33. Mason
33
MASON
I ’ve always thought of hospitals as graveyards that haven't made up their minds yet.
Bright lights, clean floors, the constant buzz of machines pretending to be alive—it’s all window dressing. Scratch the surface and you’ll find the truth: this is a place where people come in whole and leave in pieces… if they leave at all.
I’ve walked these halls more times than I care to count. Blood on my knuckles. Someone else’s or mine—it never mattered. The ache in my gut was always the same. Familiar. Like an old war buddy you never wanted to see again.
But this? This feels different. It’s not just another bullet wound or another bad decision carved into someone's flesh. This is the kind of wait that crawls up your spine and whispers that maybe—just maybe—you won’t be walking out with the person you came in with.
The worst I ever saw? That was Sophia.
Maxine’s twin.
Sophia came in on a stretcher, unconscious, barely breathing, skin pale and slick with sweat. She’d been pumped full of every kind of poison you could imagine—whatever her kidnappers could get their filthy hands on. A cocktail mixed by monsters. There was nothing we could do but watch the machines try to keep her tethered to the earth.
They failed.
She flatlined in front of us.
I remember the sound of it. That flat, screaming note that stole the air from the room. We lost her that day—lost her to the same hell Maxine had been dragged into. A hell we couldn’t reach.
Only Maxine didn’t die.
No, Maxine disappeared.
She vanished. Taken, sold, vanished into a world none of us were equipped to navigate. A year passed. A full goddamn year. And while the rest of the world kept turning, we scoured the shadows, pulled every string, shook every tree until something fell loose. We didn’t even know if she was still alive.
She came back… but not in one piece. Not really.
Maxine walks around now with pieces missing. She doesn’t talk about what happened to her in that year, and I don’t ask. I see it in the way she flinches when a man raises his voice, in the way she avoids mirrors, in the haunted look she carries like it’s stitched into her skin. Altin Kadri—if you can call a parasite like that a man—kept her locked in his world. A pretty thing he thought he owned.
When she returned to us, she was broken, bruised, but breathing. And none of that would’ve happened if it weren’t for Rafi Gatti.
Rafi… kid’s got too much heart for this life, but he never let that stop him. He took it all personal. Obsessive. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep. He was going to find her or die trying. Not because she owed him anything, not even because she was family by extension. No, Rafi was trying to prove something— to his brothers, to himself. That he had what it took. That he belonged in the same room as the Gatti kings.
And damn if he didn’t prove it.
He got her back.
But not without a cost.
He nearly lost his soul in the process. Spent so long chasing ghosts that he forgot he was alive. Until Tayana Kamarov came along. That woman didn’t just bring him back—she dragged him out of his own grave and made him feel again. Love has a way of doing that. Cutting through the noise. Making you remember who the hell you are underneath the scars.
Still, as I sit here now—watching Maxine trace invisible paths along the floor, counting tiles like she’s marching to some silent metronome—I realize none of us got out clean.
We’re all a little haunted.
Some of us just hide it better than others.
Everyone is here, all the Gatti brothers and their wives, huddled in their little corners, and I’ve never been more grateful for this family that I’ve forged.
They showed up.
Like they always show up.
And fuck if that doesn’t do something to my chest.
It’s hard to remember that this all started with me crashing into their world, not as a brother or a soldier, but as a desperate man—just a father hunting for his daughters in a city that eats girls alive. The Gattis didn’t owe me anything. But they answered anyway. Took one look at my pain and said we’ll help you carry it. Scar, Brando, Lucky, Rafi—they didn’t flinch. They moved mountains, broke bones, crossed borders.
What I got back wasn’t everything—but it was enough to keep me breathing.
Sophia didn’t make it.
Maxine came back broken, but alive. And Mia—my flesh and blood, my firebrand—somehow ended up marrying Brando Gatti, her old high school crush turned mafia prince. And me? I became their enforcer. Their knife in the dark. I bled for them, burned for them, and earned their trust the only way this world respects—through violence and loyalty.
Now I’m underboss to the Moreno family.
You don’t climb that ladder unless you’ve walked through hell barefoot.
But titles aside, the real thing I earned—what means more than any crown or cut of territory—is this family. These brothers. This tribe. We didn’t choose each other, not at first, but we bled together, suffered together, and now... we’re bound. No blood oath could hold us tighter than what we’ve survived. And in moments like this, when the world is tilting off its axis, I look around this room and feel something I don’t feel often.
Gratitude.
