Archie
I knew it was going to be a problem the second she walked in and saw me.
Tone didn’t slow. She stopped just inside the room like she’d hit an invisible wall, her gaze locking onto mine, sharp enough to draw blood.
“What the hell is he doing here?” She asked, as though I was the last person on this earth she wanted to share oxygen with. She was direct. Hostile. And thoroughly unapologetic.
I leaned back slightly in my chair, saying nothing, even as my chest tightened.
I couldn’t understand the depth of her disdain for me.
The way it flared so easily, so instinctively, every time she looked at me.
It didn’t make sense. And yet—there was something about it that pulled at me.
Something that felt too close to a challenge.
After I pulled her out of that situation where she and her brother’s now-wife were almost killed, I figured something would shift.
I wasn’t naive enough to expect gratitude, but a crack even. A pause. A moment where she didn’t look at me like I was just another problem circling her.
It never came.
She stayed exactly as she was. Cold. Guarded. Untouched by it.
Like saving her life hadn’t bought me a single inch closer—only proved she had no intention of letting me in.
Atlas didn’t even look up from where he stood at the head of the table.
“Sit down, Tone.”
“No,” she snapped, taking a step further into the room, her attention still fixed on me. “I want to know why he’s here.”
Around us, the others stayed quiet.
Gianni leaned back in his chair, arms folded, jaw tight. Marcello sat beside him, watching the exchange with careful neutrality. Raze—her brother—was already tense, like he knew exactly where this was going and didn’t have the energy to stop it.
They all knew. Tone had established a reputation for herself-when she erupted, it was not a small thing.
Atlas finally lifted his gaze.
“Because,” he said evenly, “whether you like it or not, Archie is part of the situation we’re dealing with. Which means he’s involved and he needs to be here for this meeting.”
Her laugh was sharp.
“Since when?”
“Since it became necessary.”
“We’ve never had an outsider sit in on a family meeting,” she challenged.
“Things change.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you need.”
Silence stretched for a beat.
Then she huffed, shaking her head as she dropped into a chair, crossing one leg over the other with a sharp, agitated movement.
“Un-fucking-believable.”
I watched her openly and didn’t even bother hiding it.
The tension in her shoulders. The way her fingers tapped once against her thigh before going still. The anger simmering just beneath her skin like it was always there, waiting for an excuse to rear its head.
“Good,” Atlas continued, like nothing had happened. “Now that we’re all here, we can move on.”
The meeting shifted, but the tension didn’t ease. It coiled tighter. Because then Atlas said her name again.
“Tone.”
She looked up, already irritated. “What?”
“I want clarification.”
Her expression darkened, a neat crease scaling the terrain between her her eyebrows.
“On what?”
“France.”
The word settled in, and no one rushed to fill the silence that followed. I felt it immediately—the shift. Subtle, but undeniable. Everyone was listening now.
“I’ve heard,” Atlas went on, “that you’re considering going there. Not for a visit this time. Something more permanent.”
Tone leaned back in her chair, folding her arms.
“I’m considering it,” she said. “That’s all.”
Raze snapped.
“No.”
The word came out harsh. Immediate. Final.
Her head turned slowly toward him, her expression sharpening.
“Excuse me?” She looked at him in disbelief.
“You’re not leaving,” he said, leaning forward now, his voice tight with anger. “I absolutely forbid it.”
Her eyes softened slightly then. She looked almost doe-eyed. But there was nothing gentle about the words that followed.
“This,” she said quietly, “is exactly the kind of attitude that made De Marco leave us.”
Complete and utter silence followed, so taut you could hear a pin drop. The name moved through the space—felt, not seen. I’d heard that Raze and Tone had a brother I’d never met.
Raze froze.
“So tell me,” she continued, her voice steady, cutting, “is that what you want? Another estranged sibling?”
No one spoke. Obviously because De Marco was a wound they all still carried. I didn’t know much about her brother who’d left the family fold years ago, but obviously, his abandonment was still felt deeply to this day.
What I did know was that he was gone without warning. Without explanation. No contact. No trace. He’d vanished so cleanly it was like he’d erased himself from existence. And none of them—not Atlas. Not Gianni. Nor Marcello. Not even Raze—had been able to find him.
I watched it settle over them. The weight of not knowing.
Raze’s jaw clenched, the fight draining out of him all at once as he leaned back in his chair, dragging a hand over his face. He looked exhausted. Defeated.
“Do what you want,” he muttered finally.
It wasn’t approval. But it wasn’t resistance anymore, either. Because Tone had obviously hit him with the thing she knew would hurt the most.
The room breathed again.
Atlas let the silence sit for a moment before moving on.
“If you leave,” he said, his tone shifting back to business, “we’ll need to discuss a replacement.”
Tone’s head snapped toward him.
“I haven’t even left yet.”
“And if you do,” he continued calmly, “we can’t be without a medic.”
“So you’re already planning to replace me?”
“We’re planning for all outcomes.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is when lives are involved.”
