**Valentino**
It was early morning, the kind where the sky bled a faint, bruised blue along the horizon, like it hadn't decided yet whether to wake up or stay dead. The air was cold enough to bite, but beneath it, I felt... good. Strangely good. A stillness in my chest that didn't belong in a world like ours. For once, it felt like today might offer more than blood, tension, and the kind of silence that settles after the worst kinds of news.
I was supposed to meet Dahlia at the gym. Maybe throw a few dry jokes her way to soften the edge she always carried. Then I'd check in with Antonio. Routine. Familiar. Safe.
A wave of heat suddenly coiled up my spine, wrong and cloying like the breath of something ancient crawling just beneath my skin. My palms slicked with sweat. The taste of iron hit the back of my throat, and I staggered for a second, nauseous without cause. It felt like the world had tilted just slightly out of alignment.
A fever, or a warning. I didn't know which.
I called Gio, voice low but tight, every word laced with a tension I tried to hide. He answered with his usual calm. Antonio and the family were fine. Nothing unusual. No threats. No problems.
So why the hell did it feel like the ground was already cracking beneath my feet?
I hung up and tried to breathe, my chest tight. "Fuck this, Val. Enjoy your day," I muttered like a charm against the weight pressing down on me.
I threw on clothes, still damp from the cold air that seeped through the cracks in the windows, and headed to the gym. The streets were quiet, too quiet. No sirens, no traffic chaos. Just the occasional hiss of a streetlamp flickering out. The world was holding its breath, and so was I.
As I neared the door, I spotted her.
Dahlia.
Walking with her shoulders squared, her long black coat catching the wind like a cape. Her face was unreadable, cut from stone. But behind her, moving slow, and careful was a car.
My stomach sank. Something was off.
I called out, urgency slicing into the morning calm like a blade through silk. Dahlia turned, quick, eyes sharp. She slipped into the gym, and I slammed the door shut behind her, locking it with trembling fingers.
She was safe. For now.
But I knew what came next. I had to put my damn underboss cap on and deal with it. "I know how to fix this problem."
I reassured myself even when that tight sinking feeling was still knotting my insides.
The car rolled up, smooth and slow, arrogant as hell. Like it believed the street belonged to it. The tires whispered against the damp concrete. I stepped into its path, hand raised. Outwardly calm. Inwardly, my heartbeat was thundering and I could barely hear over the roar in my ears.
The rear window creaked down.
Arthur's face appeared, smug and rotten like something left too long in the sun. A damn ghost. His greying auburn hair tucked beneath that same damned flat cap. Grey tailored coat. Clean, expensive. Hollow. He looked like a walking corpse in a gentleman's costume.
His eyes met mine.
They should've been dead eyes. He shouldn't be breathing..
Then my eyes slowly slid to the man beside him, cradling a camera. The screen still lit—an image of Dahlia glowing faintly from it.
My stomach turned to lead.
In our world, a picture isn't just a picture. It's a mark.
It's a death sentence wrapped in pixels.
That's how the mafia works, you see.
Once a picture is taken, a life is taken along with it.
There were no words left to say. No warnings to give.
Family comes first. Always.
I pulled my pistol, the metal warm from my skin, familiar like an old scar. Instinct did the rest.
Three slugs ripped through Arthur's face, bone and blood painting the backseat in a grotesque mural of his last mistake. One more for the man holding the camera, his finger still hovering near the shutter. Then one final shot into the lens itself, right where the memory card would've been.
No hesitation. No regret.
Because this was my mess.
And I clean up my own blood.
I straightened, jaw locked tight, and looked one last time at what remained of Graves. His expression, what was left of it, was frozen in shock. Eyes wide, mouth parted like he hadn't expected death to come from the front this time.
I turned and walked back into the gym, the heavy door groaning behind me. I hoped Dahlia was still there, safe, and maybe wouldn't ask too many questions.
But the moment stuck to me, thick and choking. It clung like smoke, burned into my skin, curled behind my eyes, and soured the back of my throat. Blood pulsed through my head louder than my steps. Louder than reason.