And then my gaze lands on Maxine, and that feeling curdles in my gut.
She’s not sitting. She’s pacing. Always pacing.
Three tiles forward, stop. Pivot. Three tiles back. Repeat. It’s like watching someone trying to outwalk their own thoughts. I know that drill. I’ve done it myself in cells and safehouses and nights too long to count. But Maxine’s been doing it since she got back, and it guts me every damn time.
She keeps her eyes low, doesn’t speak unless spoken to, and even then it’s clipped, rehearsed, like she’s still afraid the wrong word will get her punished. Crowds make her tense. Even our crowd—people who would kill for her, die for her—she still folds in on herself like she’s bracing for impact. Sometimes she steps so far back in the room she practically vanishes.
She doesn’t talk about what happened in that year. Doesn’t share the horror. And I don’t push her.
But I see it in her.
Every movement. Every pause. Every breath that sounds just a little too careful.
Whatever Altin Kadri did to her… he didn’t just touch her body. He rewired her spirit. Taught her to disappear in plain sight. And now, back in the land of the living, she’s trying to remember how to be again. Piece by piece.
Thank God for those therapy sessions. Twice a week, like clockwork. She doesn’t miss them. And maybe—just maybe—they’re working. There are moments now, flickers of light through the cracks, when I see a glimpse of the Maxine we lost. The one who laughed too loud and danced barefoot in the kitchen. The one who gave as good as she got, with a wit sharp enough to cut.
She’s still in there. Somewhere.
But tonight… with Shelby bleeding on a table behind those sealed doors, and the past hanging over her like a noose… I see her slipping again.
And I can’t do a damn thing about it.
The doors to the waiting room slide open with that soft hiss and someone stumbles in.
Clay.
That motherfucker.
My blood spikes so fast it’s like a grenade goes off in my chest. I’m on my feet before I even realize I’ve moved, boots hammering across the tile like war drums. Every muscle is coiled, every step a loaded gun. The room stutters around me, voices dying off, eyes tracking my storm path straight to him.
He looks up.
And I see it.
Guilt.
Clear as day.
And that’s what makes it worse.
I throw my hands out, my voice low and calm—not because I’m in control, but because my rage is strung so tight it’s humming like piano wire. One flick and I’ll snap.
“You fucker,” I growl, my voice a blade pressed against his neck.
Clay’s mouth opens, some pathetic explanation half-formed—but I don’t let the words live long enough to offend me.
“You knew it made her a target,” I snarl, stepping into his space, my breath hot with fury. “And you still didn’t fucking tell me.”
His jaw ticks. His face is unreadable—too trained, too disciplined—but regret bleeds through in the way his eyes flicker away for just a second too long.
“Mason,” he tries. “You don’t understa?—”
I snap.
My fist cracks into his face so hard it echoes down the hall like a gunshot. His head jerks to the side, a grunt punched from his throat, and I feel the satisfying crunch of cartilage under my knuckles.
One hit.
That’s all I get before Brando and Lucky are on me, hauling me back like they’ve been waiting for this exact second to stop me from doing something I can’t undo. My boots skid against the floor, my chest heaving, every nerve ending screaming for one more shot.
Just one more. Just one.
Clay turns to face me, his hand cupping his jaw, lip split, cheek already darkening. He doesn't speak. Doesn’t lift his hands. Doesn’t run. Because he knows.
He fucking knows.
This is on him.
All of it.
“She’s in there,” I roar, my voice bouncing off the walls, raw and sharp and burning at the edges. “She’s in there bleeding out while you play chess with people’s lives! She’s dying, Clay. Because you couldn’t tell the fucking truth!”
The room is dead silent.
The kind of silence that doesn’t come from peace, but from fear. From pain. From the moment just before the sky collapses.
Clay swallows hard. His fists are clenched at his sides, his stance rigid, like he wants to say something, fight back, scream—but he doesn’t. He just stands there and takes it.
Because deep down, he agrees with me.
He doesn’t deserve to defend himself.
Scar is already talking fast to the hospital administrator, probably offering to slap the Gatti name on a new cardio wing to keep me from getting thrown out. Again . God bless him for it. That’s the price of this life—reparations paid in donations and body bags.
I wrench out of Brando and Lucky’s grip and shove away, pacing like a caged animal, trying to breathe through the fire searing my insides. My knuckles throb. My chest is worse. I stare at the hallway doors, those cold slabs of steel that separate life from death, and I wait.
We all wait.