And he knows it.Plus if he kills me here, in front of his men, in the place where he turned boys into monsters his men will ask themselves a question he can’t afford: If he can kill his own son, what the fuck does loyalty mean?
And that’s the one thing he can’t survive.Doubt.
But no bullets come.
Just silence.Then he nods.
A single, quiet motion.Small.Precise.
That’s all it takes.
His soldiers move like shadows.Trained, merciless, silent as death.They’re on me before I can shift, grabbing my arms and wrenching them back with a force that sends white-hot pain ripping through my shoulders.I grunt, but I don’t scream.I won’t give him that.
They shove me down, my knees hitting the floor first, then my face slamming into the concrete.Hard.Grit tears into my cheek, and blood bursts in my mouth.It’s bitter, flooding my tongue like punishment.
This is what he wanted.Not to kill me.Not to break me.To remind me who the fuck I belong to.
“Stay fucking put,” one of them snarls, pressing his boot between my shoulder blades the way a hunter pins down prey, just flesh, just a trophy, nothing more.
The pressure grinds into bone, pinning me like an animal, and it takes everything I have not to move, not to snap, not to rip his fucking leg out from under him and crack his skull open on the concrete.
I wait.Breathing heavy, jaw clenched so tight my molars threaten to crack from the pressure.Blood pools in my mouth, all rust and rage.
My father steps past me.
Calm.
Unhurried—this is just business to him.As though I’m not even worth a glance.
His polished shoes, perfect, expensive, soulless, stop inches from my face, the leather catching the fractured light above like it’s something holy.
I tilt my head, just enough to see him standing over Dante Moretti.
The man’s still on his knees, trembling like a coward.And he looks smaller by the second, shrinking under the weight of the reckoning he helped build but never had the spine to own.
And for a heartbeat, I forget the pain in my body, because I know what’s coming.
“You,” my father spits, disgust curling each syllable as if he’s choking on bile.“I gave you everything.Power.Respect.My fucking trust.And you repay me by slithering into the shadows—a rat crawling through the same dirt you once sent others to die in?”
Emery’s father shudders.He’s weak and pathetic.Sweat clings to his face, his skin ashen, as though he's already partway to the grave.
“Please,” he breathes, barely audible.A whimper, not a defense.“I didn’t… I was—”
“You were what?”my father growls, stepping in so close the bastard goes stiff, spine pulled tight as if fear alone might snap it in half. “I made you.Protected you.Gave you a seat at my table when you were nothing but bloodstained hands and empty threats.And still you have the fucking nerve to betray me.”He circles him, slow and deliberate, a predator savoring the moment before the kill.
“Now look at you… shaking, pathetic, trembling the way a mutt does after pissing on the wrong boot.Begging.”
Dante flinches like he’s been struck, the shame and fear rolling off him in waves.
My father crouches beside him, calm now.Too fucking calm.That’s when he’s at his most dangerous.His voice drops to a low, slicing whisper.
“Tell me,” he leans in close, their faces inches apart, breath hot with fury, “was it worth it?”
“N-no,” Dante stammers like a fucking coward, voice cracking, as his body shudders uncontrollably.“It was a mistake, please… I didn’t mean—”
“You’re goddamn right it was a mistake.”My father straightens, rising with all the weight of a man who knows he owns every soul in this place.All except mine.His expression is stone.But his eyes… fuck, his eyes burn like fire eating through flesh.“And now you’re going to fucking pay for it.Slowly.Painfully.Second by fucking second.”
From where I’m pinned, cheek pressed against the rough concrete, I watch as Emery’s father crumbles.The tremble in his limbs turns violent, his breathing spiraling into ragged panic.
