"De Luca! We have your father!"
Alessio didn't even blink. He fired. Two shots. The second man dropped. The third man dropped.
Silence fell again, thicker this time.
"Liars," Alessio said. His voice had no heat left. Just ice. The kind that burns .
He was still on his knees, gun up, chest heaving. Blood ran down his side in a steady stream. The stitches I'd done just minutes before were all torn. Useless now.
"Alessio–" I reached out for him.
"Stay down." He didn't looked at me. He was scanning the doorway, waiting for number four. "They want you alive, so they will wait."
"My father's been dead six years," he said suddenly, talking either to me or the bodies, or maybe to himself. "I buried him. I dug the grave."
My stomach dropped. "Then why–"
"Because they want to see if I'll hesitate." He Finally looked at me. His black eyes completely empty. "I didn't."
He pushed himself to his feet using the heavy bed frame.
His face went stark white with pain, but he locket it down, caged the agony inside.
"We need to move now, before the rest comes."
He crossed over to me and hauled me up.Not gently. His hand was slick with blood where he gripped my arm. "Can you walk?"
"Yes." My legs were shaking, but I'd crawl before I told him no.
"Good." He shoved his gun into my hands again. This time he didn't wrap his fingers around mine; he just expected me to hold it. "Safety's off. Don't point it at me."
A phone vibrated from his pocket. He pulled it and read the screen, stopped breathing entirely. Then he turned the display into my face.
It was a photo. An old man with distinct De Luca eyes was tied securely to a chair. Blood on his face, but he was still alive.
The text below it read: Six years is a long time to hold your breathe, son. – M
Alessio made a sound which I had never heard come from a human mouth before. He threw the phone, and it exploded against the weapons wall.
"He's alive," he said, addressing the room and the dead men rather than me. "My father's alive."
He turned on me. Fast. Too fast for a man with two bullets in his side. Bullets dropped on the floor. His free hand caught my jaw, tilted my face up. His thumb smeared the blood all across my cheeks—claiming me, branding me.
"M is for Moretti," he said, his voice shaking with pure rage or something worse. "They took him. Told me that he was dead. I have been fighting his wars, cleaning his mess for a ghost."
His thumb pressed firmly into my skin, not hurting, but anchoring. "I have to go get him."
"You can't even stand straight!" I snapped. My hands went up to his bare chest before I could even think. His skin was burning hot. Fever or fury, I couldn't tell. "You will die before you can even get into the car."
"I don't care."
The rook was dying around us. Feathers from the shredded sheets still drifted down through the air, catching in his hairs, on his shoulder, and on the blood which wasn't dry yet. The air smelled heavily like gunpowder and iron.
He swayed on his feet, barely. No one else would have noticed, but I was watching his body like mine it was my own. Because if he drops, I drop. That was unwritten deal I didn't remember signing.
"You think this is brave?" My voice cracked, and I hated that it did. "Bleeding out on your wedding night? That's totally stupid."
His laugh was quiet. "My whole life is stupid, principessa. Marrying you was the smartest thing I have ever done."
Liar. But the words hit anyway, landed right under my ribs next to the phantom feeling of his blood on my hands.
The Morettis had held his father for six years, lying to him and using him. And Alessio had built a criminal empire on that lie. Now the ghost was breathing, and Alessio De Luca was going to tear the world apart to get him.
"I do care!" The words burst out from my mouth before I could stop them.
His eyes flared. Something dangerous and hungry lit up in them. His hand slipped from my jaw to my throat. Not squeezing, just holding me, feeling my pulse hammer against his palm.
"Say that again," He ordered. His voice quiet.
I should have lied. I should have shoved him away. Instead, I doubled down. "I'm not watching you bleed out for a man whom you already have buried twice."
He laughed– a single, broken sound. Then his mouth crashed into mine.
No warning. No permission. Just pure heat, blood, and tongue. He tasted like copper and vengeance. His free hand fisted tightly in my ruined wedding dress, hauling me hard against him. Against the blood. Against the wound. He didn't care.
It lasted three seconds, or maybe four. Long enough to completely ruin me.
He ripped his mouth away, breathing heavily like he'd run mile. His forehead dropped against mine. "You don't get to care about me, moglie . It will get you killed."
"Too late." I was shaking, not from fear but from him. "You married me. You said 'mine'. Now deal with it."
His eyes searched mine, looking for any trace of lie or any weakness. He didn't find it.
"Fine." He stepped back, turning cold again– becoming the King once again. "You want yourself in my world, you bleed in it."
He stalked over to the closet and kicked it wide open. Inside, everything was solid black: suits, shirts, pants.
"You bought this all?" I said. It wasn't a question.
"I buy everything I want." He tossed a pair of pants and a shirt towards me. "Change. You can't run in that dress, and I'm not carrying you."
He started ripping his own ruined shirt completely off. There was more blood. And there– below his ribs on the back– was a second wound. An exit wound.
"You were shot twice," I whispered.
"I was shot thrice." He didn't look at me. " The third one's in my shoulder."
He picked up a fresh shirt, solid black. Like his soul.
"Five minutes," he said. "Then we go get my father. And you stay behind me. Always."
He paused at the broken door and looked over his shoulder back at me. "And principessa?" His gaze dropped to my mouth, tracing the blood he had left behind on my lips. "Wipe my blood off your lips, or the Morettis will think I have already marked you as a widow."
I didn't wipe it off .