23. Raiden
Chapter 23
Raiden
M idnight settles over the old industrial block like a heavy velvet curtain, muffling distant sounds and swallowing the weak glow of street lamps. I stand beside Lucrezia near the mouth of a deserted warehouse’s loading bay. Her shoulder almost brushes mine, and I can sense a restless energy vibrating through her. She says nothing, and I keep quiet, too, my gaze flicking from shadow to shadow as we wait.
Priest told me not to come alone. He offered the full retinue of the Destroyers, all twenty of our best fighters armed to the teeth. “That Castiglione bastard can kill one of us and get away with it. He can’t kill us all, Raid. Let us go with you.” I told him he could, and then I lied to him about the date and time. I know he cares about Lucrezia and me, but I can’t drag him into this. I can’t drag him down with me. These are my sins to atone for, not his.
Saverio arrives with his men fanning out around us in a careful semicircle, ensuring we’re blocked in on all sides. The street lamps buzz and hum overhead, illuminating every scar on the cracked pavement. The light’s too harsh for this late hour, making everything feel artificial and exposed. His entourage looks crisp but uneasy in their dark suits. A few hands hover near concealed weapons, trying to be subtle about it and failing. Saverio himself stands in front, leaning on a polished mahogany cane with silver fittings. He’s pale beneath his usual olive complexion, crisp white bandages peeking from under his perfectly tailored charcoal suit. The blast took its pound of flesh. He’s weakened and slower, but his eyes still burn bright with that familiar intensity—a predator forced to limp but not defeated, perhaps more dangerous now for having tasted vulnerability.
Raffaele, his hulking bodyguard, stands at his right, eyes like chips of granite scanning the surroundings with mechanical precision. Matteo hovers on the opposite side; hands clasped tightly behind his back, face slack with forced neutrality that barely masks his underlying tension. My stomach clenches and twists at the sight of them, these men who have made an art form out of power and intimidation.
“Lucrezia,” Saverio says, voice quiet and cutting through the silence like a blade. Each syllable feels deliberate. He taps his cane softly against the concrete, a subtle metronome keeping time with his pain. “I’m disappointed to see you stoop to such barbarity. But I suppose I should’ve expected as much.”
Lucrezia doesn’t flinch. Her posture is regal, her chin raised slightly, her jacket collar casting a faint shadow on her face. I stand a half-step behind her, my arms crossed, trying to blend tension and readiness into a calm facade. My heart hammers a quiet rhythm, and my knuckles itch for the reassuring weight of skin slamming into skin.
Saverio’s men close ranks behind him, forming a loose wall of dark suits and squared shoulders. He inhales slowly, grimacing as if the very air hurts. “You know I have to make you pay for what you’ve done,” he says, each word falling like lead between us. “There’s no room for mercy here.”
Lucrezia tilts her head, eyes narrowing but still calm, a predator assessing her prey. The silk of her jacket rustles softly as she shifts her weight. “Do what you must,” she replies, voice steady.
My attention shifts as Saverio’s gaze slides to Matteo. The temperature seems to drop several degrees. He jerks his chin toward Lucrezia’s informant, the gesture sharp and dismissive. “Matteo, step out.” He knows. How long has he known? How long has he been aware of this man’s betrayal?
Matteo tenses, confusion rippling over his features like water disturbed by a stone. But he obeys, moving forward without question. The hush is absolute. I can smell the faint scent of oil and dust from the old warehouse, the distant rot of garbage in a nearby alley, and something else—fear, perhaps, seeping from Matteo’s pores as understanding slowly dawns in his eyes. His boss knows what he’s done; and knows that he’s responsible for what happened.
Once Matteo stands before the men, Saverio flicks a glance at Raffaele. “Kill the traitor,” he orders, delivering the command with the same casual indifference one might use to request coffee.
The words drop like a stone in a still pond. Raffaele doesn’t hesitate—there isn’t even a flicker of emotion on his face as he does what he’s told. He lunges forward, scarred fists striking bone and flesh in a brutal rhythm. The sound is sickening—wet thuds, muffled gasps, the sharp crack of ribs giving way beneath trained knuckles. Matteo tries to shield himself with trembling arms and tries to beg through bloodied lips, but Saverio has made his decision and nothing will change it now. The man’s desperate pleas turn to choked cries, then to wretched gurgling as blood fills his throat. I watch from my position, fists clenching and unclenching at my sides, not sure what I feel: disgust at the raw violence, pity, or a cold acceptance that this is how these monsters settle their accounts.
I risk a glance at Lucrezia. She watches impassively, jaw tight but eyes dispassionate, as if assessing a painting rather than witnessing a murder. There’s no flicker of regret or mercy, not even the smallest twitch of discomfort as another bone snaps with a sound like dry kindling. Kristopher was right: she has a ruthless streak, but perhaps not the way he imagined—this is something colder, more calculated than simple cruelty. She stands still, hands clasped loosely at her waist, silent as Matteo’s life leaks out onto the concrete. The overhead lights cast strange shadows across her face, making her expression even more removed from the brutality unfolding before us.
