Luca’s crooked half-smile.
Marco’s squared shoulders.
Nico’s watchful eyes.
Vito’s controlled stillness.
They moved toward me in unison.
Not rushing.
Not crowding.
Just forming that same protective circle from childhood without even thinking.
For one fragile, foolish moment, I believed the nightmare was over.
Until the ambush.
We were already at the airport, approaching the plane that would take us to New York, when several cars drove in.
Black-hooded masked men stormed out with force.
They targeted me.
My brothers fought back, but they couldn’t stop them from tearing me away from their protection and dragging me off.
I remember Dario’s roar.
Then darkness.
Two more months in that warehouse.
Two more months becoming nothing but a vessel for a masked man’s rage and lust.
He never showed me his face.
Just hands.
Gloves sometimes. Bare skin others.
His scent—cheap cologne mixed with sweat and violence—clung to me no matter how hard I scrubbed. Even now, standing in this pristine mansion, I could swear I still smelled him beneath the cedar and cologne.
Knowing he escaped.
Knowing his men died in sprays of blood and screams while he slipped through some hidden exit—
It carved fresh hatred into me every time I inhaled.
The present snapped back into focus as Ruslan shifted in his chair.
He crossed one leg over the other.
Casual.
As if his hands weren’t stained with blood.
As if my life weren’t balanced on a knife’s edge.
