I look at her, and fear hits me so hard I nearly mistake it for control. I want to put walls between her and the world. I want to make safety simple, even though she has never been simple. But she isn’t a trophy to be hidden. She is my partner. She is the woman who found the truth when I was too blinded by loyalty to see it.
“Stay with me,” I say, and force my hand to loosen before fear turns into something that hurts her. I need to feel her pulse. I need to know she’s real and alive in a world that just turned into a graveyard.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, her voice steady. She reaches up and wipes a smudge of Turi’s blood from my jaw. Her touch is a silent anchor. “Let’s finish it, Alessio. For Carlo. For Riza. For Curtis. For everyone this war has taken.”
Dominic steps forward, his presence commanding the space. He looks at Turi one last time, then turns to the rest of us. The time for mourning hasn’t arrived. We are in the middle of the storm, and the only way out is through the heart of the enemy.
“Load up,” Dominic orders. “Every able man. We end this today. We end the Bellantis at the place where they tried to end us. Anyone who raises a weapon dies. Lorenzo comes home breathing.”
The brothers move as one. The shock of the betrayal has been forged into a singular, lethal purpose. We are the Costas, and theworld is about to remember why that name was whispered in fear for generations.
I lead Amara toward the SUVs, her hand in mine until we reach the convoy. The vibration of the compound hums through my boots—the sound of magazines being slammed into rifles, the heavy thud of boots on stone, the low drone of engines idling. It’s the sound of a family going to war.
At the SUV, I stop long enough to turn toward her, my forehead lowering to hers. I don’t care about the mission for this one, selfish second. I lean down, my forehead resting against hers.
“If anything happens?—”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” she says, her hands coming up to frame my face. “And nothing is going to happen to you. You hear me? You’re the one who keeps everyone alive, Alessio. Today, you just worry about ending the man who started all of this. I’ll be your eyes. I’ll be your back. We do this together.”
I kiss her with a desperation that has no room left for pride. I don’t need words for home or vows. I need the friction of her breath against mine to remind me I’m still standing. I need the fire in her to burn away the cold of Turi’s skin.
“We stay together,” I say against her mouth.
“I’m right here,” she whispers back.
I pull away, the black hole of my rage focusing into a laser-fine point. I open the door for her, watching as she slides into the seat, her laptop bag clutched in her lap. She is the most brilliant woman I have ever known, and today, she is the mind that will dismantle what is left of a criminal empire.
I climb into the driver’s seat, my hands gripping the wheel. The blood has dried on my skin, a dark, stiff reminder of what I lost minutes ago. I don’t wash it off. I want to feel it. I want toremember every drop of Turi’s sacrifice and every ounce of his treachery.
The convoy moves out, a line of black armor cutting through the gray Chicago morning. We aren’t the police. We aren’t the feds. We are the sons of the people Lorenzo Bellanti thought he buried twenty years ago, and we are coming to take him alive.
23
AMARA
The smellof rotting wood and ancient oil hits me first, a thick, cloying blanket that tastes like the end of something. Rain drums a frantic, uneven rhythm against the corrugated steel roof of the warehouse, sounding like a thousand nervous fingers tapping for a way out.
This is the place. The South Side tomb where Carlo Costa was lured into a trap, and where the patriarch whose empire paid for my brother’s death is currently hiding like a rat in a sewer.
I step over a rusted chain, my boots crunching on gravel and broken glass. Alessio is a storm at my side, but not a quiet one. He’s a storm held in check by a thin wire of discipline, his breathing shallow and jagged. He doesn’t look at me, but his hand brushes my elbow once, just enough to remind me we move together.
He’s been like this since we left the compound—feral, silent, and vibrating with a frequency that makes my teeth ache. Turi is dead, buried under the weight of his own secrets, and the man responsible for so much of the blood on these floors is ten feet behind a reinforced door.
“Left shoulder,” Alessio says. “If I move, you move.” It’s a low growl that vibrates through my skin.
“I didn’t come here to watch your back from the parking lot, Alessio,” I snap back, though my voice is a whisper. My heart is frantic, but my hands are steady. I’ve lived for this. I’ve survived a decade of lonely apartments, cold coffee, and the crushing weight of a folder marked ‘Unsolved’ for this exact moment.
“I’m not losing you where I lost my father,” he counters. The raw trauma in his voice is a jagged blade. He doesn’t say he’s scared. He doesn’t have to. The way his fingers dig into the leather of his holster says everything.
The other brothers move through the dark in a practiced line. Dominic is at the front, his face a mask of cold, unrelenting stone. Matteo is a step behind him, his eyes red-rimmed but his grip on his weapon white-knuckled. There’s no shouting. There’s no dramatic music. There’s only the sound of the rain and the heavy, suffocating weight of history.
We reach the loading bay office. The door is steel, dented and scarred, but it’s the only thing in this warehouse that looks like it’s been touched in the last decade. Vincenzo holds up a hand, three fingers, then two, then one.
The explosion isn’t loud—a controlled pop that blows the hinges and sends the door sagging inward.
Alessio moves before the smoke can even clear. He’s a blur of dark clothes and lethal intent. I’m right on his heels, ignoring the burn in my lungs. The office is small, cramped, and smells like expensive cigars and cheap fear.
Lorenzo Bellanti is sitting behind a desk that probably cost more than my first car. He’s older than I expected. His hair is a shock of white, his skin like crumpled parchment, and his eyes are wide, darting between the armed men filling his tiny kingdom.
