Iturned, fury blazing, ready to strike again—and for a heartbeat, I thought I saw Amy.
Goosebumps raced across my skin.
But the face in front of me was not hers.
A tall man, dressed impeccably in a suit, moved with a strange grace, almost feminine in appearance.
My mind reeled, reality crashing back in.
I spun back to the fallen man, my chest heaving, eyes still burning with rage.
“I’m Ciro,” the new man said calmly, his voice cutting through the storm of my adrenaline. “Second in command to the Capo, Vincenzo Orsini.”
Capo.
An Italian Mafia boss.
The word stumbled across my mind like a stone in my chest.
Vincenzo... the boy I had once known—small, almost fragile, with that hesitant, nervous laugh, fourteen hours trapped together in that cave—he?
The same boy who had trembled at the dark, who had begged for scraps of hope, now sat at the apex of power?
My stomach dropped.
He wasn’t a boy anymore. Not by a long shot.
Where there had once been uncertainty, fear, and a flicker of kindness, there was now steel.
The sweet, scared boy of memory had risen, transformed into a man who commanded loyalty, fear, and death—and he wore it all like a crown.
The realization hit harder than any punch I’d taken.
Ciro, however, didn’t flinch at the bloodied body sprawled on the ground—a cruel testament to my uncontrolled rage.
There was no anger in his face.
No shock. Not even the faintest flicker of surprise.
He only glanced at the man I had beaten to the edge of ruin, his body a grotesque map of blood and bruises.
And in that calm, detached glance, I saw it: he had already sized up the damage, weighed it, and moved on.
Perhaps Ciro had seen enough violence to make this look ordinary—but for me... the weight of it pressed down like stone.
My chest heaved.
My hands shook.
Guilt clawed through me with every ragged breath.
I wanted to undo it, to rewind time, to stop before I had gone too far.
I wanted him to stop—to not charge at me, not to fight me—but he wouldn’t listen.
He wouldn’t care.
Ciro moved with unnerving calm, each step precise.