Her chair scraped slightly as she leaned forward, anger rising again.
“I’m still here.”
“For how long?” He snapped back at her, suddenly angry.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered.
That was the moment Gianni chose to lose his shit.
“What the fuck do you want, Tone?!”
The outburst cracked through the room, loud and sudden enough to pull everyone’s attention to him.
Even her.
She blinked at him, caught off guard.
He was already on his feet.
“You want to leave,” he went on, his voice rough, raw in a way that had nothing to do with anger alone. “But you don’t want to be replaced? Make up your fucking mind.”
The room fell quiet again—but this time, it carried weight by everyone at the table.
This wasn’t about France. It wasn’t even about her leaving.
Something older had surfaced. Something none of them had buried properly.
And just like that, I didn’t belong there. Not in this room. Not in this moment. I was standing on the edge of something that wasn’t mine—watching them circle a wound I had no right to see.
I saw it in the way Gianni’s hands trembled slightly at his sides. In the way his gaze locked onto her like he was trying to hold something together that had already started to break.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he said, quieter now, but no less intense. “Running from it. Running from everything.”
Her expression shifted.
“I’m not running,” she said.
“Yeah?” he shot back. “Then what do you call it?”
Silence.
He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.
“Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re trying to outrun something that’s already inside you.”
Her jaw clenched.
“Don’t—”
“No,” he cut in. “You don’t get to shut this down.”
The air thickened, heavy and stifling.
“You didn’t even cry,” he said suddenly, the words dropping into the room like a weight.
Everything stopped. My attention sharpened.
“You didn’t shed a single tear when Alessio died,” Gianni went on, his voice cracking slightly. “Not one. Because you were too busy holding everything together. Making sure the rest of us didn’t fall apart.”
Tone didn’t move. But something in her eyes changed.
“And now?” he pressed. “Now you think you can just leave? Like we can afford to lose another member of this family? He was your best friend!”
Alessio’s name wasn’t spoken again, but his absence filled the room.
I watched it happen. The way each of them carried it differently.
Gianni—raw. Open. Bleeding.
Raze—contained. Buried.
Marcello—quiet. Still grieving.
Atlas—controlled, but not untouched.
And Tone—Tone looked straight ahead, unblinking. Locking her emotions down. But I’d seen enough to know better.
The silence stretched. Pain sitting thick between them. Shared. Unspoken. Unforgettable.
I leaned back slightly, watching it all unfold, piecing it together.
The cousins. Their bonds. And the fractures.
Who belonged to who. Who carried what. Who broke, and who refused to.
It wasn’t just family. It was something tighter. Something welded together by an enormous loss.
And as I watched Tone, I understood something I hadn’t before. It wasn’t just anger or defiance. It was pressure. Coiled tight beneath her skin. Held there by sheer force of will.
Her need to leave—France, anywhere—wasn’t about distance. It wasn’t about sun or escape or freedom. It was about survival. About putting space between herself and something she hadn’t been able to face. Something she hadn’t let herself feel.
Alessio.
He’d been shot, killed, gone in a way that didn’t leave room for denial, but somehow—she’d found a way to deny it anyway. Not by pretending it hadn’t happened. But by refusing to let it break her.
She hadn’t cried. Gianni had said it like an accusation, but it wasn’t just that. It was confusion. Hurt. Maybe even resentment. Because everyone else had. Everyone else had felt it. Except her. She was still holding onto her grief, a silent, terrifying thing she couldn’t let go of.
Or at least—that’s what it looked like. But I knew better.
People like her didn’t not feel. They just buried things better.
Locked it down so tight it couldn’t breathe.
And then they kept moving. Working. Fixing.
Holding everyone else together so they didn’t have to look at the pieces of themselves that were missing.
She’d thrown herself into her role. Into being the one they relied on. The one who stayed steady while the rest of them fractured. And when that stopped being enough—she ran.
She was trying to outrun something that kept catching up to her.
Another country. Another life. Another version of herself that didn’t have to carry the weight of that moment. Of losing him.
My jaw tightened slightly.
And then there was the other part. The part she wouldn’t say out loud.
Alessio had been killed by Russians. Not my people, but that didn’t matter.
To her, the distinction would blur. Because grief didn’t care about accuracy.
It didn’t care about lines or allegiances or truth.
It needed something to attach to. Something to blame.
And I—I was standing right in front of her, carrying the face of it.
The accent. The history. The enemy she’d been taught to mistrust long before any of this happened.
So of course she hated me. Or thought she did. It was easier that way. Easier than admitting that the anger wasn’t really about me at all. It was about him. About everything she hadn’t let herself feel when he died.
And suddenly—her sharp looks, her cutting words, the way she bristled every time I stepped too close—it made more sense. Not enough to excuse it, but enough to understand it.
Enough to know that this wasn’t going to be a fight I could win by pushing back. Because I wasn’t just dealing with Tone. I was dealing with everything she hadn’t faced yet.
And that? That was an eruption waiting to happen.