*Olivia*

“What do you mean he’s gone? Who is?”

Shame curled around my throat like a hand around my windpipe, and every ragged breath through my mouth felt like swallowing a hundred razor blades. I could hear Gio’s fear, the way it mirrored my own, and I choked on my spit, unable to say the next words that I didn’t even want to admit to myself.

I was his mother. How could something like this happen on my watch? He was right here in my arms only a ...