17. Rocco
ROCCO
I’m looking at a photo of Nadia Rivas when the first gunshot comes through the phone. That’s how fast a life turns.
One second, Lewis is standing beside my desk with a tablet, saying, “We have a driver who moved her from Eclipse to a private flat near King’s Cross.” The next, my phone lights with Serena’s name. I answer so fast the phone nearly slips.
“Serena.”
No answer. Only breath. Not hers. Too heavy. Too controlled. Matteo.
Then a crash. A woman screams. Lucia. My blood goes cold.
“Serena,” I say again.
There’s a shout in the background. Male. Not mine. Then a gunshot cracks through the speaker. Everything in me stops.
Not fear. Worse than fear. The silence after a gunshot when the body hasn’t hit the floor yet.
“Boss?” Lewis says.
I stand. The chair goes over behind me.
“Lucia’s flat,” I say. “Now.”
Lewis is already moving. My phone’s still open. There’s another crash, then Matteo’s voice, low and hard.
“Bathroom. Now.”
Serena says something I can’t make out. Another man laughs. I know that laugh. Not Rafe himself. One of his little dogs. Tomaso, maybe. Or Neri. They all laugh the same when they think they have a woman trapped.
My grip goes white on the phone. The old me arrives clean. Beautiful, almost. Kill them all. Easy. Direct. I welcome him for half a second.
Then Serena gasps. Small. Scared. Pregnant. And the old me is not enough.
Killing men is easy. Saving what I broke is harder.
“Serena,” I say, because I need her to hear me if the phone is near enough. “I’m coming.”
The line goes dead. For one second, the room tilts. Then I move.
There are four men in the front hall before I reach it. My men. They fall in without being told, the way soldiers do when the boss moves. Lewis is on my right. Bastian comes in from the side door with his gun already out. A voice says Matteo’s last ping is still inside Lucia’s building.
Words. Noise. All of it too slow.
I go through the front door into rain. The car door is open. I get in.
“Drive,” I say.
The driver drives. Fast enough that traffic becomes a suggestion. Good.
My phone rings in my hand. Unknown. I answer.
“Rocco Castellano,” Rafe D’Amato says, amused. “Your house is loud tonight.”
My vision narrows. Lewis hears the voice and goes still beside me. I put the call on speaker.
“Rafe.”
“I was told you were distracted with family issues.”
“You were told wrong.”
He laughs. I picture breaking his teeth one by one. It helps nothing.
“You humiliated a useful widow,” Rafe says. “You made a show of cutting her off. Very dramatic. I respect theater.”
Claudia. Or Vittorio. Or both. Later. I’ll deal with later if I still have a wife and child to return to.
“If you touched Serena?—”
“I have not touched your wife.”
“Then why are your men at her flat?”
“Are they?”
Another laugh. Too easy. Too pleased.
“Maybe they’re there for the guard dog.”
Matteo. The word lands ugly in my chest. A soldier. My soldier, put on my wife. The choice. Clean and immediate.
Rafe wants Matteo dead. Not only because Matteo protected Serena. Because killing him makes me choose in public. If I let Matteo die, Serena sees the truth of me. If I save him, every old man watching knows I protected the man who loves my wife.
I hate that Rafe understands me this well. Or thinks he does.
“Your problem is with me,” I say.
“No. My opportunity is with you. My problem is that your wife’s little bodyguard has been interfering with information flow.”
Information flow. Serena in a stairwell photo. The watcher in the rear lane. Rafe’s men at the door. Matteo was the wall. Rafe is trying to remove it.
The jealousy comes up. Fast. Hot. Disgusting. For one split second, a monster in me whispers that if Matteo’s gone, one problem leaves with him. In the dark car window, my own reflection shows me exactly the kind of man Serena ran from.
No.
“Listen to me,” I say to Rafe.
Lewis turns his head. He hears it. The change.
“Matteo Greco is under my protection.”
In this world that’s not a kindness. It’s a marker laid down where every capo can read it. Touch this man and the debt comes due from the Castellano boss himself. Rafe goes quiet. Good. Let him choke on it.
“That is sweet,” he says finally. “Modern marriage is so flexible.”
“He kept Serena alive when I failed her.”
The car goes silent around me. I said it. Out loud. To an enemy. Even Lewis stops breathing. Let him use it. It’s true either way.
“Touch him,” I say, “and you touch me.”
Rafe’s amusement thins.
“Careful, Rocco. Your uncle’s been telling people you’ve gone soft.”
Vittorio.
“Then send more men,” I say. “I am in the mood to educate.”
I hang up.
“Matteo is under your protection?” Lewis says.
“Yes.”
“That’ll travel.”
“Good.”
He nods once. No smile. No joke. Just yes.
The car takes a corner hard. My phone buzzes with a live feed from the outer perimeter. Lucia’s building.
