He doesn’t look like a monster. He doesn’t look like the man who could erase a family with a stroke of a pen. He looks like an old man caught with blood under his nails.
It makes me want to scream.
“Dominic,” Lorenzo says, his voice quavering. He tries to stand, but Santi shoves him back into the chair with a brutal hand to the shoulder. “We can talk about this. The routes, the money… I can give you everything.”
“You already gave us everything, Lorenzo,” Dominic says, stepping into the light. He looks around the room, his gaze lingering on the bloodstains that are surely still etched into the floorboards beneath the cheap carpet. “You gave us twenty years of empty chairs. You gave us the holes at our table. You gave us Turi’s soul.”
I push past Fabio, ignoring the way he tries to block my path. I need to see him. I need to see the man who thought forty thousand dollars was a fair price for Curtis’s laugh. I need to see the man who made me a runner.
“Who are you?” Lorenzo blinks at me, his lip curling in a brief flash of the arrogance that must have fueled his rise. “One of their strays?”
“My name is Amara Osei,” I say, and the name feels like a slammed door in the small room. “You don’t know me. But you knew my brother. Curtis Osei. Your empire paid to have him executed because he found the trail you thought you’d buried.”
Lorenzo’s eyes flicker. For a second, just a heartbeat, I see the recognition. He remembers the name. He remembers the problem his machine had neutralized.
“Business,” he mutters, leaning back. “It was just business, girl. Your brother shouldn’t have been looking where he wasn’t invited.”
Alessio goes very still, which is worse. He lunges across the desk, his hand wrapping around Lorenzo’s throat before the old man can even gasp. The chair screeches against the floor as Alessio slams him back against the wall.
“Don’t call her that,” Alessio hisses, his face inches from Lorenzo’s. “She dismantled your empire while you hid in the dark. Your accounts are empty because of her. Your exits are gone because of her.”
The possessiveness in Alessio’s voice is a living thing, a feral shield he’s wrapped around me. He’s not just defending his family. He’s defending my grief. He’s standing inside my vendetta with me.
“Let him go, Alessio,” Dominic says quietly.
Alessio hesitates, his muscles coiling, his fingers twitching with the urge to snap the old man’s neck right there. But he slowly relaxes his grip, letting Lorenzo slump back into the chair. He doesn’t move far, though. He stays right there, a dark sentinel between me and the man who broke my world.
Dominic looks at each of his brothers. This is the moment they’ve waited for. The end of the war. But there’s no joy in his expression. Only a deep, weary sadness.
“We do this right,” Dominic says. “We do this for the ones who aren’t here.”
He looks at me, then at the others.
“Name them,” Dominic commands.
“Igor Costa,” Dominic says, his voice ringing out in the cramped office. “Victoria Costa.”
“Carlo Costa,” Alessio says, his voice cracking on his father’s name. I see the way his hand shakes, just a fraction, before he steadies it. “Riza Costa.”
Matteo’s mouth twists around the name before he forces it out. “Turi.”
The names hang in the air, heavy and solid. They are more than just words. They are the cost of this victory. They are the weight we’ve all been carrying.
Dominic looks at me. He doesn’t have to say it. He’s opening the circle. He’s telling me I belong here.
“Curtis Osei,” I say. My voice is small at first, but I find the strength. “Curtis Osei. He loved jazz, and he hated the rain, and he was the only person who ever made me feel like I didn’t have to run.”
The silence that follows is deafening. It’s louder than the rain. It’s louder than the heavy breathing of the men in the room. It’s the sound of a debt finally being named.
Lorenzo looks at us, and finally, he looks truly afraid. He sees that he’s not facing a rival family. He’s facing a force of nature. He’s facing the consequences of twenty years of cruelty.
“Please,” he whispers.
“You didn’t give them a ‘please’, Lorenzo,” Dominic says.
The arrest is quick. It’s not a spectacle. It’s a quiet, grim necessity. The brothers move with synchronized precision, stripping Lorenzo of his weapon, binding his hands, and dragging him out alive. I turn away, not because I can’t watch, but because I don’t need to see his fear to know he has finally felt it. I’ve seen enough blood to last a lifetime. I’ve seen enough death to fill a hundred warehouses.
I walk out of the office and back into the main bay of the warehouse. The air is cold and damp, but it feels cleaner than the room I just left. I walk toward the open loading dock, watching the rain veil the city in grey.
