Chapter 45 Marcello
Marcello
We gathered in the only sanctuary that mattered: the room where we’d placed Alessio’s body.
His body rested beneath a white sheet, impossibly still. The machine beside him sat dark and useless, never once required. And the silence in the room was so heavy it felt like it was roaring at me.
Raze stood in the corner, lean and impatient, tapping a metal lighter against his palm. His dark eyes flicked to me, then to Alessio, then back to me—waiting.
Gianni sat at the foot of the bed, face blank, jaw clenched, grief held in check by discipline.
I took the chair beside the bed, Alessio’s cold hand beneath mine, and lowered my head in silent prayer.
They say grief is supposed to come in waves. Soft ones. Slow ones. That’s bullshit. Because this felt like I was drowning in concrete.
I’d almost lost two brothers yesterday. Two.
There was a ringing in my ears I couldn’t shake—the kind that starts when something inside you breaks and keeps breaking. My throat was raw, but I hadn’t said a word. And I couldn’t cry, because men like me don’t cry. We fracture.
I stared at Alessio’s face—pale, soft, too young. Our baby brother. The one we swore we’d always protect. The one we dragged out of the darkness, raised on loyalty and blood and whatever scraps of tenderness this family could manage.
We were supposed to keep him safe. And we failed.
My chest twisted so painfully it felt like something was sawing through bone. I gripped the bedframe until my knuckles went white. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
Gianni’s voice was low. “He shouldn’t be here.”
“No,” I managed, but it came out shredded. “He shouldn’t.”
He was supposed to be the one who never touched this life. The one who stayed clean, stayed bright. Every time Alessio smiled, it reminded me of what we could’ve been if we hadn’t been born into this life. And now? The world got another piece. A bigger one this time.
My eyes burned. I blinked hard.
“The kid trusted us to have his back,” I whispered. “And we let him down.”
Gianni tensed, jaw tight enough to crack. “We didn’t let him down. They took him.”
“No.” My voice broke on something feral, something I’d been swallowing for years. “We allowed it. Don’t pretend otherwise. What the hell was our brother doing guarding our fucking door? Why was he out there instead of inside with us—where he belonged?”
The words burned on the way out.
That’s what would tear me apart in the end—knowing Alessio wasn’t taken because he was weak, but because we put him in a weak position. We left him outside like a shield. Like a sacrifice.
He should’ve been with us. He should’ve been behind us, protected, not standing there like some disposable sentry.
He wasn’t lesser. But we treated him that way. Because Father drilled it into us—that an illegitimate son didn’t get a seat at the table. He didn’t get power. He just… existed.
And we let that poison seep into us until we believed it too. Until Alessio became something we loved fiercely in private… but sidelined in public.
It didn’t matter that he was ours. Nor that he was the gentlest of us, the one who still believed in things like fairness, loyalty, brotherhood. We let the world decide his worth. We let Father decide it.
And then we lived like it was true.
And that—that was the sin I couldn’t forgive myself for.
Because love meant nothing if it was only given in secret. Protection meant nothing if it only counted when it was convenient.
And then the second sin hit me—quiet, cruel, undeniable.
Marcello, a voice whispered from somewhere buried deep in my skull, that second sin… where you were too busy to answer your phone while your brothers lay dying in a pool of their own blood.
The words carved straight through me.
I remembered the calls I missed. The vibrations against my desk that I ignored because I was buried too deep inside a woman whose name I’d already forgotten. I remembered calling back minutes later and getting no answer. I remembered the chill that slid down my spine before I even knew why.
And now here we were. Alessio buried under a sheet, and Atlas barely alive, roaring inside a hospital bed.
Because I wasn’t there. Because I didn’t pick up the fucking phone.
Something inside me snapped.
It wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was just a clean, silent break—the kind a man doesn’t plan but has to deal with anyway. A fracture right down the middle of who I used to be, and who I would become after this day.
My throat tightened until I tasted metal. My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms, and the room swam with a heat made of grief and rage and guilt so black it felt bottomless.
I wanted to tear the walls apart. I wanted to drag every man responsible into the street and make the pavement drink them dry. I wanted to undo five minutes. Just five stupid minutes.
Gianni whispered my name under his breath—soft, like he knew the exact moment I crossed that invisible line. But it was too late.
The Marcello who walked into this room was gone.
What was left was a man built on two sins: the brother I didn’t protect, and the calls I didn’t answer.
The truth hit so hard my knees nearly buckled. My vision blurred. My chest twisted until something snapped loose inside me and I let out a sound that didn’t sound human.
I roared.
The sound tore out of me like it had been waiting years to escape, scraping my throat raw, violent enough that Gianni flinched. It was agony and self-hatred and grief all detonating at once—a sound too big for the room, too ugly for prayer, too broken for redemption.
It ripped through me—an unholy, wounded, animal scream that shook the metal rail, burned my lungs, and dragged every shard of pain to the filthy surface.
It was everything I never said and everything I failed to do. It was every fucking thing I lost in one brutal, echoing bellow.
And when it died in my chest, when the last ragged breath left me, I was left shaking, hollow, and trembling over the body of my brother—a monster made from guilt and the ruins of love.