Chapter 47 Marcello
Marcello
There was only one year between me and Atlas — my brother came first, loud and stubborn and already half feral by the time I arrived in this world. We had grown up like twin storms, always fighting, always bleeding, always ready to tear the world apart for each other.
Then Alessio happened.
I had been twelve the day my father walked through the door holding a scrawny six-year-old by the shoulders. The kid had looked like he’d been dragged through hell — he was too thin and too pale, his eyes too big for his face.
A stray.
That was what I had thought. That was what everyone had thought.
Father hadn’t offered explanations. As the Don, he had carried the privilege of silence. He had just brought that little ghost into our home and said, “This is Alessio. He’s staying with us.”
At the time, none of us had known what that meant.
It wasn’t until years later — when whispers turned into rumors and rumors turned into truth — that Atlas and I had understood the full picture.
Alessio hadn’t been some lost child my father had found wandering the street.
He had been our half brother.
The product of an affair my father had had seven years before.
The son of a woman who had slid into heroin and never crawled back out.
The boy no one had claimed until she died and Father had been forced to take responsibility for the actions of his dick.
But none of that had mattered the moment Alessio stepped into our house.
There were people in this world who fit like they were cut from the same cloth — family by blood, family by loyalty, family by fate.
Alessio had clicked with us from the first moment.
He hadn’t cried. He hadn’t shied away. He had just looked up at me and Atlas with those huge, wary eyes… and somehow we had known.
He belonged.
He hadn’t been a Cavalho in name. Father had made that abundantly clear.
Alessio would never have the title, never stand at the head of the table, never inherit the power or the legacy.
Illegitimacy had marked him like a curse — something written into his bones before he had ever taken his first breath.
But Alessio hadn’t needed the legacy.
He had built something stronger.
While Atlas and I had fought to lead, Alessio had fought to protect.
Quietly. Without complaint. He had been the one who cleaned our wounds after street fights, the one who stole from Father’s liquor cabinet to distract us from the beatings, the one who sat between us when we tore into each other so we never went too far.
He had become our shadow. Our shield. The silent spine that held our family upright.
A crucial part of us. A piece we hadn’t realized was irreplaceable — until now, when someone ripped him out of our world and left nothing but blood in his place…
There was no version of this world where my brother’s killers walked away. None. Their fate had been sealed the moment they spilled his blood.
Vengeance wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t an impulse. It wasn’t even justice. It was a taste. A pulse. A whole fucking emotion. It rose through me like heat from a furnace—bitter, metallic, all-consuming—and I let it fill every hollow place grief had carved out.
They touched Alessio. They ended him. And now? It was our duty to return the favor.
I drew in a slow breath, forcing my rage to steady itself. The logic settled first—that quiet, deadly calm that always appeared right before everything I was burned down.
“Viktor and Milan Sokolov are dead,” I began. “But the Sokolov line isn’t.”
“Semyon Sokolov,” Gianni rumbled. “The surviving brother.”
“And his inner circle,” Raze added. “Six, maybe eight loyalists. And they have a small army.”
“That wasn’t some small crew who unleashed hell on my brothers,” I murmured. One look at the wreckage in Atlas’s penthouse, at the clean precision of the breach, the brutal efficiency of the attack, and it was obvious these weren’t amateurs.
“We have the element of surprise on our side,” Gianni remarked. “They think Atlas and Alessio are dead. They think we’re grieving and crippled.”
Raze smirked. “It’s the perfect time to hit them.”
Gianni glanced at me. “They’ll scatter.”
“They’ll gather,” I corrected. “When someone calls them.”
“Who?” Raze asked.
I stood, straightened my jacket, and nodded toward the door. “Him.”
The men turned as the door opened.
A tall, lean figure walked in—dark hair, intense cheekbones, a serpent tattoo curling over the side of his neck. He wore the expensive suit of a man who saw blood daily but never expected to get any of it on himself.
Archie ‘The Pope’ Popovich. Pakhan of the Antonovich Bratva. Our sometimes enemy. Until now. Now we shared a common enemy.
Gianni stiffened instantly. Raze’s hand went to his gun.
Archie’s lifted one palm. “Relax. If I wanted you dead, I’d have worn cheaper shoes.”
I rolled my eyes. “Archie.”
“Marcello.” His gaze flicked to the sheet-covered form on the bed. He paused. “My condolences. Alessio was so young.”
“Too young.”
He nodded, expression unreadable. “The Sokolovs are reckless. They’ve been itching for a war to claim wider territory. I wasn’t interested. But I didn’t think they’d go this far.” He sighed. “You know how little I care for alliances.”
Raze clicked his lighter, eyes narrowing. “And yet here you are.”
“Because,” Archie explained, stepping closer, “I want the Sokolov family wiped from this earth as much as you do. They’ve cost me business, soldiers, and patience. And I’m done tolerating them.”
He leaned forward, locking eyes with Gianni.
“And because Atlas Cavalho once saved my life. I owe him a debt.”
I knew exactly what he was referring to—the moment only months ago when Gianni had a gun pressed to Archie’s skull, finger tight on the trigger, and it had been my brother Atlas’s call that forced him to stand down.
The order hadn’t come lightly, and Gianni had obeyed it with visible restraint, fury simmering just beneath the surface.
Atlas had his reasons for keeping the Russian alive. Important ones. Strategic ones. I told myself that mattered. I even wanted to believe Archie had changed—that whatever monster he’d been before had been tempered by time and consequence.
But Gianni hadn’t watched from a distance.
He was the one who had torn his now wife from Archie’s grasp, pried her loose with blood still on his hands and violence still echoing in the room. For him, trust wasn’t a theory or a calculated risk. It was something Archie had already forfeited.
And it wasn’t something Gianni would ever hand back easily.
Gianni turned to me, eyebrows raised. “Are you fucking serious right now? You want him, of all people, in this room?”
I ignored him.
Archie continued, his tone indicating he was unaffected by the outburst: “I’ll confirm the warehouse where Semyon is hiding.
And I’ll get invites sent out to every loyal Sokolov soldier.
They’ll gather, unsuspecting, in one place at the same time.
” He smiled.“And then you’ll just have to kill them. ”