Chapter 32 Rafe #2
Because I know exactly where that snake ran. He’s not stupid. He’s worse—he’s a coward. And cowards always crawl home to Daddy.
To Leonardo fucking Bellini.
Let’s see if Daddy’s house still feels safe when I tear the fucking walls down.
The tires scream the entire way to the estate.
Bellini property sits like a king’s carcass sprawled across a hill—gold gates gleaming under floodlights, marble steps rising in perfect symmetry, stone lions polished so obsessively they shine like sins no one ever dared punish.
It’s old money wrapped in fresh blood, mafia-baroque excess in every carved detail.
Every inch whispers legacy, fear, power. I don’t care.
I storm through the gates without waiting for clearance. No call ahead. No slowdown. No request. The guards try to stop me. They don’t succeed.
One reaches for his weapon—he’s still reaching when my fist connects with his throat and he drops like a sack of shame at my feet. The others scatter, weapons half-drawn but suddenly forgotten. They know better. They’ve seen this look on me before.
I am not the calm man at the net anymore. I am rage in black tape and blood.
I kick the front doors open—hard. The impact echoes through marble like a shotgun blast.
The Bellini house freezes.
Servants halt mid-step. Bottles stop pouring. Conversations die in half-formed sentences. Even the air seems to choke on itself, thick and still. Leonardo’s estate doesn’t get stormed. It gets kissed, bowed to, offered tribute.
Not today.
“EZIOOOOOO!” I sing, voice high, manic, echoing.
“Come to papa!” The sound ricochets off the walls like laughter from a haunted house.
I walk slow now. Deliberate. One hand resting against the grip of the gun at my back.
The other loose at my side like I’m still deciding what bone I want to break first.
The Bellini household staff backs up like shadows. Someone from the west corridor flinches. A cousin? A lawyer? Doesn’t matter.
“I want him now,” I bark. “Or I start redecorating.”
Leonardo Bellini descends the marble stairs as if this is just another quiet evening, unruffled, unrushed—like I didn’t just blow his front doors off their hinges, like I’m not standing in the foyer of his empire with blood drying on my hands, a gun heavy on my hip, and murder clawing up my lungs.
“My boy,” he says, voice calm, low, civil in that unnerving way only men like him can sustain. “What is going on?”
I don’t hesitate. “Your fucking son poisoned Julian!” I snarl, pointing with the same hand that could snap a neck if it weren’t trembling with raw, shaking fury.
Leonardo pauses, one foot still resting on the staircase.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t recoil. He regards me the way a man studies a loaded revolver left carelessly on a dinner table—calculating, detached.
He raises an eyebrow, then speaks again, voice colder now, edges honed sharper than glass.
“Ezio.” A single beat of silence. “Come downstairs. Right now.”
The pause that follows could tear cities in half.
And then—there he is.
Ezio Bellini. Golden boy. Porcelain prince. His smile has vanished, his swagger evaporated. He stands at the top of the stairs like he’s only now realizing the house he crawled back to isn’t a sanctuary—it’s a goddamn courtroom, and the verdict is already written in the blood on my knuckles.
The second I see him, I go feral.
My gun is out, up, sight locked, barrel aimed dead center between his fucking eyes. He jerks back a step.
“He died,” I growl, voice ragged and burning through my throat like acid. “Julian died in my arms, and you’re going to fucking pay, you jealous little bitch!”
Ezio stumbles back another step. Leonardo doesn’t move to stop me. Doesn’t even blink.
I start climbing—slow, deliberate—one foot at a time, gun steady, never wavering. Every step is a promise carved into the marble.
Ezio stands frozen in a half-buttoned silk shirt, barefoot, defenseless, trembling behind that perfect jaw and coward’s mouth.
“Stay there,” I snarl. “Stay right fucking there.”
He opens his mouth. I don’t wait to hear whatever privileged, snake-mouthed apology is about to slither out.
I cross the last few steps in a blur—grab him by the collar, slam him back against the nearest column so hard the plaster cracks—and shove the gun into his mouth.
Ezio gags around the barrel, chokes, eyes wide and watering, lips split, teeth scraping steel. He can’t speak now. Good. I don’t want words. I want truth.
“You think this house saves you?” I hiss, voice so low it vibrates in my throat like thunder trapped in smoke. “You think Daddy’s throne makes you untouchable?”
His fingers claw weakly at my forearm, nails scraping skin, desperate and useless.
I slam him harder into the wall, the impact reverberating through marble and bone.
