Chapter 4 Marcello
Marcello
The second I saw her in the alley behind my club, something in me snapped.
Four men had her boxed in, their backs to the alley mouth, bodies blocking out what little light reached that far.
She was crushed against the brick, bare skin scraping stone as she curled inward, trying to make herself smaller, trying to disappear.
She was shaking so hard I could see it from twenty feet away.
One of them laughed. Slow. Pleased.
He slid two fingers under her chin and forced her face up, making her look at them. Making them look at her. She jerked, tried to turn away, terror spilling out of her eyes.
He slammed her head into the wall.
The crack of bone against brick split the air.
Rage tore through me, hot and clean and bright, the kind that erased everything else. Grief, guilt, the endless hollow inside my chest—all of it burned away, leaving only one need.
To destroy.
This was my city.
These were my walls.
And nobody got to bleed like that in my shadow and walk away breathing.
The first man turned when my shoe scraped the concrete. His mouth opened to warn the others.
He never made a sound.
I drove my fist straight into his throat. Cartilage collapsed under my knuckles. His eyes bulged as air died inside him. I shoved him back and let him hit the wall, where he slid down choking on his own breath.
The second went for a knife. Panic made him sloppy. I caught his wrist mid-swing, twisted until bone cracked, then shoved the blade into his gut. Once wasn’t enough. I buried it again, higher. Blood flooded his hands as he staggered and tried to hold himself together.
The third rushed me with a metal pipe. I stepped inside the swing and drove my elbow into his ribs. Something gave. His scream was wet and broken. I tore the pipe from his grip and smashed it across his face. Teeth scattered over the concrete. He dropped, twitching in his own blood.
The fourth had her by the hair, dragging her deeper into the dark. She clawed at him, too shocked to even scream.
I hit him like a freight train.
We went down hard. His face smashed into the ground, nose bursting on impact. I rolled him over and pinned him there, my knee crushing his chest while he flailed, slick with blood and terror.
“Get—” he started.
I slammed his head into the pavement.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Something inside his skull gave way. His body jerked, then went loose.
I stayed there, breathing hard, waiting. Watching for a twitch. A breath. Anything that indicated I should finish it.
Nothing. He didn’t even flinch.
The alley fell deathly still, the air thick and heavy with the smell of blood and violence. Water dripped somewhere in the dark. My pulse thundered loud in my ears.
I straightened. Slowly. My hands were red, coated in blood. My shirt clung to me, soaked through with sweat and blood, warm and tacky against my skin. Blood streaked the walls, pooled on the ground, stained my shoes. It was a mess. Excessive, maybe. But necessary.
I turned. The woman was folded into the far corner of the alley like she was trying to disappear into it. Her knees were dragged tight to her chest. Arms locked over her head, braced for the next blow. Her whole body trembled, small and violent, like her bones were rattling inside her skin.
Her eyes lifted to me, then darted to the bodies scattered across the alley. They squeezed shut hard, like that might erase the image. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Just a breath that caught and stuttered in her throat.
She looked again. At the nearest body. Back to me. That was when what I’d done hit her.
Her shaking worsened, turning frantic. Shock crawled in fast, dragging horror with it. She made a broken sound, something strangled and small, like she was swallowing a scream before it could claw its way out.
I stepped toward her. She recoiled instantly, pressing harder into the bricks, shoulders curling in, terror flashing across her face.
I stopped. I needed to get her out of here—but not like this. Not if I was just another thing she was going to be afraid of.
I kept my voice low, steady as I tried to calm her down.
Nothing. Her stare was unfocused, like she was looking through me instead of at me. Shock had her sealed off, locked inside herself. I lowered into a crouch a few feet away, careful not to crowd her.
I tried to tell her that she was okay, that she was safe.
Her chest jerked. Short, broken pulls of air. Her teeth chattered hard enough to click. This place was already burned into her—every sound, every smell, the copper in the air, the bodies at her feet. If I left her like this, it would never let her go.
