Chapter 39 Atlas
Atlas
The moment the elevator sealed shut, my world narrowed into one command: do not let them reach her.
There was another crash, this time closer.
Glass shattered. Something heavy tipped over and crashed into the floor. Furniture scraped hard across wood. And then the unmistakable thud of boots… heavy, uninvited, stomping through my home.
My pulse spiked, sudden and electric, but my hands stayed steady as I reached for the gun in the drawer by the stove.
Low voices drifted down the hall. Guttural consonants. Harsh vowels. Russian. Bratva. They’d found us.
A shadow moved at the edge of the doorway. He stepped in—big, smug, sure of himself. He didn’t even get a full breath before I lifted the gun and fired once. The bullet hit his chest dead-on.
He folded instantly, collapsing into a boneless heap that smeared blood across my tile. Steam rose off the wound. His eyes were still open.
But killing him was loud. Too loud. Because the moment his body hit the floor, the hallway erupted with pounding feet. More shadows surged forward. More voices hurled Russian curses as they spotted their fallen comrade and realized exactly who they were dealing with.
Two men rounded the corner into the kitchen—rage, vengeance, and violence coming straight for me. I could hear others moving through the apartment, spreading out, overturning furniture and checking rooms as they looked for Neve.
I tightened my grip on the gun, letting off a spray of bullets as the Russians crossed the threshold into the kitchen.
They dropped to the ground and I swapped out my gun for their fully loaded semis.
I stepped over their lifeless bodies and moved into the hallway at the same moment that a man turned my way.
We fired at the same time.
White-hot pain punched into my shoulder, spinning me back.
My gunshot caught him in the throat before I hit the floor.
I shoved myself up. My arm was numb as warm blood trickled down my side. But I ignored the pain and surged forward. Adrenaline spiked through me so violently that my vision sharpened.
I pushed forward. Another man appeared. I shot; he ducked, his shot tearing through my ribcage like a hot iron. I choked on the impact, stumbling into the wall. My vision flickered. Breath sawed in and out of me, painful, shallow.
But I didn’t fall. I refused to fall. I raised my gun, forced my shaking hand steady, and fired. He dropped.
Two more barrels appeared at the far end of the hall, glinting under the low lights.
I barely lifted my gun before the world erupted in muzzles and thunder.
Pain hammered into me—all at once in several places. My legs gave. The floor rushed up. I hit it hard enough to see sparks.
My gun skittered away. Boots pounded toward me.
I rolled onto my back, gasping for breath, my vision tunneling. One of the men kicked my gun farther down the hall. Another nudged me with his foot.
They were talking, laughing, checking my pulse with the back of a hand like I was nothing but a dead body cooling on marble.
One of them muttered something in Russian, then spat beside me.
The thought struck without warning, hollow and chilling. They think I’m dead. They think I’m dead.
Their voices faded as they spread through the penthouse again, flipping chairs, slamming doors, searching for her. I caught fragments of their conversation.
“Girl.”
“Find her.”
“She was here.”
My rage burned hotter than the wounds tearing through my body. But I was slipping. Going under. My fingers were numb, my chest tight. I might just be dying.
When the boots finally retreated, when the footsteps faded into the main elevator shaft, the silence felt heavy enough to crush me.
They were leaving. They thought they’d killed me. And I needed to move. If I had any chance of survival, I needed to get help.
I dug my fingers into the floor, dragging myself forward inch by inch. My blood smeared behind me, dark streaks across white marble. Every pull was agony, every breath a knife. But I kept going. Because they wouldn’t stop looking for Neve, and I needed to find her before they did.
I clawed my way to the front door, using the wall for leverage. My vision blurred. The floor tilted. My arm gave out. But I reached it. Somehow, I reached it. I collapsed against the doorframe and looked down, and my world stopped.
Alessio was crumpled at the threshold. He was folded wrong, like a body that had been dropped and never picked up again, and I could tell that he wasn’t resting.
His chest didn’t move. His eyes were half open, glassy and unfocused, staring at nothing. Blood pooled beneath him in a dark, ugly circle that kept spreading, soaking into the marble like it was twain’t part of him.
My little brother. My cheeky, soft-spoken, impossible rascal of a brother… was gone.
The word didn’t fit. Gone. It was too small for what this was. Too gentle for the way it felt like something had been ripped out of my chest with bare hands.
A sound tore out of me. Raw. Deep. Animal. A roar that shredded my throat and scraped my lungs on the way out. It didn’t sound human. It sounded like something dying.
I dragged myself closer, every inch agony, my blood-slicked hand clawing at the floor as if I could reach him fast enough and rewrite what had already happened.
“Alessio,” I choked. “God—Alessio—”
I said his name like a prayer. Like a command. As though if I said it loud enough, he might hear me.
The hallway answered instead—quiet, empty, indifferent. The low hum of the building. The faint drip of blood. The slow, creeping cold sinking into my bones as the truth settled in.
He was gone.
And I was still here.
The weight of it crushed down on my chest, heavier than any bullet. Not just grief—failure. I was supposed to protect him. I was supposed to stand between him and this world. And now all I had left was his body on cold marble and the echo of his name stuck in my throat.
I tried to stand, but my legs gave out beneath me like they’d forgotten how to hold me.
I shoved at the floor, teeth gritted, vision swimming, but the world tilted hard and I went down again, slamming beside him.
My cheek struck the cold marble, the shock of it barely cutting through the numbness spreading in my limbs.
My hand found his shoulder. Warm. Too warm. And unbearably still.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words tearing out of me like they were being dragged across glass. “I’m so fucking sorry…”
For not being fast enough, strong enough. For not not protecting you from the world.
The darkness crept in at the edges of my vision, thick and heavy, swallowing the world piece by piece. I tried to fight it. I tried to hold on to anything that wasn’t blood and loss.
Neve.
I dragged her into my mind like a lifeline—her voice, soft and steady. The way her fear had flickered when she looked at me. The way she smiled like she didn’t know how much light she carried.
I clung to that. To her. To the idea that she was still out there, still breathing, still safe.
I tried to stay awake.
But grief is heavier than pain, and blood loss doesn’t care what or who you love.
The dark closed in. Everything went quiet. And the last thing I carried with me as I slipped under was her name.
Neve.