He lifted his chin, staring down at me. “Put him in the car.”
A black hood was thrown over my head, and I was manhandled roughly into the back of an SUV. Soldiers flanked me on both sides, and we drove in silence. Sweat began to bead on my forehead as I leaned back against the seat, fighting the dizziness creeping in from the open wound in my thigh. Finn’s face was all I could see. Moments with him flashed through my mind, and I smiled through each one.
My chest tightened, not from the pain of what could have been, but from the loss he’d feel again. No matter what, Finn would lose someone. Neri. Alessio. Or me. He’d lived without me before. But he wouldn’t survive anything happening to Neri. And who knew? In some alternate reality, maybe this wasn’t the end. Maybe we’re happy and in love. Together.
I was delirious. Images of a future I’d never have soothed the pain. I didn’t even notice the car had stopped until I was pulled from it and forced back to my knees. The hood came off, and the first thing I noticed was the silence. No shouting, no sirens in the distance, no city noise. We were in a forest, and the only sound was me, each ragged breath tearing from my chest.
Frankie stood in front of me, his sons on either side and at least eight Galiz soldiers surrounding us, watching. Atlas came around to my back and cut the cable ties from my sore wrists.
Frankie was about to make a show of my death. He had to. I had killed their Don. I knew what was coming.
His oldest son stepped forward and threw a shovel to the ground in front of me.
“Dig,” Frankie ordered, his voice deep and lethal.
I laughed, throwing my head back to look up at the sky. “Go fuck yourself, Galiz.”
Frankie nodded once. A fist smashed into my face, and I fell to my side in the dirt. A solid boot to the stomach followed, and I coughed through white-hot pain in my ribs.
“Dig,” he repeated as I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. “Or prolong your death.”
I reached for the shovel because I wasn’t a masochist. The sooner this was over, the better. I started digging, knowing this wasn’t about torture; it was about humiliation. A Don digging his own unmarked grave.
But it was torture, too. Every scoop of heavy earth sent flares of pain through my injured body, and my vision blurred. Sweat and blood dripped into the soil as I heaved to make a dent in the ground until my legs gave way and I collapsed into the shallow grave.
Frankie stopped beside it, peering down at me. “Legacy’s funny, isn’t it?” he said, smirking at the scene before him. A powerful Don, the third-most successful Boss in Italy, lying in a ditch where no one would ever find him. “It truly doesn’t matter when you're dead.”
He pointed his gun at me and pulled the trigger.
The shot tore through my shoulder, and agony detonated down my spine. I cried out as my body jerked in the soil, but I narrowed my eyes at him when I saw him still watching me. That wasn’t a fatal shot. Why not shoot me in the head?
Because that was too easy.
“Bury him.”
He walked away as a shot of panic sparked one last fight to the surface. No. Buried alive, suffocating and slowly bleeding out? No.
Put a fucking bullet in my head!
I wanted to scream, but hands shoved me flat, and the weight of dirt rained down on me. All I tasted was blood and soil. Air grew scarce. The pressure was too great. My chest burned. My lungs stopped working. Panic clawed up my throat as the darkness grew thicker, inch by inch.
This was how it ended. Alone. Buried alive like an animal. But a death I could be proud of. I died being who I truly was—an unashamed man protecting the man he loved.
The silence became deafening, and my struggling breaths grew shallow. A sense of calm replaced the panic as the world narrowed to black.
Chapter twenty-four
Present Day
Just when I had accepted the inevitable, a sound broke through the quiet. Muffled at first, it was so quiet I thought I was hallucinating. It couldn’t be real. But then the dirt shifted. Light stabbed through. Air.
Hands clawed through the dirt, finding my hoodie and hauling me upwards as I gasped violently for a breath that wasn’t full of soil. I was dragged from the grave and rolled onto my side, retching and heaving. Someone was smacking my back, kneeling behind me and speaking… in Italian.
“You’re a fucking stubborn prick, Aiani.”
I rolled onto my back, blinking up at the last man I expected would ever haul me out of a grave.
Alessio Barberi. Don of fucking Italy.
