No monologue.
No confession.
Just consequences.
The first man charges Dante—mistake.
Dante drops him with a single punch that cracks like a gunshot.
Another lunges for me.
I catch his wrist, twist, and slam his head into the bar top.
Wood splinters.
Blood spatters.
A gun goes off.
Rocco fires back.
The world becomes noise and movement.
A chair crashes.
Someone screams.
Dante tackles a man through a table.
And Leonid—coward that he is—tries to slip out the back.
Not today.
I cut through the chaos, dodging bodies, fists landing against me but barely registering. The only thing I see is Leonid sprinting toward the exit.
A bullet whizzes past my head—from behind him.
Dante shouts, “Sandro! He’s getting away!”
But I don’t speed up. Because I already know how this ends.
Leonid hits the alley behind the bar and skids to a stop—slamming into a wall of my men waiting with guns drawn.
There’s nowhere left for him to run.
He turns—slow, trembling—and the moment his eyes land on me, whatever courage he had drains out of him.
“Alessandro—wait,” he chokes out, palms lifting in surrender. “It wasn’t personal. It was business. I—I didn’t know—”
I step forward, boots crunching over broken glass, the metallic taste of rage thick on my tongue.
“It was business when you put a target on my wife.” My voice is calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that comes right before the end.
He shakes his head so hard spit flies. “I swear— I didn’t mean for her—”
“You meant every fucking part of it.”
Another step. Another cornered breath from him.
