were wild, beautiful, alive. Everything he’d never been brave enough to say was in the way he looked at her.

I love you. I’d do it again. Every choice. Every moment. I’d do it all again for you.

Her mouth was still moving—stay, stay, stay—but he couldn’t. Not anymore.

He let the dark take him with her name in his head.

Lola.

And then—nothing.

Lola

The change was so small at first she almost missed it.

One second his chest was stuttering under her palms, ragged and wet but moving, and the next… the rhythm shifted. A pause too long. A silence too heavy.

“No,” she whispered, pressing harder. Blood slid between her fingers like it wanted to remind her who it belonged to. “No, no, no—stay with me. Stay.”

His eyes—God, those eyes—had been fixed on hers, stubborn, fighting even as the light flickered. But now that stubbornness thinned, softened, left something else in its place. Something final.

“Nico,” she begged, her forehead pressed to his, voice shredded. “Don’t. Don’t you dare.”

The world refused to stop with her. Sirens wailed closer, voices shouted, boots thundered across asphalt. Someone tried to pull her back, but she snapped, animal, teeth bared. She wasn’t leaving him. Not now. Not ever.

Her bloodied hand cupped his cheek, thumb sliding over skin that was cooling too fast. “I love you,” she said, louder this time, because maybe if the universe heard it, it would give him back. “You hear me? I love you.”

But he wasn’t blinking anymore.

The quiet inside him was louder than the chaos around them.

She rocked, back and forth, like maybe motion could keep his spirit tethered. Like maybe if she just kept moving, he would too.

Her braid stuck to her neck with sweat. Her hoodie was ruined, soaked in him. None of it mattered. She bent over him, mouth at his ear she whispered, voice shaking. “Who’s going to watch Casablanca with me and appreciate it? Huh? Who’s going to read the same book just so I’d have someone to talk to about it?”

No answer.

“We were supposed to have more time.”

Her throat locked. She coughed a sob into his shoulder and tasted salt and iron, two flavors that didn’t belong together.

Somewhere, someone shouted for medics. A gurney squealed against the curb. Hands hovered, waiting for her to move, but she refused. Her knees were welded to the pavement, her arms braced over his body like she was the only shield that mattered.

“He’s mine,” she hissed, voice breaking. “You don’t get to take him. You don’t get to take him.”

She kissed his temple because she couldn’t not. Because her heart was clawing out of her ribs and the only way to keep it in was to anchor it to him.

Her vision blurred. For one terrifying second, she thought she’d black out too, sink into the same dark he’d slipped into. But then his name tore out of her again, ripped straight from the center of her chest.

“Nico!”

Nothing. Just the echo. Just the silence.

Her hands shook harder, pressing uselessly at the wound. Blood still welled, but without rhythm. Without fight.

And finally she knew.

It was over.

Her body folded forward, covering him, every line of her bent in surrender. She didn’t care about the crowd, the sirens, the neon glow of Vegas flickering like a cruel joke overhead. She didn’t care about the shooters who might still be out there. She didn’t care about anything except the stillness under her hands.

The stillness that meant he was gone.

The sound that tore out of her wasn’t human. It was grief stripped raw, grief that didn’t give a fuck who heard it.

Her nails scraped the asphalt as she curled closer, as if she could crawl inside his chest and drag him back by force.

“Please,” she whispered, the word collapsing into itself. “Please, Nic. Please.”

Her vision tunneled. For a beat, it was just her and him, two kids who’d never asked for any of this, who’d just wanted to laugh about cast iron skillets and music and fries. Two kids who’d found something good in the middle of all the rot, and now that good had been carved out of her like a punishment.

She didn’t notice the black SUVs screeching in. Didn’t register the flood of armed men, or the way the crowd scattered like pigeons at a gunshot.

The only thing that cut through was a voice.

“Lola!”

Enzo.

She didn’t lift her head. Couldn’t. Her hands were still locked on Nico’s chest, her cheek pressed against his shirt, her body trembling with sobs she couldn’t hold back anymore.

The footsteps came fast, pounding, a command in every stride.

And then his shadow fell over them, huge and unyielding.

Her voice was muffled against Nico’s chest, barely more than breath. “He’s gone.”

The admission ripped something new inside her, something deeper than pain.

When Enzo’s hands finally touched her shoulders, she flinched—not away, but tighter around Nico, as if Enzo himself might try to take him.

Blood smeared Enzo’s cuffs when he pried one of her hands free, just enough to see the stillness, to confirm what she already knew. His curse cracked like glass against concrete.

Lola couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at anything but Nico’s face, slack in a way it had never been before.

She bent again, kissed his cheek, whispered a goodbye she refused to make real.

And then she broke—completely, catastrophically—against the weight of Enzo’s arms pulling her back, the world dragging her forward without him.

Enzo

The first thing he saw was Lola’s hands—slick red, trembling, pressed against Nico’s chest like she could keep him tethered by sheer will.

The second thing he saw was Nico’s face.

Too still. Too pale.

Enzo’s knees hit asphalt so hard he didn’t feel it. Gravel bit through his slacks, but all he could register was the impossible fact in front of him: Nico, sprawled on his back, eyes dimming while Lola shattered against him.

“No,” Enzo rasped, the word torn raw. “No, no, no—”

He’d buried soldiers. Friends. Men he’d called family because they fought for the same patch of ground. But Nico wasn’t just a soldier. He was his.

The boy who’d stolen his first cigarette. The teenager who’d swung fists beside him in alleys. The man who’d followed him into hell without asking if they’d come back. Nico wasn’t supposed to be breakable.

But here he was.

Broken.

Lola made a sound that could split stone, and Enzo’s chest caved around it. He pulled her in, arms closing tight even as she thrashed weakly, her fists pounding against him in blind grief. He let her. He deserved every hit.

Because Nico was his responsibility. And now Nico was gone.

The round had been perfect. A clean shot, straight through the heart. No panic fire, no chaos. Just precision. A professional. Which meant it wasn’t chance—it was a message. Not to him. To her.

And still, under the fury, the grief clawed louder.

Images slammed into him—Nico on the roof when they were kids, swearing they’d own the city one day. Nico handing him his first real pistol. Nico dragging him out of a knife fight half-dead and laughing like it wasn’t the closest they’d come to the end.

Every memory weighed more than his bones.

“My brother,” Enzo whispered, voice fracturing. His forehead touched Nico’s hairline, blood seeping warm between them. “You weren’t supposed to leave me, fratello. Not you.”

Lola sobbed harder, clinging like she could keep Enzo upright when all he wanted was to fold, to tear the asphalt open and crawl into it beside Nico.

He forced himself still. Forced air into his lungs. Because she needed him, even as he broke.

Around them, guards shouted, radios cracked, sirens wailed too late. The city pulsed, neon and blind.

Enzo bent lower into Lola’s hair, voice shredded but sharp enough to scar. “I’ll find them,” he swore, each syllable like glass in his throat. “I’ll find them, and I’ll burn them to ash.”

He tightened his hold as Lola clutched him back, Nico’s body cooling beneath their knees.

Enzo’s eyes blurred, but he didn’t blink. Couldn’t. He held grief and fury in the same grip, and he let it carve itself into him:

They took my brother. They broke her. They don’t walk this earth much longer.

When he lifted his head, his tears had dried to salt on his face. His eyes were already hunting.

Already choosing who would die.