Something dark had followed me inside, and I could feel it watching.
I looked around. Nothing. No sign of her.
My pulse kicked up. Was she alright?
I slid my phone from my pocket and checked the screen. Five unread messages.
She had taken the back exit. Said there was a work emergency. Told me to text her when I got back. Said she wanted to talk.
That one hit harder than it should have.
She wanted to talk.
She knew. Maybe not everything, but enough to paint Antonio and me in enemy colors.
But I never saw her that way.
There was something about her. Something raw. Sharp around the edges. She wore that badge like a wall, but beneath it was a shadow just like ours. Whether she knew it or not, that darkness belonged in her too she just hadn't walked in the same shade we had.
And that darkness made her his.
Antonio's.
She was his balance. His blade. His goddamned grounding and the only thing that might ever anchor him to something real I had no regrets. Not for setting them up. Not for pushing them toward each other like fate owed them one reckless shot at something more.
Those two were chaos wrapped in skin. And they fit. They just needed the push.
"La nostra famiglia cresce," I muttered with a small smile to no one while thumbing out a quick reply.
Our family grows.
The rest of the day passed like a bad habit. The cops came by, asked questions they didn't really want answers to. I played dumb, shrugged like it wasn't my problem. Two dead men weren't news. Not here. To them it was two less known criminals on their streets making more paperwork for them to fill out.
It didn't matter. Not in a city built on rot. This place was decomposing in real time, and no one was stopping the worms.
The law would always be fucked because people were and that was the truth of it.
By the time the sun dipped below the skyline, I locked up, slung my bag over my shoulder, and started walking. No need for the car. The streets were mine tonight and I needed to get rid of this anxious knot that's been killing me all day.
Twilight bled across the sky, painting it in shades of smoke and ash. The streetlights blinked to life like tired eyes. A dog barked. A kid cried. A woman laughed too loudly through an open window, the sound echoing against brick. Shop doors closed with the finality of prison gates and restaurant signs lit up in neon. The city hummed to life with its nightlife. A whole other world to it's day time setting.
I stopped outside a little café. The smell of espresso and chocolate drifted out through the half-cracked door. Warm. Familiar. Human. That may be what I needed right now. To feel human after doing something so inhuman.
Caffè mocha.
Always my weakness.
One last taste of warmth before—
The world tore open.
Fire erupted through my back first, so sudden and violent it didn't even register as pain at first, just pure shock, a raw force that buckled my spine and tore the breath straight from my lungs. I lurched forward, the ground tipping at a sickening angle beneath my boots, and before I could catch myself, another burst of molten agony punched into my chest, sharper, deeper, like something was carving me open from the inside.
My mouth opened on instinct, gasping for air that refused to come, replaced only by a high-pitched, shattering ring that swallowed everything-the city noise, the distant bark of dogs, the low rumble of traffic-all gone, as if the world had been vacuumed into silence.
I looked down, blinking against the blurring edges of my vision.
My white shirt was no longer white. It bloomed red, a deep, violent stain spreading outwards with terrifying speed, like watching a flower unfurl in time-lapse, beautiful and grotesque at once. The warmth of my own blood soaked through the fabric, sticky against my skin, and a wave of nausea crashed into me, forcing me to stumble.
The image of the café twisted in my failing sight, warping from a cozy, flickering storefront into an endless stretch of cold concrete. The tall buildings loomed above me now, their black silhouettes cutting jagged shapes into the night sky, framed by the dim smog-choked glow of streetlights that flickered against a canvas of restless, rolling clouds.
Somewhere beyond the ringing, I could hear screams but they were distant, muted, like echoes underwater and honestly they barely registered.
And then he stepped into view.
The figure that emerged was both familiar and wrong, a ghost cut from the same rot as the man I had gunned down earlier that morning.
