Chapter 40 Gianni
Gianni
The first thing that hit me was the silence.
It wasn’t the soft, sleepy quiet of a building winding down for the night. This was different. This silence was empty, like the air itself was holding its breath, causing dread to pool in my gut.
The lobby was deserted. Even the doorman—the one who practically lived in that damn chair—was gone. His station sat abandoned, light still on, as if he’d stepped away and never come back.
A cold weight settled in my gut as I crossed the threshold. The air carried a faint metallic tang, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat. I knew that smell. I just wasn’t ready to name it.
Bloody footprints streaked across the tiles, dark and smeared, leading away from the elevators in uneven, desperate paths. They weren’t orderly or controlled, telling me someone had been in a hurry to leave.
My pulse thudded in my ears as I followed them, each step dragging me deeper into something I didn’t want to find. A place this locked down didn’t bleed unless something had gone horribly, catastrophically wrong.
The elevator ride to the twelfth floor felt endless. When the doors slid open, the smell hit me full force.
Blood. Fresh. Thick. Heavy in the air.
My stomach dropped as I stepped out, my gun already in my hand. The hallway was eerily still, the lights humming softly over streaks of red that led away in both directions.
“Atlas?” I called, keeping my voice low and steady. “Alessio? Marcello?”
There was no answer.
I rounded the corner, my boots sliding in a slick smear on the marble. Someone’s blood. Too much of it. The walls were spattered, the floor streaked, the kind of mess left behind by violence that didn’t stop at one body.
It looked more like a slaughter than a gunfight.
I followed the trail through the entryway until I reached the front door.
It stood open.
Two bodies lay on the floor.
One face-up.
One face-down.
Alessio.
And Atlas.
The names didn’t belong together like that. Not like this. Not on cold marble, surrounded by blood.
A curse dragged out of me, thick and broken, scraping my throat raw as it forced its way up.
“Jesus Christ…”
I went to Alessio first because he was closest, because some stupid part of me still believed proximity might meant survival. I dropped to my knees and pressed two fingers to his neck.
There was no pulse.
His skin was already cooling beneath my touch. Cooling like the world had decided he didn’t belong in it anymore.
The little shit. The mouthiest bastard in our whole family. The one who never took anything seriously, who laughed too loud, who lived like tomorrow was guaranteed.
Gone.
The word hit me like a grenade, the finality of it choking me.
Grief pounded into me so hard my vision blurred. I had to catch myself on the floor to keep from tipping over. My eyes burned, my chest tightening until it hurt to breathe.
“Fuck,” I whispered, leaning down. “You absolute idiot. You deserved better than this.”
I heard a sound that didn’t belong to the dead. It was a wet, broken drag of air.
Atlas.
I spun around.
He was barely conscious, blood spreading beneath him, his breathing ragged and shallow like he was drowning on dry land. Bullet holes tore through his torso, his shoulder, his side—more wounds than a man should have been able to carry and still be alive.
“Atlas!” I dropped to my knees beside him. “Hey—stay with me, cuz.”
His eyelids fluttered. His mouth moved, but nothing came out. Just a torn, painful exhale.
“Don’t talk. Don’t fucking talk,” I snapped, already pulling my phone out, my hands shaking as I dialed. “I’ve got you.”
As the call rang, Atlas’s hand twitched. Weak. Trembling.
He wasn’t reaching for me.
He was reaching for Alessio.
His fingers scraped against the marble, dragging toward his brother’s arm, stopping just inches short. His face folded in on itself—not from pain, but from something far worse.
Loss.
I caught his hand and pressed it to Alessio’s shoulder so he didn’t have to keep reaching. His fingers curled weakly into that blood-soaked shirt like he was afraid to let go.
And then he went still.
The line clicked.
“This is Gianni,” I barked into the phone. “We need medical extraction to Atlas’s penthouse. Multiple gunshot wounds. One DOA. One critical.”
My voice broke on the last word. I closed my eyes for a second. Just one.
Because Alessio—that loud, reckless kid—was lying dead at my feet.
And Atlas—the strongest bastard I knew—was bleeding out beside him.
The world shifted. It darkened. It hardened. Losing the light it once knew.
I retrieved a blanket and pulled it over Alessio’s body, smoothing it once, even though he couldn’t feel a damn thing. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Shock, grief, adrenaline - I don’t know. Nothing mattered now that he was gone.
I turned back to Atlas. I dropped beside him, pressed my palm to his neck again, harder this time, terrified I imagined a pulse. It was faint, thready. But it was there.
“Hold on,” I breathed, the words scraping out of me. “For Alessio. For all of us.”
I pushed to my feet, but the room tilted with me. My eyes burned, vision blurring around the edges. My throat felt raw, like I swallowed glass. There was a pressure in my chest that almost knocked me back down.
My heart wasn’t just beating - it was cracking wide open. Splintering under the weight of everything we’d lost. Everything that was still on the line. And for the first time tonight, I wasn’t sure who I was trying to save anymore… Atlas, or what was left of myself.