A hollow ache stirs in me, a longing for something I can’t name—maybe a simpler life, a world where people don’t treat murder like currency. Maybe I long for a time before I got tangled in this vendetta. The shock of violence should make me recoil, but I’ve seen worse, done worse in dark alleys and abandoned warehouses like this one. Still, it hits me differently now. Each crunch and splatter echoes with a terrible intimacy I can’t shake. Matteo’s moans fade to nothing, like a radio being slowly turned down, and soon, his body goes limp, an unrecognizable heap of torn flesh and shattered bone sprawled beneath the harsh fluorescent lights like a broken marionette.
Raffaele straightens, methodically wiping his bloodied knuckles on a crisp white handkerchief he produces from his tailored suit pocket. He steps back into place at Saverio’s side, pointedly ignoring the glistening crimson smear left behind on the concrete.
Saverio turns back to Lucrezia, his shoulders squared despite the obvious pain it causes him. “Any questions about what happens if you continue this barrage on my empire?” His voice is raw, scraping like steel on stone. He stands there like a wounded animal baring its fangs in the moonlight, desperate to show strength despite the bandages visible beneath his collar and the way he favors his left side.
Lucrezia doesn’t blink. “No,” she says simply, the single syllable sharp as a blade. “I understand.” Her hands remain perfectly still at her sides, neither flinching nor reaching for the weapon they all know she carries.
For a moment, Saverio seems satisfied. He nods, but it’s a shallow gesture. I think this is it: that we’ll be dismissed and allowed to slink back into the night. But Saverio isn’t finished. He leans slightly forward, gripping his cane until his knuckles whiten. “Why, Lucrezia? Why are you doing this? What did I ever do to deserve this betrayal from my own flesh and blood?”
She looks at him, and something shifts in the air. Her voice is low and measured, carrying old wounds and old truths. “What did I do to deserve our father’s ire? To deserve punishment where my brothers received praise? To earn abuse where you all got love?”
Her words hang there, tangled with the scent of blood and decay. Saverio’s face twists, confusion flooding his eyes as if seeing a stranger wearing his sister’s face. Raffaele stiffens at his side, uncertain, his hand twitching toward the pistol at his hip before falling away. The men behind them exchange glances, their loyalties wavering in the face of this family’s exposed wounds. The moonlight catches the silver threads in Saverio’s hair, making him look older and more vulnerable than he has all night.
Lucrezia presses on, stepping closer to the boundary between them. “I wanted to help the family grow. I wanted to be part of it, to learn what you learned, to understand what made us powerful. But father never allowed it. He beat the curiosity out of me with his fists and his words. He taught you all that I was a liability, that I deserved no place at the table where you broke bread and made plans. I never wanted to kill you, Saverio. I never wanted to rule. I only wanted to belong.”
Her voice cracks, just a hairline fracture beneath the steel of her words. The difference is subtle but shatters something invisible between them like a thread snapping after years of strain. Saverio’s eyes flicker with recognition, seeing her for the first time past the fog of childhood propaganda. The misogynistic teachings of their father, the lies and stigma that kept them apart, unfold in his mind like poisoned origami, and I watch as realization dawns in slow, painful increments across his weathered features. He seems smaller somehow, weaker not just from the blast but from the weight of truth crushing decades of certainty to dust. The sister he feared all these years was never a monster lurking in shadows; she was just a girl starved for acceptance in a kingdom that worshipped only sons, that measured worth in testosterone and tradition.
We stand there, me on the fringes, witnessing this quiet cataclysm. The tension between them is charged with regret and missed opportunities, decades of misunderstandings crystallized in a single moment. I hold my breath, sensing we’re at a crossroads where everything could shatter or heal. Saverio’s men shift uneasily, unsure how to respond to this new narrative that challenges everything they’ve been taught to believe.
But Lucrezia steps back, her posture straight and unapologetic, a queen despite her exile. Her father’s sins and Saverio’s complicity have all been brought to the surface and laid bare like bones bleached by an unforgiving sun. In the silence, I see something crumble in Saverio’s eyes. Maybe he regrets what he has done, what they all did in the name of tradition. Maybe he understands that fear and cruelty built this legacy, brick by poisoned brick, and now it teeters on the edge of collapse.
He doesn’t speak. Perhaps words fail him, or perhaps there are no words in any language to bridge this gulf of pain and betrayal. Instead, he just stands there, a man discovering his compass has pointed north to cruelty all along. Their father’s ghost hovers between us, a silent judge, his shadow long enough to darken this moment of reckoning between his children.
Lucrezia turns on her heel, shoulders straight and head high. “We’re done here,” she says. She walks away, and I follow, my heart strangely heavy in my chest. Saverio’s men part to let us pass, their faces carefully blank, trained to show nothing.
As we step into the night, the cold air hits me again, but I barely notice it bite through my jacket. My mind replays Lucrezia’s words, the raw honesty that rattled Saverio’s foundation and shook loose the mortar of his certainties. As we climb onto my bike, Lucrezia says nothing, her movements precise and controlled. I feel her warmth against my back and sense the brittle calm in her silence.
And I realize something: everything I’ve witnessed tonight—Matteo’s brutal death, Saverio’s bewildered fury, Lucrezia’s quiet confession—has changed all of us. Their father’s lies are out in the open now, and we can’t pretend we don’t see them; we can’t stuff them back into their comfortable shadows.
I rev the engine, the roar shattering the hush like thunder. We ride away, leaving Saverio and his bleeding legacy behind.