Even if Sandro doesn’t want me at his side right now, I can still find my footing. I can prove useful. If I don’t, I’ll likely end up back at my family’s home, forever my brothers’ burden because I won’t be able to provide Sandro with children. But I refuse to be a burden. Not if I can help it.
13
SANDRO
It’s a punch to the gut the first time I see the state of our family home. The place where we grew up—the halls I used to sprint down with Gio biting at my heels, where Raf studied late into the night by candlelight, where Leo snuck girls in through the windows while I pretended I didn’t notice—it’s been reduced to ashes and broken bones of stone.
One wing of the house still stands. Barely. The walls are blackened, the windows shattered. The roof has caved in on the west side, where my father had his suite. The fire gutted most of it, left it hollow and rotting. Every step closer feels like someone wringing my chest tighter, like I’m walking up to the corpse of a loved one.
But corpses don’t breathe. Don’t bleed.
The men standing watch outside, though—they breathe. And I can promise they will bleed.
The Yakuza aren’t stupid enough to abandon the property completely, but they’re not hell-bent on protecting it either. A skeleton crew, just enough to make it look claimed. Like it’stheirs. The rage that boils in me at that thought is enough to make my hands shake until I curl them into fists.
This house is ours. It always will be.
The week that follows is a blur of fists, knives, gunfire, and blood.
Every night we stalk the perimeter, picking off the Tanaka men one at a time. We make them silent kills when we can manage it—loud ones when I can’t control myself. Raf coordinates the men, his brain a machine of strategy. Miko moves like a shadow beside me, quick and clean. I’ve always been the messier fighter. I don’t do it to look pretty—I fight to break things.
Evi’s brothers fight, too, side by side with us. Her family has served more as grunts, foot soldiers who handle the messy situations that are too minor to require our attention. But they’re strong, brutal in a way that earns my respect fast.
One of them—Cassio, I think—is especially vicious with a blade. He’s the kind of fighter Miko taught me to be, the kind who doesn’t flinch when he slits a throat, just wipes the blood on his sleeve and keeps moving.
The other, Marco, has a sniper’s calm. He takes his time, waits for the right shot. As we infiltrate the Chiaroscuro grounds, he sticks close to Raf’s side, proving a sufficient bodyguard as well as fighter. Together, Evi’s brothers prove themselves worthy of their new rank.
Still, it costs us.
Every fight leaves bodies on both sides. Men we’ve bled with, men we’ve drunk with—some don’t make it home. And by the final sweep, when Raf finally decides it’s time to take not just the grounds but reclaim our home, I’m running on rage and muscle memory.
The air stinks of smoke and damp stone when we slip back onto the estate grounds. The dark night is thick around us, the moon smothered behind clouds, but the glow of cigarettes betrays guards stationed along the broken walls.
There’s more this time. They must have finally realized we’re not going away.
Raf raises his hand, and the men freeze. His eyes scan the perimeter—always calculating, always cold. “Double what we expected,” he mutters. “They know we’re coming for what’s ours.”
Miko palms his blades, his mouth forming a grim line. “Doesn’t matter. We finish this.”
My pulse pounds, steady and hungry. The beast inside me, the one I’ve kept chained too long, stretches its claws against my ribs. Tonight, it gets fed.
Raf turns his head toward us. “No mistakes. Clear each room, floor by floor. Watch each other’s backs.” His voice drops lower. “Leave no survivors.”
We move creeping in through the tree line, cutting down the farthest guards without a sound. The first wave falls fast—throats cut, muffled grunts swallowed in the dark. We enter through the west side, which gapes open, too exposed to stand a chance without a full regiment of men. We’ve increased ournumbers tonight as well—enough that we can keep the home we intend to reclaim.
And as our forces flood the blackened remains of my father’s bedroom, pouring silently down the hall that leads to the main residence, no one sounds the alarm.
When we breach the cracked double doors of the ballroom, however, the house erupts. Gunfire explodes from the shadows. Plaster bursts from the walls. A man screams, high and sharp, before collapsing at my feet.
“Down!” Raf roars.
We dive behind the splintered remains of a table. Bullets chew into the wood, spitting splinters across my face.
“Fuck—they’ve got numbers,” Miko growls, exchanging his knives for a couple of handguns and snapping a shot that drops one from the balcony above. “At least fifty.”
“Then we kill fifty,” I bite back, teeth bared. My lungs burn with the smell of cordite, my ears ringing with every blast.
Raf leans out, rifle booming. One man drops, then another.
