Chapter Thirty-three
Rodion
Alessia’s father called. He said he had a clear photo of Luigi. That was all I needed. I didn’t ask how or where he got it, but if that picture leaked, Luigi would vanish. And I wasn’t letting that happen.
The engine roared as I tore through the streets. I had lived for this and hunted for it. And I would make Luigi bleed for what he stole. He killed my mother. I wasn’t the soft son or the loyal one, but no one touched what was mine and walked away breathing.
It took five minutes to reach the building. As I parked, a knot twisted in my gut.
Something was wrong.
I rushed toward the door, but something caught my eye. The glass door reflected a black car parked across the street. Its window sat low enough to reveal a man’s face. He saw me turn, slid the window up, and drove off.
That was no curious bystander. Something was off and my first thought was about Alessia’s parents.
I took the stairs two at a time. On reaching the floor, I noticed the apartment door was ajar.
My hand found the gun, and I moved in silence.
Glass shattered inside, followed by a voice I knew too well. “What is the password?”
Renat.
His voice crawled under my skin. That bastard I swore I would bury. And now he had walked into the grave I built. I slipped through the door. Renat stood by the sofa with one arm locked around Alessia’s mother. A gun pressed into her skull.
Her lips trembled as she struggled while staring at her husband, crumpled on the floor, blood pooling beneath him.
“Tell me the password or your wife dies.”
He saw me just when he said that. His hand shifted to aim, but I had already fired. The bullet tore through his wrist and spun the gun from his grip. His scream hit the walls as the gun hit the floor.
Alessia’s mother dropped to her knees, gasping for breath.
Renat lunged for the weapon and fired one shot.
It scraped my arm, but I was already moving.
I kicked his jaw, snapping his head sideways.
He hit the floor but didn’t stay there. He grabbed a stool and hurled it towards me.
I kicked it mid air, the wood hitting the wall.
He didn’t get it. I had waited for this moment.
I grabbed his injured hand and drove my thumb into the wound.
His scream couldn’t calm the storm inside me.
His face reminded me of the scar he gave Alessia.
That was my first target. I slammed the butt of my gun into his face, again and again, carving blood down his cheek like tears. Then I hurled him against the wall.
This wasn’t a fight; it was a sentence. I shrugged off my jacket and rolled my sleeves slowly.
He spat out blood and grinned through broken teeth. “You’re weak. You know why Father gave up on you?” He coughed and spat again. “Kidney failure. That’s what you are. A defect. That’s why he turned to Dmitri. He looked at you and saw a curse.”
He wasn’t wrong. After they took out my first kidney, something shifted in my father’s eyes. He saw a flaw, a crack in what should have been stone. But I didn’t need him to hand me the crown. I carved it myself.
Renat tried to rise. “You’re dying, Rodion. I’ll take everything from you. Dmitri doesn’t deserve that title. I do.”
He shut up when I drew my knife. I only used that blade when it was personal. Renat tried to grab the stool, but he was too slow. I flipped the blade and slammed it through his palm, pinning it to the wood. His scream ripped through the air, raw and painful. He twisted and thrashed.
He cursed through clenched teeth and choked on pain. I stepped in and gripped his jaw, yanking his face up to mine.
“You’ll watch me kill you slowly. When it’s done, I’ll clean your blood off these walls and sleep like a king.”
I had promised Alessia Renat’s death, but I hadn’t known how much I needed it myself until I watched him give up. I spat on him, then turned and walked to the bathroom.
Renat’s blood clung to my hands. I turned on the tap and let the water run over them, scrubbing the blood off. My chest was tight. Each breath was a war in my lungs. I shut my eyes and dropped my head low, gripping the edges of the sink.
The suffocating pressure of breathlessness clawed at my ribs. The air felt thinner. Fucking kidney failure. I pulled the pill bottle from my pocket, snapped it open, and tossed two down my throat. They scratched going down, like I deserved the punishment.
Voices stirred in the sitting area, followed by quick movements and commands. Doctor Dorothy had arrived with my men. I rinsed my face, shut the water off, and stepped out.
The four men were already cleaning the mess, dragging Renat’s body across the floor. He was a mistake in the Konstantinov bloodline.
Dorothy crouched beside Alessia’s father, her hands red to the wrists as she pressed into the wound on his arm. I didn’t care about the pain he felt. What I wanted now was Luigi’s face. That was the reason Renat came here. He was desperate to find Luigi.
When Dorothy excused herself to wash up, Alessia’s father, still propped up against the wall with a bloodied bandage at his side, lifted a shaky hand and pointed to the laptop on the coffee table.
“The password,” he said hoarsely, “My daughter’s name.”
There were specks of blood dried along the keyboard, smudges where Renat had tried to force it open. I picked up the laptop and typed in Alessia. As my finger hit enter, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Frowning, I ignored the phone call as I stared at the face flashing across the laptop screen.
Dmitri’s face. I tapped some keys, still confused why Alessia’s father had my brother’s photo on his laptop. The video started just as my phone rang again. I answered without checking the name.
“What?”
“Boss,” the voice rasped. “It’s Matvet.”
He had my attention now. Dorothy had said he was awake, but I hadn’t spoken to him. “Yeah. I’m listening.”
“You need to listen to the recording I just sent you,” Matvet said, his voice strained. “It’s urgent.”
The video on the laptop screen played as I stared quietly. There was no audio; only visuals of grainy footage of a dock, with Dmitri at its center.
“Boss?” Matvet’s voice broke through the silence again.
“Let me call you back.” I hung up and dropped the phone on the table.
Dmitri was talking to a man I recognized from the same list Luigi had been tied to. I played the clip again, my jaw tightening in confusion. I faced Alessia’s father.
“What the hell is this?”
His voice was faint but clear. “That’s Luigi.”
“No.” The word growled out of my chest. I turned and ordered everyone out of the room.
They cleared the space, leaving me alone with him.
“That’s not Luigi.”
He shook his head slowly, pain etched deep across his brow. “Check the other photos,” he said. “He’s in every one of them. Every man on that list… he met them before they died. I tracked the dates and times. Everything matches.”
My throat locked. I clicked through the photos, each file slicing into my brain. Dmitri knew all the men I investigated. Some pictures at the dock, outside a house I personally marked as compromised, and everywhere Luigi had been.
All seven men always disappeared before I could reach them. Luigi had erased every witness. I backed away from the table like it had caught fire. The room spun.
It made no sense. I remembered the month Dmitri disappeared. He said he had business to handle. That month, someone burned our mother and sister alive.
Luigi didn’t rise from the ashes. He had always been there. Wearing my brother’s face. I reached for my phone to call Dmitri, but stopped when I saw Matvet’s unopened message.
He said it was urgent. I tapped it, and the audio started.
The voice that came through cracked with age and sickness. My father.
“A good leader works mysteriously,” he said. “He carries a false name, erases enemies without leaving a sound. That is your job. Take a new name and do some cleaning, then be the next Konstantinov Bratva. Am I clear, Dmitri?”
Silence.
Then Dmitri’s voice came. “Yes, Father.”
Father coughed painfully and spoke again. “Your brother… is weak. A curse. A disgrace to our name. He will never be a leader. Kill him if you must. Take him down. Take everyone around him down, and be the mob boss.”
The audio ended, and my sanity too. I stared at the wall. My father had spent his last three months in bed, and not once had he asked for me. Not once did he speak my name? I told myself I didn’t care.
But now I did, because Luigi wasn’t a myth. My greatest enemy was my brother. I turned to the door, sickness surging back up my chest. I pulled out the pills again and tossed two more into my mouth.
Luigi was close. And God help me, I left Alessia with him.