3

ODESSA POV

I was sleeping deeper than I had in months. The kind of sleep where your body feels heavy and your mind is finally quiet. I was naked under the blanket, and the sheet felt cool against my skin. For a few minutes, I let myself forget everything. I forgot about the men outside my door. I forgot about the price on my head. I forgot about running.

Then the gunshots started.

The sound tore through the room and through my sleep. It was close. Too close. Three shots, one after another. _Crack. Crack. Crack._ The window shook with each one.

My eyes opened and I was already moving. My heart was beating so hard it hurt my chest. I didn’t think. I just reached under my pillow. My hand closed around the grip of my gun. Cold metal. Heavy. Safe. I’ve slept with it there every night for five years.

More shots came from outside. Then shouting. Then the sound of glass breaking somewhere downstairs.

I kicked the blanket off and grabbed the pants I’d left on the floor. My hands were shaking, but I got them on. I pulled a t-shirt over my head. I didn’t bother with a bra. There wasn’t time. I didn’t bother with shoes either. If I had to run, I’d run barefoot.

“TEAM TWO, MOVE LEFT! I SAID LEFT! CORNER HIM, DAMN IT!”

That was Aaron. The man trying his best to keep me alive. His voice was loud and rough, cutting through the gunfire. “TEAM ONE, COVER FIRE! DON’T LET THEM UP THE STAIRS!”

My bedroom door was locked. I knew that lock wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted in. But it would buy me two seconds. Sometimes two seconds was all you needed.

I pulled the slide on my gun. The sound it made was sharp and final. It clicked into place. A bullet was in the chamber now. Ready. I pressed my back against the wall next to the door. I held the gun up with both hands, pointed right at the door handle. My arms were straight. My breathing was loud in my ears.

My plan was simple. The first man who came through that door was going to get a bullet in his chest. If I was fast enough, the second man would get one too. I would keep shooting until I was out of bullets or out of men.

Then everything went quiet.

The shooting stopped. Aaron stopped shouting. I couldn’t hear boots on the stairs anymore. I couldn’t hear anything at all.

The silence was worse than the gunshots. Silence meant it was over. And if Aaron’s men weren’t talking, it meant they were dead.

My stomach felt sick. Aaron and his team were good men. Ex-military, every one of them. They knew how to fight. If they were down, then whoever came for me was better. Much better.

Elena.

My daughter’s face came into my head, and my chest hurt. She was five years old. She was two states away with my sister. Safe. She calls my sister “Mama” now. She didn’t know my real name.

I had to live. I had to get up off this floor and live, because she needed me. Even if she didn’t know it.

That was when I heard it.

A sound inside my room. Behind me.

It was soft. Just the sound of a foot stepping on the old wood floor. The floorboard gave a little creak.

Someone was already in here with me.

I started to turn. I started to swing my gun around. My finger was already moving to the trigger.

I wasn’t fast enough.

Something hard and metal slammed into the back of my head. I saw a bright white flash, like lightning inside my skull. The pain was instant and huge. My legs gave out.

The gun fell out of my hand. I heard it hit the floor, but the sound was far away.

Then everything went black.

ALESSINO POV

For five years, I told everyone she was dead.

I told my men when they asked why I didn’t take a wife. I told my priest when he said I should find peace. I told my own reflection in the mirror on nights when the whiskey wasn’t strong enough to shut my brain off.

Dead. Buried. Gone. That was the story. I made sure it was the only story.

We had a funeral. Closed casket. The church was full of people who were scared of me and people who owed me money. They all cried because they thought they had to. I didn’t cry. Dons don’t cry. I stood in the front, wearing a black suit, and I watched them lower an empty box into the ground. There was no body to bury. The car crash was bad. The fire was worse. They said there was nothing left to identify. No dental records. No DNA. I paid them enough money to make sure nobody asked questions.

After that, I stopped a lot of things. I stopped going to that church. I stopped drinking wine because she liked wine. I stopped letting women stay the night in my bed.

Because before the funeral, before the fire, before she left me, there was her.

