Chapter 4 Alexandra #2
We stare at each other across the bed, documents scattered between us like a battlefield. I watch his hands, waiting for them to curl into fists. They don’t.
“If you’re right,” he says slowly, “this changes everything.”
“I know.”
“If you’re wrong, I’ll have accused a loyal soldier based on the word of a prisoner.”
“I know that too.” I shrug. “Your call. But I’m not wrong.”
He looks at me… really looks, not the measuring stare or the blank mask, but something deeper. Something that makes my stomach flip in a way I don’t want to examine.
“Why?” he asks. “Why help us? You could’ve kept this to yourself. Used it as leverage.”
I consider lying. It would be easier, cleaner. But I don’t know… something about the way he’s looking at me makes honesty feel necessary.
“Because I’m tired of being useless,” I say. “Because Viktor died trying to save me, and the least I can do is make that mean something. And because—” I stop, swallow, force myself to finish. “Because you haven’t hurt me. You could have. You had every reason to. But you didn’t.”
Leone’s expression shifts, a crack, a fracture, but I see it. Something human breaking through the mask.
“That’s not a reason to trust me,” he says quietly.
“No,” I agree. “But it’s a reason to try.”
He holds my gaze. Then he gathers the documents, all of them, including Renzo’s photo, and turns toward the door.
“I’ll look into it,” he says. “Get some sleep.”
“Leone.”
He stops, hand on the door frame.
“If I’m right,” I say, “if Renzo is your mole—what happens to him?”
He doesn’t turn around. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “I figured.”
The door closes behind him. The lock clicks.
I lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and try to feel bad about the fact that I handed a man a death sentence.
I can’t.
Maybe that means I’m adapting. Maybe it means I’m becoming like them. Maybe it means I was always capable of this, and I never had the opportunity to find out.
I close my eyes and see Viktor’s face.
The debts aren’t meant to be paid. They’re meant to own you.
My father. My mother. The eight years I spent trying to save a man who didn’t want to be saved.
Leone, the violence, control, the unexpected gentleness. The way he looks at me like I’m a problem he can’t solve. The way he keeps coming back, even when he doesn’t have to.
You haven’t hurt me. You could have. But you didn’t.
It’s not enough. Not nearly enough to trust him, or this place, or any of the monsters who run it.
But it’s something.
And right now, something is all I’ve got.
Sleep doesn’t come easy.
I toss and turn for hours, tangled in sheets that cost more than my monthly rent, brain refusing to shut off. Every time I close my eyes, I see Renzo Marchetti’s face. Those dead eyes staring at me from the photograph, daring me to look closer.
I did look closer. And now a man is going to die because of it.
The ceiling offers no answers. Neither does the window, or the bathroom, or the ridiculous orchid that someone waters every day even though I’ve never seen them do it. The room is a stage set, and I’m the only actor who doesn’t know her lines.
Around 3 AM, I give up on sleep entirely. I sit cross-legged on the bed and do what I always do when my brain won’t stop spinning: I make lists.
Things I know: The Castillo’s wanted me badly enough to burn Viktor. Leone is protecting me for reasons he won’t explain. There’s a mole in the Bonaccorso organization. Renzo Marchetti is probably that mole. My father’s debts started this whole chain of events. I am, technically, still a prisoner.
Things I don’t know: What the Castillo’s actually wanted from me.
Why Aurelio ordered his men to keep me alive and comfortable.
What Leone’s deal is—why he watches me, why he keeps coming back, why he looks at me like I’m more other than a problem to solve.
How to get out of here. If I even want to anymore.
That last one stops me cold.
Do I want to leave?
Three days ago, the answer would’ve been obvious. Hell yes. First chance I got, I’d be out the window or through the door or down a drainpipe, whatever it took. Freedom at any cost.
But now?
I look around the room. The burgundy walls. The soft bed. The documents spread across the desk, evidence of the work I’ve been doing. Work that matters. Work that could save lives—or end them, depending on how you count.
Out there, I was a courier. A nobody. A girl drowning in her father’s debts, taking shadier and shadier jobs to keep her head above water.
In here, I’m something else. An asset. A mind that can see patterns. Someone whose insights made the Don’s right-hand man go still with recognition.
It’s fucked up. I know it’s fucked up. Stockholm syndrome, or garden-variety desperation. But for the first time in years, I feel like I have a purpose beyond surviving until tomorrow.
Is that worth more than freedom?
I don’t have an answer.
Morning comes gray and drizzling. The window streaks with rain, blurring the courtyard into watercolor shapes. I watch the guards do their rounds, umbrellas up, shoulders hunched against the wet.
Breakfast arrives. I eat mechanically, barely tasting the eggs.
When Leone walks in at nine, he looks worse than yesterday. Dark circles, stubble shadowing his jaw, suit slightly rumpled like he slept in a chair. Or didn’t sleep at all.
“You look like shit,” I say.
“Thank you for that assessment.”
“Did you find anything? About Renzo?”
He crosses to the desk, sets down a thin folder. “Surveillance footage. Communication logs. Financial records.” He meets my eyes. “You were right.”
Cold dread settles in my stomach. “How right?”
“Renzo Marchetti has been feeding the Castillo’s information for fourteen months.
Routes. Schedules. Guard rotations. Everything they needed to stay one step ahead of us.
” Leone’s voice is flat, controlled, but I catch the rage simmering beneath.
