LOGINSeeing the person you love broken is a different kind of torture. One that leaves no wound on your skin, but somehow makes every part of you bleed. DAMIENBefore I left, I asked to see Vivian.The Alchemist didn't hesitate. Maybe he thought letting me see her would make me more desperate, more willing to hand over whatever he asked for. Maybe he thought seeing exactly what he had done to her would break what was left of my resolve. Either way, I didn't care about his reasoning. I just needed to see her.The moment the door opened, I stepped inside.My eyes swept the room immediately. It was a mess in the specific way of a room where someone has fought — not panicked, not thrashed around, but actually fought. The small table was knocked over. One of the chairs was broken. Pieces of glass scattered across the floor in a pattern that told me something had been thrown or smashed deliberately. Scratches along the wall near the door. The sheets half-dragged off the bed onto the floor.She
NICOThe room was getting harder to breathe in. I could see it in the way Vivian's chest moved on the screen — too fast, too shallow, her body working harder than it should have to for something as basic as air. Every cough that came through the speakers scraped against my nerves like something physical. I wanted to tear the screen off the wall. I wanted to put a bullet between the Alchemist's eyes and watch him fall and then find Vivian and get her out of this building and out of this country and somewhere that had nothing to do with any of this.Instead I stood there. Because Vivian had taught me something long before I understood who she really was. Never react when someone wants you to. Especially when they are watching and waiting for it.My eyes stayed on the screen. Vivian pushed herself upright slowly. She looked terrible — hair everywhere, clothes covered in dust, skin pale under the harsh light of that bare room. She looked like someone who had been through something and was
NICOI stare at the briefcase.At the photographs. At the man who claims to be my father. At all of it laid out on the table between us like evidence in a case I did not ask to be part of. None of it changes anything. At least that is what I tell myself, standing in a room in Russia looking at pictures of two newborn boys being held by a man in a mask."This isn't going to do shit."The Alchemist remains silent. I look at him. "You think showing me a few old photographs is going to make me suddenly accept you?" I shake my head. "You think I'm going to walk out of here and tell Luca that we have a father we've never known about?" I almost laugh at the image of it. "What do you think Luca would do if he heard all this?" I don't wait for an answer because I already know it and so does he. "He'd put a bullet through your head."The Alchemist doesn't react.I step closer. "And that's exactly why you didn't go through him first, isn't it?" His head tilts slightly. "You know how unpredictabl
NICOI turned toward the door. I had heard enough. More than enough. I didn't care what he claimed to know about me or Luca, didn't care about his inheritance speech, and I certainly wasn't about to steal a ledger for a man who had materialized out of nowhere and expected me to take his word for something this large. I took two steps."Nico."I stopped. His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be — it had the particular quality of a voice that has never needed volume to make people stop. I turned my head slowly.. "I left you and Luca in Dante's father's care."I stared at him. "What?""You heard me." He walked toward me, his footsteps measured and unhurried against the marble. "How did you think you ended up growing up with Dante?"I said nothing."By accident?" A faint trace of something moved through his voice. "No." He stopped a few feet away. "I made it happen."My brows pulled together. "You?""Me." He pointed toward me. "I made sure Dante's father—Giuseppe took you both in. I m
NICOI was beginning to hate invitations.Especially invitations from the Alchemist. Every time one of his men came looking for me I had the same thought before I could stop it — what the hell does he want now? I had already spent more time in Russia than I intended. More time than was comfortable. More time than I could justify on the basis of an alliance meeting that should have concluded days ago.I wanted answers about my parents. I wanted to understand what Salvatore had actually been telling me in that café. And somewhere in this building, in this country, behind whatever walls the Alchemist had put between us, I needed to find Vivian. None of that was something I was going to hand to this man willingly. Not yet. Maybe not ever.The doors opened. I stepped inside alone. The Alchemist stood near the enormous windows with his back toward me — the same position he always seems to choose, like he has decided that making people look at his back while they approach is a kind of power.
DANTE.The house is quieter than it has been in years.No phones ringing. No meetings running over time. No men waiting outside my office with problems that apparently cannot survive until morning. Just my family, in the sitting room, with toys scattered across the carpet and the particular low-key chaos of small children who have decided that evening is their most energetic hour.I sit back and watch Sofia on the floor with the children. She has been working all day — I know because I know her schedule and I know the look she carries at the end of a long one — and somehow she still found the energy to come down here and be present for this. That is a thing about her that I have never fully gotten used to, how she shows up for them even when she has already given most of what she has. But I can see the worry underneath it. The way she checks her phone when she thinks nobody is watching. The small thing that happens in her expression when the screen shows nothing. She has been doing it
“PAIN MADE US STRONGER, TEARS MADE US COLDER.”DANTE.The whiskey burns going down, but I barely notice anymore, alcohol over the years became like water to me, which–-well wasn’t such a great thing. I'm sitting in the guest room of Marco's house—my cousin's house, though I haven't seen the bastar
“NOT ALL DEMONS LIVE IN HELL.”SOFIA.I must have dozed off at some point because I woke to the sound of my bedroom door opening.My eyes snap open and I sit up quickly, my heart already racing before I'm even fully awake. The room is still dark but there's a stream of light from the hallway, and M
IF I CAN STILL BREATHE, I’M FINE.SOFIA.I can't sleep.I should be sleeping. I should have taken a pill or had a glass of wine or done something to knock myself out so I wouldn't be lying here obsessing over things that aren't my business. But I can't. My mind won't stop racing, won't stop wonderi
SOFIA.IF I TOLD YOU MY SECRETS YOU WOULD NEVER LOOK AT ME THE SAME.The thing about living with a man who doesn't love you is that you become very good at reading silences.I can tell the difference between Marco's "I'm working" silence and his "I wish you weren't here" silence. Between his "I'm t







