Chapter 29 - Marco
“You became a killer.”
Alice's words land like bullets in the morning sun streaming through the plate-glass windows of the Northwestern coffee shop. My wife doesn't flinch, but I see her knuckles go white around her coffee cup, the black ink of her tattooed ring—three days old, still tender—stark against her skin.
The accusation hangs between the sisters like a blade.
I stay silent, letting them navigate this minefield, but my hand rests on my thigh, inches from the Glock beneath my jacket.
Alice arrived fifteen minutes late—deliberate power play, making Valentina wait until other patrons started stepping around our table like we were a force of nature they didn't want to disturb.
Now she sits at the furthest chair from us, back straight, looking older somehow. These few days have aged her years.
"I became a survivor," Valentina says.
Her chin lifts, the line of her jaw so sharp it could cut glass, and I would be embarrassed by the way my body reacts if I wasn’t so preoccupied with the very real possibility of someone getting shot before we finish our lattes.
My wife’s voice is even, but her words snap in the air between us, brittle and bright. "With power. With choices."
The implication hovers: I made the choices you couldn’t, and I’m still standing. What does that say about you?
Alice doesn’t blink. She folds her hands primly on the table, a child’s posture at odds with her severed innocence.
The resemblance between them is unmistakable in this moment—same, dark eyes; same arched nose and high, Slavic cheekbones; same hint of something violent and wild buried beneath.
I catch a glimmer of what they must have looked like as girls, fighting over the last cookie or a broken doll, and I realize with an awful clarity that this conversation was written in their bones long before any of us stepped into this goddamn coffee shop.
"Mom died trying to save us from this life," Alice reminds, her voice so soft it’s almost gentle. The words coil around our table, venom in silk. She leans forward, and the plastic spoon in her cup trembles, a tiny quiver of fear or rage or both. "She burned for us—literally. You know that."
Valentina doesn’t yield. "Mom died because she thought she could outsmart men who spend their lives building cages for women like us." Her gaze never leaves Alice’s face. "She tried to run. I stayed and fought. That’s why I’m alive."
Two old men at the next table argue about baseball stats, their voices rising and falling in the background like the tide.
A woman with a stroller checks her phone, thumb scrolling while her baby screams into the void.
The world keeps spinning, unaware that the balance of power in the city could tip over the edge with a careless word from either sister.
I want to tell Valentina she doesn’t have to do this.
That we could walk away, disappear together, start over someplace with no ghosts—except I know that’s a lie.
The ghosts always find you. I know this because I am one.
The man I used to be haunts every decision I make, every time I reach for a weapon instead of a word, every time I let Valentina take the lead because she’s better at bloodshed than I ever was at being good.
Alice shifts, and her knee bumps the table. "You think you’re free," she says, "but you’re just at the top of a different cage." Her eyes flick to me, then back to her sister. "You married a man who could kill you. Is that power?"
Valentina smiles. "I married a man who would die before he let anyone touch me." She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t need to. "That’s all the power I’ll ever need."
I want to reach across the table, thread my fingers through hers. But she doesn’t want comfort, not now. She wants a witness.
Alice’s mouth twists, and I wonder if she’s about to cry or throw her coffee in Valentina’s face. Instead, she looks away, out the window, where a black SUV idles at the curb. "You’re not safe," she says. "You never will be."
The words chill the inside of my chest, because they’re true. Not just for Valentina, but for all of us.
I tilt my chair back, scanning the room again.
The barista from earlier wipes a counter, but his eyes keep straying to our table.
The college kid with the laptop hasn’t typed anything in ten minutes.
In the reflection of the glass, I catch the glint of a camera lens.
I reach under my jacket, fingers grazing the cold metal of my Glock, and I feel Valentina’s approval like a warm hand at the back of my neck.
Tommy's positioned at the north entrance, two more men in unmarked cars. Even this conversation requires an army.
Alice's eyes find mine, those young eyes suddenly ancient. "Your father killed our mother."
