"I can't tell Dominic," I rasp, leaning into her touch. I'm so goddamn tired of being the keeper of secrets. "If I tell him now, he’ll kill Turi in front of the whole family. It will trigger a civil war we can't afford. Not while the Bellantis are still at the gates."
"Then we wait," she says, her voice firm. "We finish Vane. We clear the path. And then we give your brothers the truth they deserve."
I wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her flush against me. I bury my face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. She’s the only home I have left. The compound feels like a tomb, the family feels cracked open, and she is the only thing keeping me upright.
“I don’t want you near the final site,” I mutter into her skin, my possessiveness flaring. “But I know I need your hands on the system.”
Amara pulls back just enough to look me in the eye. Her expression is a mix of love and that sharp, biting wit. “I'm not running. You need me to bypass the master server, and I'm going.”
"It’s too dangerous," I growl, my hands tightening on her hips. "I almost lost you tonight. I saw those gates open, and all I could think about was you being trapped inside while the world burned. I can't do it again."
"You won't lose me," she says. "Because I'm not running anymore. I'm with the Costas now, Alessio. Whether you like it or not.”
The word hits me like cold water. She’s claiming us. She’s claiming me. Even knowing the rot, she’s choosing to stand in the wreckage.
I kiss her then, a desperate, bruising thing that tastes of salt and smoke. It’s a vow. It’s a prayer.
We stay in the workroom for hours, killing Vane’s network node by node. A relay dies. The map redraws. Amara flags the old warehouse as a lure and Vincenzo confirms the live hub is Wabash. There’s a grim efficiency to our movements. The grief is still there, but it’s been sharpened into a weapon. We are two hunters with one target left.
As the first gray light of dawn begins to bleed through the tall study windows, I walk Amara back to my suite. The house is starting to wake up, the sounds of my brothers moving in the hallways a jarring reminder of the day ahead.
In my bedroom, Amara sits on the edge of the bed, watching me as I check my weapons. My movements are mechanical. Thesilver in my hair catches the morning light. When I look at Amara, I don't feel the weight of the years. I just feel the hunger for a future I never thought I’d see.
"Get some sleep," I tell her, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. "I have to go to the war room. Dominic will be looking for a plan."
"Alessio," she calls out as I reach the door.
I turn back.
"Be careful," she says. "Don't let the dead win."
I nod, the lump in my throat too big to speak past. I walk out into the hallway, pulling the door shut. I head toward the war room, my boots echoing on the hardwood floors, a doctor walking toward a battle he has been dissecting for eleven years.
I pass the basement door. I don't go down. I don't look back. I have a war to finish, a woman to keep beside me, and a family that deserves the truth even if it breaks us first.
The war room is already full. My brothers are gathered around the mahogany tactical table, their faces grim. Dominic is at the head, a map of the South Side spread out before him. He looks up as I enter, his gaze narrowing.
"You look like hell," he says.
"I’m fine," I say, taking my place. “I have the coordinates for Vane’s master server. It’s not the old South Side warehouse. That was a lure. The live hub is South Loop, Wabash.”
Dominic nods, his hand flat on the map. “Then we hit Wabash tonight. We end the financier, freeze the accounts, and use what he gives us to take Lorenzo alive.”
"Tonight," I agree.
The secret weighs heavy in my pocket—the strip I tore from the list before the fire reached Turi’s name. I didn't burn it because I needed to remember. I needed to remember that lovedoes not make betrayal impossible. Sometimes it makes the betrayal worse.
I look around the table at my brothers. Matteo, Dante, Enzo, Santi, Fabio, Vincenzo, Nico, Giovanni. They are my blood. They are my life. When Vane is dead and the switch is gone, I'm going to tell them something that will change everything.
But for now, I look at the map. I look at the plan. And I think about Amara, waiting upstairs, the one place in this house that does not feel like a lie.
The old warehouse was a lure. Wabash is the vein. Tonight, we cut it.
The house is getting ready for war, and it sounds like a heartbeat.
Boots on stairs. Magazines clicking home. The armory door swallowing men two at a time and giving them back heavier. Somewhere below me, Matteo is baking—at ten o'clock at night, before a battle, because that's what his hands do with fear—and the smell of bread drifts up through a house full of guns like a prayer nobody will say out loud.
In four hours, the Costa brothers roll on the South Loop before dawn can reach the city and put a bullet in Alvarado Vane.
