For not being fast enough, strong enough.For not not protecting you from the world.
The darkness crept in at the edges of my vision, thick and heavy, swallowing the world piece by piece.I tried to fight it.I tried to hold on to anything that wasn’t blood and loss.
Neve.
I dragged her into my mind like a lifeline—her voice, soft and steady.The way her fear had flickered when she looked at me.The way she smiled like she didn’t know how much light she carried.
I clung to that.To her.To the idea that she was still out there, still breathing, still safe.
I tried to stay awake.
But grief is heavier than pain, and blood loss doesn’t care what or who you love.
The dark closed in.Everything went quiet.And the last thing I carried with me as I slipped under was her name.
Neve.
40
Gianni
The first thing that hit me was the silence.
It wasn’t the soft, sleepy quiet of a building winding down for the night.This was different.This silence was empty, like the air itself was holding its breath, causing dread to pool in my gut.
The lobby was deserted.Even the doorman—the one who practically lived in that damn chair—was gone.His station sat abandoned, light still on, as if he’d stepped away and never come back.
A cold weight settled in my gut as I crossed the threshold.The air carried a faint metallic tang, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat.I knew that smell.I just wasn’t ready to name it.
Bloody footprints streaked across the tiles, dark and smeared, leading away from the elevators in uneven, desperate paths.They weren’t orderly or controlled, telling me someone had been in a hurry to leave.
My pulse thudded in my ears as I followed them, each step dragging me deeper into something I didn’t want to find.A place this locked down didn’t bleed unless something had gone horribly, catastrophically wrong.
The elevator ride to the twelfth floor felt endless.When the doors slid open, the smell hit me full force.
Blood.Fresh.Thick.Heavy in the air.
My stomach dropped as I stepped out, my gun already in my hand.The hallway was eerily still, the lights humming softly over streaks of red that led away in both directions.
“Atlas?”I called, keeping my voice low and steady.“Alessio?Marcello?”
There was no answer.
I rounded the corner, my boots sliding in a slick smear on the marble.Someone’s blood.Too much of it.The walls were spattered, the floor streaked, the kind of mess left behind by violence that didn’t stop at one body.
It looked more like a slaughter than a gunfight.
I followed the trail through the entryway until I reached the front door.
It stood open.
Two bodies lay on the floor.
One face-up.
One face-down.
Alessio.