Cold grey eyes locked onto mine. They were icy and unblinking, colder than Arthur's had ever been. Younger too, sharper, leaner, a coiled spring of violence wrapped in human skin. He was tall, with a broad-shouldered, wiry frame, the black leather of his jacket clinging to his body like armor. His jaw was set hard, mouth twisted into a smirk that dripped venom, and his auburn hair, darker and less faded than his father's, was buzzed short on the sides but messily tousled on top, damp from either sweat or rain.
The faint city light caught on the scar that slashed diagonally across the bridge of his nose, an ugly reminder of whatever battles had carved him into this. And there, inked bold and unapologetic along the side of his neck, was the Graves family crest. The crest was a savage-looking thing that seemed more like a damned branding mark—screaming loyalty to a dead legacy.
He tilted his head slightly, studying me like a butcher might study a slab of meat before the final cut.
Aiden Graves.
The son of the man I had killed.
Twice.
Only this time, Arthur wasn't going to claw his way back out of the grave.
This time, it was sticking.
The realization settled in my gut like ice. Heavy. Unforgiving. There would be no outrunning this. No bargaining. No mercy.
Through the static flooding my ears and the fire gutting my chest, a single thought anchored itself stubbornly in the flood of everything slipping away.
At least I protected them.
My family. Because protecting Dahlia was protecting Antonio.
That would have to be enough.
"Nothing personal," Aiden said, his voice sharp and cutting, the kind of venom that didn't just kill but mocked you as it seeped in.
He grinned then, wide and cruel, teeth flashing beneath the dim, sputtering glow of the streetlights, as if he was savoring every second of watching me fall apart.
"Actually," he said, stepping closer with a slow, deliberate swagger that pressed against the edges of my fading awareness, "it is personal. Rot in hell, you piece of shit."
His words hung heavy between us, thick and final, heavier than the blood soaking into the cracked concrete beneath me.
He looked at me like I was already dead, like I was nothing more than a pile of broken bones and wasted breath. Maybe that was all I was now. Maybe I had already crossed over and just hadn't caught up to it yet.
I fought to lift my head, muscles straining against the pull of gravity, to meet his cold grey stare one last time.
"See you there," I rasped, my voice shredded and foreign, more like a thought escaping my cracked lips than a real sound. I wasn't even sure if he heard it or if it only echoed in the hollow space inside my skull.
I thought he might have spat, the motion lost somewhere in the haze. Maybe at my feet, maybe at the stain my life was becoming on the sidewalk. I could not be sure anymore.
All I could see were the stars above, faint and struggling against the thick clouds and sickly orange city light. They flickered like dying embers, smothered by smoke, disappearing one by one into the dark.
The sky tilted again, the sharp edges of the buildings framing it leaning in like grave markers.
The pavement was cold beneath me, rough and wet where my blood had begun to pool. The chill bit through my soaked clothes, threading up my spine until it settled deep in my chest like a stone.
My blood was still warm where it spilled out in thick rivulets, but the rest of me was already fading, inch by inch, and I was getting so cold.
And God, I was tired.
Tired in a way that had nothing to do with the pain tearing me apart. It was an exhaustion that lived in the marrow, a slow crumbling that even death could not hurry along fast enough.
Still, one savage comfort held firm in the hollow beating of my slowing heart.
I would not be here to see what Antonio would become after this.
Would not be here when the dam inside him finally burst.
Because he would not just retaliate. He would raze the earth.
It would not be war.
It would be a massacre that no soul would escape. Innocent and sinners alike would have their blood mix and fill the sidewalk gutters. Rain would slick the rooftops and wash the alleys, but it would not cleanse anything. It would only carry the wreckage further into the heart of the city.
Dahlia...
I prayed she could stop him, prayed she could hold him back from the edge he had already spent most of his life standing on.
She was all he had left now.
The weight in my chest grew heavier, dragging my breath down with it. My vision blurred at the edges, the world shrinking to a narrow tunnel of flickering light and darkness.
My thoughts slowed, pulling apart and twisting into shapes I could no longer recognize.
Damn.
Guess my time's up.
And then, just like the clouds swallowing the last fragile glimmer of starlight, the darkness took me.
I love you, brother.