Not directly. Not with a phone call or an order. But by design. By constructing a war that made the retaliation inevitable. He built the machine. The machine produced the violence. And when the violence came for his sons, he sat in the kitchen with his whiskey and waited for me to handle it.
Because handling it was my function. My purpose. The reason he showed me where the throat is weakest—not to save me, but to make me the tool that protected his investment.
The Reaper was never my father's failure. The Reaper was his product.
Something in my chest detonates.
The sound I make is not language. It comes from a place below words—a low, building pressure that exits through my throat as a roar.
I grab the nearest object—a heavy wooden stool covered in paint splatters—and I throw it.
It hits the brick wall with a violence that shatters the seat. Wood splinters spray across the room. A canvas falls from its stack. A jar of brushes topples, spilling turpentine across the floor.
It’s not enough. The rage is a physical thing, a creature trying to claw its way out of my skin.
I grab a metal shelf unit. I rip it from the wall. Jars of pigment crash to the floor—blue, red, yellow powder exploding into the air like smoke. I kick a crate of supplies, sending wood and metal skittering across the concrete.
I want to tear this room apart. I want to tear the world apart.
My father. My da. The man who told me I was strong. The man who told me I was the shield.
He made me a monster for profit. He sold my childhood, he sold my innocence, he sold my soul for territory.
"Killian."
Alessandro’s voice. Quiet. Calm.
"Killian, stop."
I stop. I am panting, my chest heaving. My hands are clenched so tight my nails are cutting into my palms. I am standing in a cloud of blue pigment dust, surrounded by wreckage.
Alessandro steps into the mess. He walks right up to me. He isn't afraid.
"This document is not a wound," he says.
"It’s a lie," I choke out. "My whole life is a lie. Everything I did... everyone I hurt... it was for nothing. It was for a fucking spreadsheet."
"No. It’s a weapon." His voice is steel. "It’s proof. Proof that our fathers orchestrated a war to consolidate power. Proof that every death in the last twenty years was a line item in a business plan."
He grips my forearms. His fingers dig in, grounding me.
"If we release this to the families," he says, "both patriarchs lose their authority overnight. The Morettis, the Rileys, the surviving Devaneys—they will turn on them. The coalition against our fathers would be unanimous. They would have no choice but to step down. Or be removed."
"You're talking about a coup."
"I'm talking about the only move that addresses every threat simultaneously." His eyes burn into mine. "We take this document to the Volkov meeting. We present it to both families. We use it to remove our fathers from power, dismantle the Russian leverage—because Volkov's entire strategy depends on exploiting the divisions our fathers created—and we restructure the alliance."
"Under who?"
"Us."
The word hangs in the silence.Us.
The arranged marriage. The political tool. The joke.
"We were supposed to be pawns," I say.
"We were supposed to be managed," Alessandro agrees. "We were supposed to bleed for their arrangement. And instead?"
