CHAPTER 25
FIORELLA P.O.V.
I ripped a long strip of my silk slip, the expensive fabric shredding with a sharp, discordant sound that barely registered over the ringing in my ears.
The limestone ledge was slick beneath my bare knees, the stone threatening to send us both over the edge prematurely if I shifted my weight too fast. I pressed the crumpled silk directly into the jagged hole in Angelo's shoulder, my fingers instantly slipping in the warm, iron-scented overflow.
It wasn't stopping. The blood was pumping rhythmically, a terrifying, heavy pulse that told me an artery was clipped.
Every time I thought I had a grip on the flow, it surged right through the shredded fabric, painting my hands a glossy crimson all the way to the wrists.
I used my teeth to tighten the knot of the makeshift bandage, pulling brutally hard, my eyes stinging from the acrid smell of gunsmoke hanging thick in the ravine air.
"Stay with me, bastardo," I hissed, my breath shallow. "Don't you dare close your eyes. Pressure. I need more pressure."
"Puttana! I know you're down there!"
Alessio’s voice tore through the night, distorted by the canyon's acoustics but unmistakable in its unhinged vitriol.
The sound of my brother screaming that word hit me like a physical blow.
I flinched so hard I almost lost my footing on the narrow ledge, my heel kicking a loose stone that clattered over the lip and vanished into the pitch-black abyss below.
A cold, hard survivalist's chill instantly replaced whatever lingering shock I had left.
He wasn't here to rescue me. The audacity of this man, standing up there playing the righteous executioner when his hands were dirtier than anyone's. He was hunting us to erase the shame I’d brought the family.
The ravine was a trap, and we were the rats.
"He's not coming for me," I muttered, pressing my weight down on Angelo's shoulder. "He’s going to kill us both. Bastardo, listen to him."
Angelo reached out with a trembling hand, his bloody fingers leaving thick smears across my pale forearm.
His skin was already graying from the blood loss, his iron-hard exterior finally crumbling into something terrifyingly fragile.
He tried to push me away, shoving me toward the climbing path with a weak, uncoordinated flex of his good arm.
"Go back, Fiorella," he rasped, his words slurring together. He coughed, a wet, rattling sound from deep in his chest that sent a fine spray of blood hot against my cheek. "Tell them I drugged you. Let me go."
He was trying to play the martyr. After everything he’d put me through, after dragging me out of that masquerade ball and systematically dismantling my entire reality, he wanted to die on this ledge to give me a chance at a lie.
Fucking idiot. He thought I was still that girl in the silk dress who cared about the family name.
I snatched his jaw, digging my nails hard into the rough stubble on his chin to force his heavy, oil-slick eyes to lock onto mine.
"You don't get to die," I snarled, shaking my head in a violent refusal.
I leaned in and crushed my mouth against his.
It wasn't romantic; it was a desperate, bruising transfusion of willpower.
I bit his bottom lip hard enough to taste fresh copper, demanding he stay awake.
I pulled back, wiping a smear of blood from his mouth with my thumb before I licked it off my own skin, keeping my eyes deadlocked on his blown-out pupils.
"You belong to me now, Angelo. Look at me! "
The limestone face above us exploded. A high-velocity round from an 'Ndrangheta sniper on the opposite ridge struck the rock inches from my head.
Shards of white stone sprayed outward like shrapnel, slicing tiny, hot lines across the skin of my shoulder.
The deafening crack of the rifle echoed through the canyon, immediately followed by the frantic, disorganized shouting of the Silvestri guards swarming the ridgeline.
I threw my body over Angelo's chest, wrapping my arms around his head to shield him as another rain of pulverized dust pelted my back.
"Don't move!" I yelled over the ringing in my ears. "They're shooting at anything that breathes. Stay low."
I risked a glance over the jagged lip of the ledge.
The drop was about ten feet straight down into a tangled mess of Mediterranean scrub and loose scree.
Hitting that brush was going to be brutal on Angelo's wounded body, but staying up here was a guaranteed death sentence.
We were caught in a lethal pincer. I shimmied down and maneuvered myself under his good arm, my small frame straining against his immense, dead weight.
"I'm going to drop us," I panted, digging my bare toes into a narrow crack in the rock, my calf muscles trembling violently. "Hold onto me, Angelo. Don't let go."
