There was a ringing in my ears I couldn’t shake—the kind that starts when something inside you breaks and keeps breaking.My throat was raw, but I hadn’t said a word.And I couldn’t cry, because men like me don’t cry.We fracture.
I stared at Alessio’s face—pale, soft, too young.Our baby brother.The one we swore we’d always protect.The one we dragged out of the darkness, raised on loyalty and blood and whatever scraps of tenderness this family could manage.
We were supposed to keep him safe.And we failed.
My chest twisted so painfully it felt like something was sawing through bone.I gripped the bedframe until my knuckles went white.I couldn’t breathe.I couldn’t think.
Gianni’s voice was low.“He shouldn’t be here.”
“No,” I managed, but it came out shredded.“He shouldn’t.”
He was supposed to be the one who never touched this life.The one who stayed clean, stayed bright.Every time Alessio smiled, it reminded me of what we could’ve been if we hadn’t been born into this life.And now?The world got another piece.A bigger one this time.
My eyes burned.I blinked hard.
“The kid trusted us to have his back,” I whispered.“And we let him down.”
Gianni tensed, jaw tight enough to crack.“We didn’t let him down.They took him.”
“No.”My voice broke on something feral, something I’d been swallowing for years.“We allowed it.Don’t pretend otherwise.What the hell was our brother doing guarding our fucking door?Why was he out there instead of inside with us—where he belonged?”
The words burned on the way out.
That’s what would tear me apart in the end—knowing Alessio wasn’t taken because he was weak, but because we put him in a weak position.We left him outside like a shield.Like a sacrifice.
He should’ve been with us.He should’ve been behind us, protected, not standing there like some disposable sentry.
He wasn’t lesser.But we treated him that way.Because Father drilled it into us—that an illegitimate son didn’t get a seat at the table.He didn’t get power.He just…existed.
And we let that poison seep into us until we believed it too.Until Alessio became something we loved fiercely in private… but sidelined in public.
It didn’t matter that he was ours.Nor that he was the gentlest of us, the one who still believed in things like fairness, loyalty, brotherhood.We let the world decide his worth.We let Father decide it.
And then we lived like it was true.
And that—that was the sin I couldn’t forgive myself for.
Because love meant nothing if it was only given in secret.Protection meant nothing if it only counted when it was convenient.
And then the second sin hit me—quiet, cruel, undeniable.
Marcello,a voice whispered from somewhere buried deep in my skull,that second sin… where you were too busy to answer your phone while your brothers lay dying in a pool of their own blood.
The words carved straight through me.
I remembered the calls I missed.The vibrations against my desk that I ignored because I was buried too deep inside a woman whose name I’d already forgotten.I remembered calling back minutes later and getting no answer.I remembered the chill that slid down my spine before I even knew why.
And now here we were.Alessio buried under a sheet, and Atlas barely alive, roaring inside a hospital bed.
Because I wasn’t there.Because I didn’t pick up the fucking phone.
Something inside me snapped.
It wasn’t loud or dramatic.It was just a clean, silent break—the kind a man doesn’t plan but has to deal with anyway.A fracture right down the middle of who I used to be, and who I would become after this day.
My throat tightened until I tasted metal.My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms, and the room swam with a heat made of grief and rage and guilt so black it felt bottomless.
I wanted to tear the walls apart.I wanted to drag every man responsible into the street and make the pavement drink them dry.I wanted to undo five minutes.Just five stupid minutes.