"Yes." No point in denial. The guilt sits in my chest like shrapnel, sharp and constant. "And I'll carry that sin forever."
Three days since the chapel. Three days since Valentina killed Liam with his own gun. Three days since we tattooed permanence into our skin instead of wearing rings that could be removed. The marks have barely healed, and here we are, waiting for the last piece of her old life to pass judgment.
"But not our father?" Alice's voice sharpens like a blade finding its edge. "He's still alive?"
The sisters lock eyes, and this is it—the real test. Everything hinges on this moment.
My phone buzzes with updates from Luca about Irish movement on the south side, but I ignore it.
The copper tang of blood never quite leaves my mouth, mixing with bitter coffee as I watch them circle each other with words.
Now Alice leans forward, and I see the steel that runs in the Bernardi women. "Let him go. He's broken, beaten. Let him disappear."
"He doesn't deserve mercy," Valentina says.
"Neither do any of you. But here we are.
" Alice's fingers drum against the table, a nervous tell she probably doesn't know she has.
"I'll go to college. Leave this life. Never come back to Chicago.
" She pauses, letting the weight of her next words build.
"But only if you let him live. Those are my terms."
Valentina looks at me. I nod slightly—her family, her choice.
Whatever she decides, I'll support. And whoever needs to die because of it, I'll handle.
The morning light catches the black ink circling her ring finger as she reaches for my hand.
The nervous energy radiates from her—the same tension that had her gripping her coffee cup like a lifeline before Alice arrived.
"Fine," she says after a long moment. "But he leaves everything. The territory, the money, the connections."
"Everything becomes yours?" Alice asks, a bitter smile playing at her lips.
"Everything becomes ours," Valentina corrects, her fingers sliding through mine.
The tattooed rings align. Even this simple touch makes my cock twitch—three days since the chapel, and my body still responds to her like I'm starving.
We fuck like animals after violence, and today's been all sharp edges.
The truth sits darker underneath: I'd do it again. Kill anyone, destroy anything, to have her. That's what makes me the monster her mother tried to escape. But looking at Valentina now, seeing the power she's claiming, I know she's becoming something just as dangerous. My queen with teeth.
She loves her sister. And so she is letting her go.
The medical facility reeks of antiseptic two hours later, no other scents surviving the industrial disinfectant. Valentina and I find Alonzo in a private room, his left hand heavily wrapped, face bruised but conscious. The beeping of machines marks time like a countdown.
"My daughters," he rasps, voice raw from screaming or crying or both. "Both lost to me."
"You lost us the day Mom died," Valentina says, no emotion in her voice.
I stand by the door, checking exits, watching sightlines, scanning for threats while she handles what needs handling. This is her moment, her closure. My role is to ensure she gets it. And to put a bullet in anyone who tries to stop her.
She produces papers from her bag, setting them on his bedside table. "Sign these. Everything transfers to me."
His right hand shakes as he reaches for the pen, the left too damaged to use. "Then you disappear," she continues. "As soon as you're out of hospital. Never return to Chicago."
The scratching of pen on paper fills the silence. Each signature another nail in the coffin of the Bernardi empire as it was. With trembling fingers, he signs away everything—territory, accounts, connections. A lifetime of blood and violence reduced to ink on paper.
"I didn't want to kill her," Alonzo blurts out, voice cracking under the weight of all he's lost.
The pen slips from his fingers, landing on the crisp manila folder with a soft, final-sounding tap. For one vertiginous second, the only sound is the medical monitor's slow, steady beep. His chest rises and falls in shallow, frantic movements, the oxygen tube fluttering at his nostrils.
He doesn’t look at us when he says it, his gaze fixed on the blank wall across from his hospital bed, as if he can will himself into another universe where the past is reversible.
He’s not the man who ordered a dozen executions over the phone, not the man who stormed through the Bernardi townhouse with a pistol and a prayer; right now he’s just a battered old wolf, cornered and desperate, haunted by the only kill that ever mattered.