جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 5

Luca Moretti had always believed that if you moved fast enough, the world couldn’t catch you. Tonight, the world was proving him wrong.He crouched on the fire escape outside a crumbling warehouse in the old industrial district, rain sliding down the back of his neck like cold fingers. Twenty-three years old, wiry as a stray cat, with dark curls plastered to his forehead and eyes the color of wet slate. The black hoodie he wore had seen better days—probably someone else’s better days, if he was honest. He adjusted the thin gloves on his hands, flexed his fingers, and whispered the same stupid mantra he always did before a job.“Don’t get caught. Don’t get shot. And for fuck’s sake, Luca, don’t die. Nico needs you.”Nico. The thought of his little brother was the only thing that ever made his hands stop shaking. Thirteen years ago, Luca had been ten, holding Nico’s tiny hand in the back of a police cruiser while red and blue lights painted their parents’ twisted car like some sick carn

Luca came back to the world in pieces.First, the taste—metallic and sour, like old pennies mixed with the faint sweetness of whatever drug they’d pumped into his neck. Then the ache: ribs screaming from the earlier beating, wrists raw where zip ties bit into his skin, and a pounding headache that made his vision swim when he tried to lift his head. The floor beneath him was cold concrete, stained with god-knows-what from years of neglect. But the air… the air smelled wrong for an abandoned warehouse. It carried the sharp tang of diesel, the faint chemical bite of fresh plastic wrap, and underneath it all, the low hum of machinery and muffled voices. This wasn’t some forgotten ruin. This was a working machine, humming with operations Luca couldn’t begin to map.He blinked hard, forcing his eyes to focus. Crates stacked high against the walls. Forklifts idling in the distance. Men in dark clothes moving with the quiet efficiency of people who knew exactly what they were guarding—and wh

Luca stared at the text on the burner phone Vittorio had pressed into his hand the night they’d dragged him from the warehouse. The screen glowed in the dim light of the guest room—more like a luxurious cell—in Vittorio’s sprawling house on the city’s northern edge.Velvet Rope. Room three. Midnight. Don’t make me wait.No greeting. No explanation. Just the command, sent at eleven-thirty like Luca’s entire existence was a switch Vittorio could flip whenever the mood struck. Three days since the warehouse. Three days of being patched up, fed, watched by silent guards, and allowed one short, supervised call to Nico where Luca had lied through his teeth about a “new job” that kept him away. Nico had sounded relieved. Luca had felt like vomiting.He shoved the phone into his pocket and pulled on the black button-down and jeans the guards had left for him. The split lip had scabbed over, the bruises on his ribs were fading to yellow, but the real damage was deeper—something raw and unnamed