I shifted our center of gravity outward, and we slid off the blood-slicked limestone together.
We plummeted into the dark, hitting the dry, thorny brush at the bottom with a sickening, bone-jarring thud.
Angelo took the brunt of the impact, his massive body hitting the dirt first. A choked, agonizing gasp tore out of his throat before his head lolls back lifelessly into the crushed leaves.
My ankle twisted savagely as I landed on a hidden rock, the joint popping loudly.
I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood instantly, forcing the scream back down my throat.
"Angelo? Angelo!" I whispered frantically, patting his chest. "Wake up. Shit, shit, shit."
He didn't move. I heard the unmistakable crunch of heavy gravel directly above us.
I scrambled to crawl completely over Angelo, turning my body into a physical shield, and clamped my hand tight over his mouth just in case the pain forced a groan out of him.
I looked straight up. The imposing silhouette of Alessio stood on the exact limestone ledge we had just abandoned.
He clicked on a tactical flashlight, the blinding white beam cutting a terrifying path through the dark, sweeping the rocks just feet from where we lay.
I frantically tucked the ruined, shining white fabric of my silk skirt securely under my legs, pressing my face into the dirt to hide any reflection.
Alessio leaned over the edge and hawked a mouthful of bile down into the ravine. I squeezed my eyes shut as the spit landed with a wet slap on a broad leaf mere inches from my trembling hand.
"I'll bury you both in this hole!" Alessio screamed, his voice raw. He ripped his radio off his belt. "Find them! I want them dead! No prisoners! Check the south descent trail!"
The radio crackled harshly with confirmations. Alessio’s heavy boots turned and stomped away from the ledge. The transition from missing sister to officially liquidated target was complete.
A low, modified engine growl vibrated through the earth beneath us.
Down the lower access road at the bottom of the ravine, a set of headlights flickered on and off, sweeping rapidly through the tree line.
It was Renato’s sedan, driving blacked-out, desperately trying to find our position without alerting the choppers.
I shoved my hand toward Angelo’s tactical vest, my fingers brushing the cold metal of his mag-lite.
I almost pulled it to signal, but my hand froze.
One flash of light, and the snipers on the ridge would turn us into red mist.
"Renato..." I breathed into the dirt, watching the faint glow of the tires creeping forward. "Over here. Please see us."
A massive Silvestri SUV roared out of the shadows with its high beams blindingly bright, broadsiding Renato’s sedan with a deafening, metallic crunch.
The impact sent the smaller car spinning out of control.
Instantly, tracers lit up the night—red and green lines arching furiously across the dirt road.
Assault rifles chattered in a deafening crossfire.
Renato’s tires screamed against the gravel, smoking as he gunned the ruined engine, forcing his car back toward the main road to escape the hail of gunfire.
"No!" I rasped, my fingernails digging deeply into the soil until my knuckles turned stark white. "Don't leave us. Renato!"
The taillights vanished into the trees. The oppressive, heavy silence of the woods rushed back in to fill the void. We were deadass alone.
Beneath me, Angelo’s head lolled sharply to the side, his jaw completely slack.
His breathing had shifted into a shallow, irregular wheeze—that terrifying death rattle of a body severely losing blood volume.
His massive frame was pure dead weight, literally crushing my ribs against the muddy floor of the ravine.
"Angelo! Wake up!" I shook his heavy shoulder violently, my fingers digging into the dense muscle. "Don't you dare die on me. Open your eyes, you bastard."
His skin was freezing. I shoved his heavy shoulder off my chest, gasping for a full breath of air, and pressed two fingers desperately against the pulse point on his thick neck.
It was thready. A frantic, weak tapping against my skin.
The silk bandage had completely soaked through again, and the dirt beneath us was turning into a thick, horrifying slurry of mud and Ferraro blood.
I wiped my hands frantically on the tall grass beside us, trying to get a better grip, only to realize the grass was already dripping wet with his blood.
A deafening thudding sound drowned out my thoughts. A Silvestri helicopter crested the tree line, its massive spotlight sweeping the ravine floor in wide, aggressive arcs. They were running thermal imaging. Angelo’s massive, bleeding body was going to light up their screens like a bonfire.