Chapter 43
Lucio
T he second I step into Dom’s place, the smell of old bourbon and leather hits me like a punch to the face.
The lighting’s low, warm, too calm for what the fuck we’re about to get into.
Everything in this house looks like it belongs in a museum: polished floors, crystal decanters, delicate art lining the walls.
I don’t belong here. But that doesn’t stop me.
Romiro’s already pacing by the staircase, jaw tight, hands on his hips like he’s holding himself back from throwing something. Dominico lounges in the armchair near the fireplace like he owns the fucking world, his gold signet ring catching the light as he swirls a glass of scotch.
They don’t look up when I enter. They don’t have to.
“You called?” I say, voice flat.
Romiro turns first. “You should’ve come here on your own.”
Dom doesn’t even bother greeting me. “You’ve got nerve showing up with blood still on your shirt.”
I glance down. There’s still a faint rust stain near the hem. Not mine.
“Get to the point.”
Romiro stops pacing. His voice is low, clipped. “We know the breach came from her place.”
My stomach knots. “You don’t know shit.”
“We traced the signal,” Dom says, standing now, placing the glass down on the table like he’s preparing for war. “It pinged right off her router. She opened the fucking door, Lucio.”
“You think she did it on purpose?” I bark. “You think she planned for Ma to get caught in the crossfire? You think she wanted bullets in our fucking house?”
Romiro’s eyes flash. “I think you’re too close to see straight. And that makes you dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” I take a step forward. “You want dangerous? Keep talking about handing her over and see what I fucking do.”
“You’re not thinking clearly,” Dom cuts in. “She’s the reason we had to scrape your ma’s blood off the kitchen tiles?—”
“Don’t.” My voice breaks, sharp and raw. “Don’t fucking talk about my mother like she’s evidence in a case file.”
Dom sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Lucio?—”
“She didn’t mean for any of this to happen!” I shout, louder than I mean to. The chandelier above us sways slightly. “She didn’t know they were using her. They baited her—planted something in her system. She thought she was helping.”
Romiro shakes his head. “That’s the problem, Lucio. She thought.”
The room goes still.
“You’re asking me to hand her over,” I say, quieter now. “To you cruel fuckers. You think I don’t know what you’ll do to her. What the Camorra will do to those who cross them. You want me to give her up for you to kill her.”
Romiro meets my eyes. “No. We want you to step aside. Let us handle it.”
“No.”
Dom scoffs. “You’d throw the family away for one girl?”
I walk up to him, close enough to see the lines around his eyes. “You’d sacrifice a girl who didn’t know better just to send a message?”
“This isn’t about a message. It’s about blood. Retribution. Security,” he spits. “She’s a liability.”
“She’s mine ,” I snarl.
Silence falls like a blade. Heavy. Cold.
Romiro’s voice is quiet now, like he’s trying to reason with a bomb. “She was the breach, Lucio. Whether you like it or not.”
I turn to him, fury boiling under my skin. “I know that. I fucking know. But she didn’t pull the trigger. She didn’t shoot Ma. She’s not the one who stormed into our house armed to the teeth like fucking cowards.”
Dom’s voice cuts in like ice. “But she opened the door . And that means something.”
I breathe hard through my nose, trying to stay steady.
“She loves me,” I say, softer. “And I love her. You don’t get to rewrite that because it’s inconvenient.”
“She’s not a part of the Camorra. She’s not one of us,” Dom says.
“Neither was your wife,” I shoot back.
Romiro flinches.
I step back, running a hand through my hair, chest heaving. “I’m not handing her over. You want her? You come through me.”
Romiro steps forward, voice heavy. “Then what? You protect her forever? You keep her locked away? What happens next time someone gets through? What happens when your enemies know exactly where to strike?”
I don’t have an answer. Not one they’ll accept.
Dom pours himself another drink and takes a long, slow sip. “You don’t get to make decisions like this alone.”
I look him dead in the eye. “I’m not asking for permission.”
Romiro’s face falls. “Lucio…”
I turn to him, voice hollow. “She’s all I’ve got left that feels good in this world, Rom. I let her go, I lose whatever’s left of me.”
He doesn’t say anything. No one does. The room hums with tension, low and lethal.
Finally, Dom sets his glass down and walks past me, muttering, “Then pray to God your girl doesn’t make another mistake. Because if she does…”
He stops by the doorway.
“I won’t need your permission.”
The fluorescent lights in the ER hum like they’re pissed off to be awake. Or maybe that’s just me. Everything in here feels sterile, wrong, too bright for what just happened.
I push through the double doors, the scent of antiseptic and copper clogging my throat. The nurse at the front desk barely gets a word in before I spot Matteo pacing at the far end of the hall, phone pressed to his ear, voice clipped and sharp.
