The first shot cracks like God slamming a door.
The metal table jumps under my ribs. Chains chatter at my wrists like they’ve learned fear. Dust sifts from the light in a thin gray veil, and the air changes—gunpowder and panic slicing through the old stink of blood and oil.
Another shot.
Then shouting.
Not commands. Not control. Just men unraveling out loud.
Carlo snaps toward the door. His mouth opens and something filthy spills out—then the third shot eats the rest of it. He stabs the air with his hand. “Move!”
Boots thunder. Two of his men rush the door.
They don’t make it.
The door doesn’t open.
It explodes.
Steel shrieks as it caves inward, hinges tearing like wet cartilage. One guard lifts clean off the floor and slams into the wall hard enough to forget breathing. The other staggers back, screaming—then stops. The sound cuts off mid-note like a wire snipped.
And there he is.
Santino doesn’t step through the doorway.
He arrives.
Heat rolls off him like a storm front—hair dark with sweat at his temples, jaw set hard enough to powder bone, eyes wild and locked on me as if the rest of the world can burn. His knuckles are split. Blood slicks his hands.
I don’t care whose.
The guards surge.
He moves first.
The nearest one goes down with a sound like a branch under a boot. Santino doesn’t wait for the body to finish falling. His elbow drives backward into another throat—wet and final—and that man collapses like a puppet stripped of strings.
A third comes fast with a knife.
Santino catches the wrist and twists.
Hard enough that the scream turns into an animal.
Then he buries the man’s own blade into his thigh and shoves him backward. Concrete and paperwork explode as he smashes into Carlo’s desk, sending papers and lies skidding across the floor.
Someone fires again—wild.
The round cracks past my ear and bites the wall.
I flinch.
Santino doesn’t.
He turns on the shooter like violence has a favorite child.
The guard barely realizes he made a choice before Santino slams into him—shoulder to chest—driving him flat. Something inside the man gives with a noise like broken furniture. When Santino straightens, the guard doesn’t.
Carlo backs away, calculating.