“He died in my arms, you fucking piece of shit!” I shout, the words tearing louder now, fury cracking open into something sharper, more dangerous—grief.
“Julian flatlined. Cold. Blue. Foaming at the fucking mouth. And you did that.”
Ezio gurgles something incoherent, eyes wet now. Not with remorse. Not with shame. With fear. Finally.
I lean in closer, shoving the barrel deeper into his throat until his gag reflex stutters and spasms. I whisper it like a promise carved from bone. “Admit it.”
A beat. His eyes dart to Leonardo, pleading. “Don’t look at him,” I snarl. “Look at me.”
Another second. Another twitch of his jaw. Then—he nods. Once. Tight. Barely there. But enough.
The trigger clicks—right at the edge of breaking. He flinches hard. Whimpers. His knees buckle beneath him.
I let the barrel rest there, a single breath away from annihilation, and whisper, “Run. You ever look at him again—breathe near him—I’ll make you swallow something worse than lead.”
Then I rip the gun out of his mouth.
He collapses in a heap. A Bellini—coughing, choking, crying against his father’s polished floor.
And I would’ve ended it there. Gun still warm in my hand, blood still singing in my ears, eyes still full of Julian—twitching in my arms, mouth foaming, ribs stuttering to a stop.
I would’ve walked away and left Ezio breathing just long enough to drown in regret every time he tried to swallow.
But then Leonardo steps forward.
Still calm. Still regal. Still fucking terrifying in the way only men who’ve outlived every bullet can be. He looks down at his son—not like a boy anymore, but like a stain that needs scrubbing out. “Ezio.”
Ezio tries to lift his head, lip split and bleeding from the impact against the column, eyes red and swollen. He stares up at his father like a child caught stealing, waiting for the reassurance that it’s okay, that it can be fixed, that he’s still welcome in this house of marble and power.
Leonardo simply says, “You are no longer mine.”
The room stops breathing.
Even I don’t move.
Because what the fuck?
I look at him—hard—at Leonardo. This man, this don, has just disowned his heir, his only son, the one he groomed with wealth, whispers, and enough silver-spoon entitlement to make kings look humble.
“You… what?” I mutter.
Leonardo doesn’t look away. Doesn’t explain. Doesn’t justify. He repeats it, colder, final: “He is no longer Bellini.”
Ezio gasps—like the words struck harder than the gun barrel ever could, like he’d rather I’d pulled the trigger and ended it clean.
And for the first time in years, I feel the back of my throat tighten. Because I’ve seen what it looks like when this man loves—when he chooses family, when he protects what’s his. And now I’ve seen what it means to lose that protection entirely.
Leonardo walks past me without a glance down at the crumpled figure on the floor. “Get out of my house,” he says coldly. “Before I let him finish what he started.”
Ezio scrambles—tripping over his own limbs, hands smearing blood across the marble as he crawls toward the door.
I just stand there, staring. Because I came here to kill a Bellini. But I didn’t expect his father to bury him first.
I stand there too long, still gripping the gun like it’s fused to my arm, like Ezio might somehow grow a spine and try something stupid again.
But he doesn’t. He’s already crawling down the stairs like a discarded mistake, whimpering, wiping blood from his mouth with the sleeve of a shirt that probably cost more than the first car I ever stole.
Leonardo turns his back to him without a blink, without a word, without a shred of fatherhood left in his spine.
I turn to face him fully as the adrenaline finally catches up.
My hand—the one still wrapped around the gun—starts to shake, not from fear but from the raw aftermath, from the sheer absurdity of what just unfolded.
My voice comes out low, stripped bare. “What… is wrong with you?”
Leonardo pauses at the landing, one hand resting lightly on the mahogany banister, the other swirling wine in his glass as if this were some elegant opera and not a blood-drenched reckoning.
He tilts his head slightly, that infuriating smile curling across his face—all calculation, all ice. “Whatever do you mean, dear boy?”
I blink at him, no longer sure if I’m speaking to a man or a machine. “I almost killed your son,” I whisper, voice cracking at the edges. “And instead of flinching… you disowned him. Just like that. Your own blood.”
Leonardo turns his full gaze on me now—sharp, precise, unapologetic. “He’s an idiot.” He lifts his glass, sips once, never breaking rhythm. “You’re worth ten of him.”
Silence crashes between us.
My grip tightens on the gun, but not from rage anymore. From disbelief. From the slow, cold realization that there are men worse than me—men who can smile while setting fire to their own legacy.
Leonardo steps past me, nodding once toward the door. “Now,” he says, bored, “go save the little star. The rink misses its god.”