Because Atlas always came home.That was the rule.The universe could do whatever ugly shit it wanted to him, but he always came back.
Gianni hesitated.His eyes flicked to the floor, to the dark stains still smeared across the marble, to the outline where Alessio had died.
“Whatever you’re planning,” he warned, “maybe we should wait.”
Wait.
The word felt obscene in my mouth.
“What are we waiting for?”I snapped.“For the Russians to finish the job?”
“We haven’t even buried Alessio yet.”
The words tore out of Gianni, raw and jagged.The sound echoed off the walls like a wound.
That’s when I saw it, and understood it.The grief.
It was written all over his face, carved deep and ugly.Gianni looked like someone had ripped his spine out and left him standing anyway.
He was the one who had found Alessio.
He was the one who had dropped to his knees beside our little brother and known instantly there was nothing to be done.
He was the one who had held Atlas in his arms, begging him not to die, blood soaking through his clothes, while everything he loved tried to bleed out at once.
And on top of all that?
His wife was pregnant.
There was a life growing inside her while death had just torn through our family like an avalanche.
The weight of it all was crushing him.I could see it in the way his shoulders sagged, in the way his eyes kept drifting to the door like he was torn between running back to her and staying here with us.
Family pulling him in two directions.Both of them bleeding.
“I know,” I added quietly, stepping closer.“I know you’re not okay.”
He didn’t look at me.
“I’m fine.”
The lie was thin.
“You’re not.You’re standing in a room where one of your brothers died and the other nearly followed him.You’re allowed to not be fine.”
He swallowed.Hard.
For a second, I thought he might say something.Might crack.Might let a single piece of it out.
But Gianni was built to hold things together while everything burned.
“I just—” His voice roughened.“I don’t want this to get worse.”
I studied him.The blood on his sleeves.The hollow in his eyes.
“It already is.Alessio is dead.Atlas is barely alive.There is no version of this that isn’t already hell.”
That finally made him look at me.