Her clothes hung torn and crooked on her frame. There was a fresh cut along her cheek, blood drying dark against her skin. Her chin trembled uncontrollably. Trauma had her muscles wound so tight she looked like she was one breath away from falling into madness.
Slowly, I reached into my pocket and felt for the dissolvable strip. I kept it for panic—my own, mainly. It took the edge off when the walls started closing in. Slowed the nervous system. Smothered fear before it turned me into a raging mess. It blurred memory, too. I guessed that was the point.
I didn’t know this woman. I shouldn’t have been making that choice for her.
But she was balanced on the edge, and this alley was soaked in blood and trauma.
If I walked away now, what she’d seen tonight could trap her inside her own head—an endless void, hollow, gone.
And I sure as hell didn’t want that guilt weighing on my conscience.
I drew the strip out where she could see it, slow and deliberate, so it didn’t look like a weapon.
“This will calm you,” I said. “Take it.”
Her eyes didn’t focus. She wasn’t hearing me. She was drowning.
I brought the strip closer.
Her gaze finally locked onto mine. Wide. Wild. Terrified. And underneath it—pleading. She needed something solid. An anchor. A pause. Anything to make the night stop crushing her lungs.
Her lips parted a fraction. I placed the strip on her tongue. It melted instantly.
Her shoulders sagged as the tension drained out of them. Her breathing evened, loosened. Panic unwound from her body in visible waves. It hit faster than it should have. Stronger, too. She swayed even though she was still seated.
Her head tipped forward.
I caught her before she could fall. Something slurred left her mouth, a meaningless sound. The drug was already taking hold. Maybe harder than I’d intended.
I scooped her up before she could slip any farther, lifting her into my arms. She weighed almost nothing. Her cheek pressed against my shoulder, warm and damp with tears, her body limp against mine, like she’d finally run out of ways to hold herself together.
I scanned the alley once more. No handbag. No phone in sight. Just blood, brick, and the men who would’ve ruined her if I’d been a second later.
I carried her out, stepping over broken bodies without slowing. None of them moved.
My car was parked close. I eased her into the back seat delicately, arranging her so she was comfortable, so nothing pulled or twisted.
Before I climbed into the car, I wiped my hands on a towel, smearing dark red into the fabric until my skin was mostly clean.
Her breathing stayed soft, even. Gone but not gone.
One problem contained. Another just created.
The engine turned over, a low hum filling the silence. I pulled out of the lot and merged onto the road that led away from the club, away from the alley, toward my villa.
My chest tightened. The steering wheel creaked under my grip.
I shouldn’t have used the strip. I knew that. My head told me I’d crossed a line. But leaving her there wasn’t an option. And calling the police never was.
I checked the rearview mirror.
She drifted in and out, caught somewhere between sleep and nothing, lashes resting against her cheeks, face slack with exhaustion. Vulnerable.
I told myself she’d been spared something far worse than what I’d done. That I’d stopped the real damage before it could take root. It should have eased the pressure in my chest, but it didn’t.
The gates slid open and I pulled into the garage, the engine cutting off into heavy silence. I lifted her again, her weight slack in my arms, and carried her inside. She barely stirred. Just a faint shift, a breath against my neck, nothing more.
I took her to the guest room and laid her on the bed. She didn’t fight it. She didn’t even flinch. I pulled the blanket over her and switched off the light.
Her breathing deepened, slow and even.
I stayed there a moment, seated at the edge of the room, elbows braced on my knees. Blood still stained my clothes. My hands smelled like iron no matter how much I tried to ignore the smell.
This night was supposed to have ended clean—paperwork, silence, an early end where I went home alone and drowned my sorrows in a bottle of tequila.
Instead, I was standing watch over a stranger, letting her sleep through a drug I’d had no right to put on her tongue.
The guilt crawled in sharp and unwelcome.
What the fuck were you thinking, Marcello?
I shoved it aside. It was hopeless now. The only thing that mattered was that she woke up alive, intact, and out of danger.
I stepped back and closed the door. The lock clicked—soft, final. I rested my forehead against the wood and shut my eyes. I still had a call to make. A crew to send. A mess in that alley that needed to disappear.