One black car at the curb that isn’t ours. Two men moving at the main entrance. Another at the rear lane. Then muzzle flash from inside the second-floor flat.
My wife is in there. My child is in there. Matteo is in there between them and Rafe’s soldiers, men paid to make a point with their hands and enjoy the overtime.
The world goes clean.
“Bastian,” I say into the comm.
“Here.”
“Rear man first. Quiet if you can, loud if you must.”
“Understood.”
“Lewis, stairwell with me.”
“Yes.”
“No one shoots toward the bathroom.”
“You think she’s there?” Lewis asks.
“Matteo would put her there.”
It costs me nothing to admit that. It costs me everything.
The car stops before the building. Not parked. Abandoned. Doors open. Men move.
I’m out before the tires settle. Rain hits my face. Gunfire cracks from above. Someone screams. Not Serena. Not Lucia. I know both voices now in ways I did not deserve to learn.
Lewis puts one shot into the lock and we go through the main door, because apparently subtlety has left the chat. The stairwell smells like old carpet, rain, and gunpowder. I take the stairs two at a time.
The second-floor door to Lucia’s flat hangs broken. Wood splinters. Chain torn. A smear of blood on the frame.
My heart stops at the blood. Then starts again wrong. I don’t know whose. Blood is never polite enough to label itself.
A man comes out of the flat backward, gun raised toward someone inside. He doesn’t see me. Unfortunate for him. I take his wrist, break it, and drive him into the wall hard enough that plaster cracks. His gun hits the floor. Lewis kicks it away. The man gasps. I hit him once. He stops being useful.
Inside, the living room is chaos. Sofa bed shoved sideways. Bakery box crushed on the floor. Custard across the rug. The air white with smoke.
Matteo’s near the hallway, one shoulder against the wall, gun in his right hand, blood running down his left arm. Still standing. Barely.
Two of Rafe’s men are down. One is moving. One is not. A third has a gun aimed at the bathroom door.
Everything in me becomes violence. I shoot him before he sees me. He drops.
Matteo turns toward me. For one frozen second, we look at each other across the wrecked room. There’s blood on his face. Blood on his shirt. His eyes are clear. Furious. Alive.
“Serena?” I ask.
“Bathroom.”
“Hit?”
“No.”
Relief hits so hard my knees almost go. Almost. No time.
A shout comes from the rear. Bastian’s voice in the comm.
“Two more coming up the back.”
Matteo pushes off the wall. His left arm fails. He sways. I catch him without thinking.
There. My hand around the arm of the man who loves my wife.
He flinches. Not from me. Pain.
“Stay down,” I say.
“Fuck you.”
Good. He’s alive enough to be insulting.
“Later.”
I shove him behind the kitchen wall as the first rear man comes through the back entrance. Gunfire shatters the cabinet near my head.
Lucia’s going to be furious about the cabinets. If we live, I’ll buy her an entire kitchen. No. Serena would call that billionaire nonsense. So I’ll ask first.
The rear man fires again. Lewis takes him down from the hall. The second one comes low and fast, knife in hand. He goes for Matteo. Not me. Matteo sees him too late. His gun is empty. His left side is bleeding through his shirt. The man lunges.
And I understand Rafe’s play. In one perfect, ugly flash.
He wants me to watch. He wants me to hesitate. He wants the whole city to hear that Rocco Castellano let the man beside his wife die because jealousy weighed more than a debt.
And God help me, the old me reaches for it. Let the blade land where it was aimed. Keep my pride whole. No old man in this city would blame me. A husband doesn’t bleed for the man who loves his wife.
Half a second. That is the whole size of the choice. Pride on one side. The man who put my wife behind a locked door on the other.
I choose him. Serena isn’t even here to see it. My body moves before thought finishes. I step between the blade and Matteo.
The knife goes into my side. Hot. Deep enough. Not fatal unless the universe gets cute.
There it is. My pride, leaking out of a hole I opened on purpose.
I grab the man’s wrist and drive my elbow into his throat. He chokes. I take the knife out of me and put it into the wall beside his head. On purpose. Not mercy. Message. This is what happens to the soldiers other men send.
“Tell Rafe,” I say, close to his face, “he aimed at the wrong man.”
Then I hit him until he stops trying to stand.
“Rocco,” Lewis snaps.
I turn. Matteo is staring at me. At my side. At the blood spreading under my jacket.
“Idiot,” he says.
“You’re welcome.”
“I had him.”
“You had an empty gun and one working arm.”
“Still.”
I almost laugh. Insane time for it.
The bathroom door opens. Not much. Just a crack. My whole body turns toward it.
“Serena,” I say.
The door opens wider. She’s there. Alive. Barefoot. Pale. One hand around Lucia’s wrist, the other pressed over her stomach.
Lucia is behind her holding what appears to be a toilet brush like a weapon. Of course she is.