Chapter 37
Lucia
The world narrowsto a single point of black metal pressed into my son’s hair. Everything else becomes background noise. Guards, radios, the wind lifting over the drive, the distant mechanical hum of the estate that has no idea what’s happening at its front steps.
Nico is crying, but he’s trying not to. He’s doing that thing children do when they sense the adults are breaking. Making themselves smaller in their own bodies, holding their breath like quiet might save them. His shoulders shake against Marco’s arm. His little fingers flutter toward his ear, touch it, retreat, and touch it again, like his body is trying to soothe itself in the only way it knows.
And he looks at Turo. Not at me. Not at the gun. At Turo. The way children look for the person they believe can make the world safe again.
“Papa,” he whispers.
Marco hears it, and something inside him snaps. Fractures. His mouth twists into nearly a smile. His eyes go glassy, unfocused, like he’s slipping somewhere private and violent. The gun presses harder into Nico’s head, enough that Nico whimpers in pain.
“You ruined my life!” Marco screams a second later, spit flying. “Both of you! You erased me!”
His finger curls tighter. I see it clearly now. The trigger isn’t just trembling. It’s resetting. Testing resistance. Practicing.
I can’t move. Not because my legs won’t obey, but because every muscle in me is calculating the same terrible math: one wrong motion, and my son dies.
My hands lift slowly, empty, visible. My body’s old instinct is to show I’m not a threat. As if appeasing him will make him human again.
It won’t.
Marco laughs suddenly, sharp and wrong. “You know what’s funny?” he says, breath reeking of alcohol. “I didn’t even mean to come here to kill him.”
My blood turns to ice.
“But now?” His eyes flick down to Nico. “Now I think maybe I should.”
“No,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
Marco’s head snaps toward me. His smile widens. “See?” he says. “That’s power.”
I watch his finger. It’s not just twitching now. It’s committing. Pressure building, release imminent, like he’s daring the universe to stop him. I watch the vein in his neck pulse. I watch the sweat drip into his eyes and not slow him down.
And I watch Turo. Because if anyone is going to end this, it will be him. Turo stands a few steps away, hands open, posture loose enough to seem harmless. His voice stays even. The tone men use when they’re trying to keep a bomb from noticing it’s a bomb.
But his eyes are locked. Calculating. Cold. Measuring angles, distance, time to impact. The don is fully there now.
Behind Marco, barely visible unless you know where to look, I see it, too. A guard shifting position, silent, precise, sliding into the blind angle created by the service vehicle. Close enough now to touch Marco if he turns even a fraction.
My stomach flips.
This is ending.
Now.
Marco suddenly presses the gun harder, grinding the barrel into Nico’s scalp until he cries out.
“Stop crying!” Marco shouts. “You’re going to make me mess this up!”
Nico sobs harder. Marco’s chest heaves. His breath turns ragged, feral.
“Marco,” Turo says. “Look at me.”
Marco’s head jerks toward him, eyes wild.
“Not him,” Turo continues. “Me.”
