I glanced back.
Vincenzo stood where I had left him.
Still.
Immovable. Unyielding.
The morning sun wrapped around him like a crown, gilding the edges of his tall frame, catching in the dark strands of his hair until they gleamed like polished obsidian.
The wind tugged lightly at his suit jacket, but he didn’t shift. Didn’t blink.
Didn’t follow me with his body.
Only his eyes.
Fixed. Watching.
Cataloguing.
As though every tear I’d shed, every tremor I’d fought to hide, every crack in my carefully constructed composure—was something to be recorded.
I held his gaze for half a second longer than I should have.
Then I turned.
Because if I stayed—if I let myself linger in the space between him and me—I might break.
And I refused. I refused to give him even that much power.
I moved forward, each step deliberate, toward the massive doors of the Crimson Chamber.
The hallways around me seemed to hum with the weight of history, the echoes of every recruit who had ever dared to step inside before me.
Before I even reached the threshold, I heard him.
Renzo.
His voice carried through the heavy doorway—sharp, precise.
Authority embedded in each syllable.
I walked into the Crimson Chamber.
The doors swung shut behind me.
Softly.
Like a verdict that could not be reversed.
The echo of the closing doors wasn’t loud, but it resonated inside me.
The Crimson Chamber stretched before me in dark, imposing symmetry.
Twenty-one men were already seated, their bodies rigid, disciplined, quiet.
They sat like soldiers awaiting inspection, but there was more to it than that—they were weighing the new variable entering their midst.
And that variable was me.