“Eighteen men have died because of him. Two of them last week.”
Eighteen men. I try to wrap my head around the number. Eighteen lives ended because one guy decided to play both sides.
“What happens now?”
“Now we bring him in. Question him. Find out how deep the damage goes.”
“And then?”
Leone doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. I curl them into fists to make them stop.
“I got him killed,” I say. “That’s what I did. I looked at some papers and now a man is going to die.”
“He got himself killed.” Leone’s voice is hard. “The moment he started selling information to the Castillo’s, he signed his own death warrant. You only moved up the timeline.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It’s not supposed to.”
I laugh, high and a little hysterical. “Jesus. What is wrong with me? I should be—I don’t know, crying or screaming or hiding. Instead, I’m—”
“You’re surviving.” Leone sits on the edge of the bed, closer than he usually gets. “That’s what you do. It’s what you’ve always done.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s an observation.”
He’s right. I am tired. Not physically, but down to the bone. The tired that comes from carrying too much for too long.
“Does it get easier?” I ask. “Knowing you’ve ended someone’s life?”
He’s quiet. “No. But you learn to carry it.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
We sit in silence, the rain pattering against the window. I should be afraid of him. I should be planning my escape, looking for weaknesses, thinking three steps ahead. Instead, I’m sitting on a bed next to a killer and feeling dangerously close to comfort.
“Leone.”
“Hmm?”
“Why do you keep coming back here? You could send anyone to deliver documents. Hell, you could have one of the guards check on me. But you keep showing up yourself.”
“You’re my responsibility.”
“Bullshit. I’m Aurelio’s prisoner, not yours. You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I’m not babysitting.”
“Then what are you doing?”
He turns to look at me, and for a second, the mask slips. I see something raw underneath—something hungry and scared and desperately human.
Then it’s gone, and he’s Leone again. Controlled. Untouchable.
“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He stands and walks to the door. Pauses with his hand on the frame.
“Renzo will be dealt with tonight. By tomorrow, the leak will be closed.” He glances back at me. “You did good work, Alexandra. Don’t let the guilt eat you alive.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“No.” His voice drops. “It’s not.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m alone with the rain and the silence and the growing certainty that the animosity between us has shifted.
I don’t know what it means yet.
I spend the day pacing.
The documents are gone, Leone took them when he left, so I have nothing to occupy my hands or my brain. I do pushups until my arms give out. Squats until my legs burn. I recite song lyrics, count ceiling tiles, play chess against myself using pieces made from torn paper.
Nothing works. The restlessness crawls under my skin like ants.
By evening, I’m ready to scream.
When the dinner tray arrives, I almost don’t eat. But hunger wins over anxiety, and I force down the food without tasting it. Roast chicken tonight. Mashed potatoes. Green beans cooked with garlic. A meal fit for a guest, not a prisoner.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
I’m washing my face in the bathroom when I hear it: raised voices in the hallway. Not shouting, but close. Intense. Urgent.
I press my ear to the door and catch fragments.
“—can’t be serious—”
“—Aurelio’s orders—”
“—move her now, before—”
The voices fade. Footsteps retreat.
I step back from the door, heart pounding. Something’s wrong. Something’s changed.
Ten minutes later, the lock clicks.
Leone enters, and he’s not alone. Two guards flank him, faces grim. He’s changed clothes… dark tactical gear instead of the suit, a gun holstered at his hip.
“Get up,” he says. “We’re moving.”
“Moving where?”
“Somewhere safer.”
“Safer from what?”
He crosses the room in three strides and takes my arm, not rough, but firm. “Renzo talked. The Castillo’s know where you are. They’re coming.”
The words hit me like ice water. “Coming for me?”
“Coming for the compound. You’re a bonus.” He steers me toward the door. “We have twenty minutes before they hit us. I need you to trust me.”
“I don’t—”
“Alexandra.” He stops, turns to face me. His eyes are dark and intense, boring into mine. “I will not let them take you. I will kill every man who tries. But I need you to move. Now.”
I stare at him. The guards behind us are shifting, anxious, hands on their weapons.
Twenty minutes. Castillo’s are coming. And Leone is looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He nods once, sharp, and pulls me into the hallway.
The compound is chaos. Soldiers running, orders being shouted, the distant wail of alarms. Leone moves through it like water, his grip on my arm never loosening. The guards follow close behind, covering our backs.
We descend two floors, then three. The architecture changes. Less luxury, more concrete. We’re going underground.
“Where are we going?” I ask, voice breathless.
“Panic room. Reinforced walls, independent air supply, enough supplies for a week.” He pulls me around a corner. “You’ll be safe there.”
“What about you?”
He doesn’t answer.
We reach a heavy steel door, and Leone punches a code into the keypad. The lock disengages with a heavy thunk. He pushes me inside—a small room, twelve by twelve, stocked with water and food and a narrow cot.
“Stay here,” he says. “Don’t open the door for anyone but me. If anyone gets in that isn’t me, shoot them.” He hands me a gun.
“Leone—”
“Anyone but me. Understand?”
I grab his arm before he can turn away. “What are you going to do?”
His eyes meet mine. For a second, he looks almost human.
“What I always do,” he says. “Whatever’s necessary.”
Then he’s gone, and the door seals shut behind him, and I’m alone in the silence, listening to my heartbeat and praying to a God I don’t believe in that he comes back alive.