Luca's pov –
There's a moment between heartbeat and breath — that sliver of silence when a gun clicks empty — where everything slows.
That's where I live now.
In that goddamn moment.
Because Elena came back.
But not clean.
Not whole.
And I could smell the blood before I saw it.
Rafael's body was found just before dawn.
Dumped outside a church in Ragusa. No ID, but his face wasn't hard to recognize.
I didn't send the kill order.
But the blade from Elena's pendant was buried in his chest.
That was a message.
And I was the only one meant to read it.
"You didn't kill him," I said, later, as the sun clawed its way over the horizon.
"No."
"Then who did?"
"I don't know."
But she flinched when she said it.
Not because she was lying.
Because she knew she wasn't the only one being watched.
The estate went on lockdown again.
Same rhythm. Same paranoia. But everything had shifted.
Trust used to be currency.
Now it was a weapon.
I used it to keep Marco close. To bait out cracks in the perimeter. To find out who else was feeding intel off the grid.
And I used it to test Elena.
Not because I didn't believe her.
But because belief had nothing to do with survival.
We didn't sleep.
We trained.
Two hours before dawn, bare-knuckled sparring in the weapons hall beneath the cellar. Blades. Ropes. Live steel.
She didn't hold back.
Neither did I.
I bloodied her lip. She cracked my ribs.
By the end, we were both on the floor, breathing like wolves.
She pressed her forehead to mine.
"You want me to trust you?" she whispered.
"No," I said.
"I want you to help me kill them all."
Marco cornered me that afternoon with a file thick enough to make my stomach turn.
"New chatter from Vienna," he said. "Intercepted two transmissions between Orlov affiliates. Guess who popped up?"
He slid a photo across the table.
Rafael.
Alive.
Smiling.
Arm around a girl I didn't recognize.
Dated three days before the note he supposedly sent Elena.
"Someone's playing with us," Marco said.
"Why fake a corpse?"
"To move the real one."
He leaned in.
"Look, Luca… Rafael's alive. Maybe even working for them. You think Elena knew?"
I didn't answer.
But my silence was loud.
Elena's pov –
You never outrun ghosts.
You just learn to walk with them.
Mine had a name again.
Rafael.
And he was alive.
But he was also a traitor.
That photo Marco showed Luca?
I'd seen it before.
Not printed. Not digital.
In my mind.
Because I was there when it was taken.
Three years ago. In Berlin. The girl was a courier named Matya. Bratva-adjacent. Gone dark after a deal went south.
Which meant the photo was real — but the timestamp was fake.
Someone doctored it to make Rafael look like he'd never died.
But he had.
I knew it because I buried him.
So who the hell was the body in Ragusa?
And who was trying to make me doubt my own blood?
That night, I checked the vault again.
Luca didn't stop me.
Didn't follow.
But I felt his eyes anyway.
On me. In me. Always.
The board had changed.
More red lines. New names. No answers.
But one thread caught my eye.
Nika Volkov – MISSING.
I froze.
She hadn't told me she was in danger.
Hadn't mentioned anything about going dark.
But now she was gone.
And someone wanted me to know.
Flashback – Moscow, 2017
Nika once carved a bullet from my shoulder with a broken wine opener and no anesthesia.
After, she lit a cigarette and said, "Pain is a better teacher than memory."
I never forgot that.
Because the lesson wasn't about pain.
It was about what you choose to feel when it finds you.
Present
At midnight, I went to Luca.
I didn't knock.
He was half-dressed, bruises fading, a pistol on the table beside a glass of scotch.
"You lied," I said.
"About what?"
"Rafael."
He didn't look surprised.
Just tired.
"You think I faked a corpse and planted your pendant for fun?"
"No. I think someone's trying to make you doubt me."
His jaw flexed.
"And it's working."
Luca's pov –
She was right.
And that scared the hell out of me.
Because it wasn't just Rafael.
It was the timing. The whispers. The ghosts crawling out of graves with smiles stitched across their dead mouths.
Someone was engineering chaos.
And doing it with surgical precision.
But why?
And why now?
The answer came the next morning, wrapped in vellum, delivered by a man with no tongue.
Inside:
A single name.
Augusto Moretti.
My uncle.
The man who taught me how to kill.
And the man who, apparently, had sold every secret we had to the Orlovs for a promise of power.
I stared at the letter until my hands shook.
He didn't even deny it.
He signed it.
A flourish. A date.
And a line beneath:
"Blood is not loyalty. Legacy is."
Elena's pov –
He didn't speak for ten hours.
Not to me. Not to Marco. Not to anyone.
He sat in the east courtyard, smoke curling around him like ghosts with nowhere to go.
When he finally stood, the silence broke like glass.
"We move at dawn," he said.
"Where?" Marco asked.
"Via della Ruggine."
The safehouse.
The rot.
The root.
Luca's pov –
I brought five men.
Left ten behind.
Didn't matter. I expected to lose them all.
Augusto was smart. Trained. Dangerous.
But worse than that?
He was family.
And family knows exactly where to cut.
We hit the compound just before sunrise.
No sirens. No warnings.
Just steel and fire.
Two guards down before they saw us. One inside. Another in the stairwell.
I kicked in the door to the war room — and found nothing.
No blood.
No bodies.
No uncle.
Just a single item on the table:
A black chess knight.
And a recording device.
Marco played it.
My uncle's voice came through — clear, calm, familiar.
"If you're hearing this, it means I'm already three steps ahead."
Pause.
"You were always a good boy, Luca. But you were never meant to lead. You react. I build."
Another pause.
"This is your last chance to walk away. Family doesn't survive what comes next."
End recording.
Marco looked at me.
I looked at Elena.
And then the building exploded.
Elena's pov –
The blast knocked me sideways.
Concrete buckled. Dust slammed through the corridors like waves.
I couldn't hear.
Could barely move.
But I saw Luca — blood streaked down his temple, arm twisted wrong, trying to drag Marco from the flames.
I helped him.
Didn't think.
Didn't stop.
And when we were outside, choking on ash, I looked back at the ruin — and felt nothing.
Because this wasn't the end.
It was the start.
Three hours later, we regrouped at an old vineyard safehouse in Trapani.
Marco was alive. Barely.
Luca had six stitches and a broken rib.
I had questions no one could answer.
So I asked the only one that mattered:
"What's your play now?"
He looked at me like he didn't recognize the girl asking.
Then he smiled.
Sharp. Crooked. Cold.
"We kill them all," he said.
But later — when the others were asleep — I found something in his coat pocket.
Tucked inside a notebook.
A photo.
Old. Faded.
Luca and Rafael.
Arms slung around each other.
Smiling.
Not brothers by blood.
But something worse.
Brothers by choice.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then tucked it back into his coat.
And whispered the one truth I couldn't say aloud:
"You already knew he was alive."