My mouth tasted like metal.
“I’m coming,” I rasped, though the sound barely qualified as human.
I hung up.And I ran.I tore through the night like a feral animal, because there was only one truth left ringing in my skull.Something unspeakable had happened.And whatever I found in that penthouse, there was no coming back from it.
There was blood everywhere.
It wasn’t splattered or pooled.It waseverywhere.
It clung to the floors in thick, dragging streaks.It was on the walls in wild, violent arcs—handprints, smears, the desperate signatures of a fight I wasn’t here for.The once-clinical white décor was drowned beneath it, swallowed whole by a harsh, living red that pulsed in the corners of my vision like it was still warm… still fresh… still bleeding.
The whole penthouse reeked of copper and death, like the place itself was screaming.
Gianni met me at the door, his face hollow.I shoved past him.
Atlas was gone—transported to the emergency safehouse—but the blood was still everywhere.Thick streaks across the marble.Dark droplets drying on the walls.A bullet lodged in the frame.
But it was the lump under the blanket in the entryway that stopped my heart.
I walked to it.Slow.As though approaching an altar.
Gianni tried to stop me.“Marcello—maybe don’t?—”
I ignored him.My knees hit the floor beside the body.I lifted the blanket.And time ended.
My little brother.My sunshine.My headache.My favorite problem.The only person who could make Atlas laugh without trying.The kid who always saved the last cannoli for me because he knew I pretended not to care.
Alessio.
His face was too still.Too calm.It looked wrong against the happy-go-lucky persona he’d worn his whole life.
My breath left me in a guttural, animal sound I didn’t recognise.My hands shook as I touched his hair, pushing it out of his eyes like I’d done since he was six.
“He was just a kid,” I choked.“He was just—fuck—he was just?—”
Gianni knelt beside me, eyes wet.“He died protecting the door.They got him before they got inside.”
I bowed my head and pressed my forehead to Alessio’s.“You stupid, brave little shit.”
The tears came hot and violent.My chest cracked open.A raw, gutted sound tore out of me—so vicious that Gianni flinched.I didn’t care.Let the whole building hear me.I wanted the whole city to hear my pain before I burned it to the ground.
When I finally lifted my head, something new sat behind my ribs.
It wasn’t grief or shock.It was a cold, perfect rage.
“What’s Atlas’s status?”I asked him, softly, because everything in the room felt like it might shatter if I raised my voice.
Gianni stood near the doorway of Atlas’s penthouse, staring at nothing, hands stained red where he hadn’t bothered to wash them yet.Alessio’s blood.Atlas’s blood.He’d been soaked in both, and now he wore it like a second skin.His jaw was locked so tight I could hear his teeth grind every time he breathed.
“Critical.But alive.”
Those three words were a mercy and a curse all at once.Alive meant hope.Alive meant more pain to come.I nodded once, slow and careful, and forced my focus back to Gianni instead of the hollow screaming inside my chest.
“Get someone to clean this place up,” I told him.
He frowned slightly, like he didn’t understand.
“He’s not going to want to see this when he wakes up,” I added.“He’ll come back here.”