“I need full lockdown protocols. Firewalls, off-site backup…yes, even that ghost server. Fucking implement it. Now.”
He doesn’t look up when I walk past.
Mara’s sitting on one of the blue vinyl chairs against the wall. She’s still in her dinner dress—blood on her collar, dried and crusted, her hands locked in her lap. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t cry.
I stop in front of her and crouch. “Mara.”
Nothing.
I touch her knee gently, but she just flinches. No eye contact. No movement. She’s gone somewhere inside herself.
Fuck.
“Where is he?” I ask without turning around.
“Room 3,” Matteo mutters, not missing a beat in his call. “No, not the internal node. Bypass it through the external mask. You want us lit up again?”
I head toward Room 3. The hallway feels longer than it should, like the hospital’s stretching itself just to make me walk through it slower.
My boots echo. I don’t try to soften the sound. I knock once.
“Come in.” His voice is low. Dangerous.
I step inside.
Emiliano’s still in the same clothes from dinner. His white button-down is spattered in blood—Ma’s blood. His sleeves are rolled to the elbows, forearms taut as he leans against the window ledge. His jaw works from side to side, like he’s chewing glass.
He doesn’t turn to look at me. Just stares out at the city like it can give him answers.
“I moved her,” I say. “She’s safe.”
Now he looks. And if looks could kill, I’d be buried beside the fuckers who opened fire in our house.
“You moved her,” he repeats quietly. Too quietly.
“She didn’t know?—”
“Shut up.”
I grit my teeth.
He steps away from the window, slow and measured, like a fuse being lit. “I told you to bring her in. To keep her close until we figured out what the fuck happened.”
“And I did.”
“No, you ran off,” he snaps, voice rising. “You vanished with her while we were still sweeping glass out of Ma’s fucking dining room!”
“I wasn’t gonna let her die,” I shoot back. “You think they wouldn’t try again? You think if they got a second chance, they wouldn’t put a bullet in her head just to prove they could?”
“She opened the goddamn gates, Lucio!”
“She didn’t know they were tracking her!”
“She didn’t know?” he snarls, advancing. “That’s your defense? She didn’t know . My mother’s bleeding out three rooms down because your little girlfriend didn’t know she was a fucking liability?”
My chest heaves. My fists curl. “She didn’t pull the trigger.”
“She didn’t have to,” he spits. “She left the door wide open and handed them the fucking blueprints.”
Silence burns between us. He breathes like a man trying not to tear down the whole building. Then…
“Ma was setting the table, Lucio,” he says, quieter now. “Mara was just pouring the wine.”
I close my eyes.
“She went down before she even saw the first muzzle flash.”
I feel it. That icy punch to the gut. The one that never stops coming.
“She’s in surgery,” he continues. “We don’t know if she’s gonna make it.”
“I know.” My voice breaks. “You think I don’t know?”
He walks past me, shoulders rigid. “I’m trying to hold this family together, and you’re out playing house with the enemy.”
I whip around. “She’s not the enemy!”
“You sure about that?” he growls. “You willing to bet Ma’s life on it?”
My throat goes dry.
“Hand her over,” he says, and his voice is final. “You want to keep her safe? Let us handle it. Let us do it the Camorra way.”
“No.”
His eyes flash. “No?”
“She’s mine, Eli. You want her, you come through me.”
We stare at each other, years of blood and loyalty stretched thin like a wire between us.
Finally, he turns away. “You better pray to God she’s worth it.”
“I’m not praying,” I say. “I’m protecting what’s mine.”
The door opens, and Matteo steps in, face pale, his phone still clutched in his hand.
“She’s out of surgery,” he says. “They don’t know if she’ll wake up.”
Mara’s still in the chair when I step back into the hall. I sit beside her. She leans her head against my shoulder, still not saying a word. But I feel it: her silent scream. And I swear to God, someone will bleed for it.
The first alarm is soft. A single, shrill tone that cuts through the hallway like a scalpel.
At first, I think it’s another machine. Another fucking beeping thing in a building full of them.
But then the second alarm hits. Louder. Sharper.
Matteo’s head snaps up. Mara jerks beside me, eyes finally blinking to life.
A nurse rushes past us. Then another.
Then a man in scrubs shouts, “Code blue! Room three! Patient’s crashing!”
Three. Ma’s room.
I’m on my feet before I can think.
We run. Me, Matteo, Mara. Eli’s already halfway down the corridor when the third alarm blares, flat and unbroken. The line that means no rhythm. No heartbeat.
No life.
We reach the door just as two nurses shove it open, yelling for a crash cart.