She was the only one. The only woman I ever let see me without my armor on. With her, I wasn’t Don Alessio De Luca. I was just Alessio. She would say my name in the dark, soft, like it was a secret between us. She was the only one who ever made love to me. Not sex. Not fucking. Love. Slow and quiet. I would hold her hair in my fist so I could see her face. She would dig her nails into my back and tell me not to stop. After, she would lay her head on my chest. She said my heartbeat was the only thing that kept her nightmares away. She said I was safe.

Then one morning I woke up and she was gone. No note. No goodbye. Two weeks later, I got the call about the crash.

So I stopped loving. It was easier that way.

Now I was sitting in my office. The big leather chair behind my desk. The lamp on the corner was the only light on. It made the room feel small and the shadows feel long. My glass was empty. I’d been waiting for hours.

Pedro was supposed to call me after the docks. Alexandro was supposed to check in after he swept the east side. Vittorio was supposed to bring me an update at midnight.

It was two in the morning now. My phone was silent. The house was silent.

A small part of me, a stupid part I thought I killed five years ago, kept thinking about what Pedro said. They're hunting a woman. Dark hair. Said she was dead, but she’s not.

That part of me wanted it to be her. I wanted it so bad my chest hurt. The rest of me knew better. Dead women don’t come back. Ghosts don’t walk into your office. You bury them, and you move on. That’s the rule.

The door to my office opened.

I didn’t look up right away. I figured it was Vittorio, finally. Or Pedro, with bad news about the two million we lost. I was ready to be angry. I was ready to break something.

I heard boots. Heavy. Then the sound of something being dragged across my wood floor.

That made me look up.

It wasn’t Vittorio. It wasn’t Pedro.

It was two of my soldiers. Men I trusted to kill and not ask why. They had a woman between them. One held her left arm. The other held her right. Her feet were bare and dirty. They were dragging her, and her toes were scraping against the floorboards.

Her head was hanging down. Her dark hair was all over the place. Long, wet, and tangled. It covered her face completely. I couldn’t see who she was. Her white t-shirt was ripped at the collar and it had blood on it. Dark red stains. Her pants were black. No shoes.

She wasn’t fighting them. She wasn’t making noise. She looked like she was either unconscious or she had already given up.

My soldiers got to the middle of my rug. The expensive one from Turkey. The one that cost more than most cars. They let go of her arms and she dropped.

She hit her knees hard. The sound was loud in the quiet room. She pitched forward a little, and put her hands out to stop herself from falling on her face. She stayed like that. On her knees, head down, hair hiding her. Breathing. I could see her back moving up and down.

My soldiers didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. They just turned around and walked out. One of them pulled the door shut behind him. The soft click of the door echoed through the silent room.

Now it was just me and her. And the clock on the wall. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I didn’t stand up. I didn’t say anything. I stayed in my chair and I watched her. I wanted her to feel it. The floor. The quiet. The fact that she was in my house, in my room, and I was the one who decided what happened next.

I let her kneel there for a long time. Long enough that her arms started to shake from holding herself up. Long enough that the blood from her t-shirt started to drip onto my rug.

Then I finally spoke. My voice was low. Calm. The kind of calm that comes before a storm.

“Look at me.”

She didn’t move at first. Her whole body went still, like she was afraid to breathe.

I waited one more second. Then I said it again. Slower. “I said. Look. At me.”

She shook. Just once. A full body shake she couldn’t control.

Then, slowly, she lifted her head. She raised one hand, and her fingers were bloody. She pushed her hair back from her face. It stuck to her cheek because of the blood.

And then I saw her.

All the air left my lungs at once. My heart stopped beating for a second. My hands, which were resting on the desk, went ice cold.

No.

No, that wasn’t possible.

It was her face. Her eyes. Dark, big, the same ones that haunted me for five years. She had a small scar through her left eyebrow. She got that when she was sixteen, falling on a table filled with wine glasses. I was there. I was the one who cleaned the blood.

She had a cut on her lip now. Her left eye was starting to swell and turn purple. She looked tired. She looked scared. She looked twenty-five again, and forty at the same time.

But it was her.

It was the woman I buried five years ago.

It was the only woman I made love to, while I fucked the rest. The woman I told my name to.

She was kneeling on my floor, breathing, bleeding, alive.

She’s also a lying piece of shit and a betrayer!