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Bingo.
I grin. Cold. Calculating. But inside? A storm brewing. “Which traitorous bitch? Be specific.”
“Alessa!” he spits, blood trailing down his chin. “She should’ve kept her mouth shut. Always been weak.”
Wrong fucking move.
I lean in, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “Weak?” My laugh is pure razor blade. “She’s the strongest thing in this room. In this entire fucking world.”
His laughter is more like a wet, broken cough. A sound of defeat. “You think you know her? You think you know anything?”
“Enlighten me,” I challenge.
And he does. A story of manipulation that goes deeper than I expected. Isabella—his wife, a Mafia princess—using him like a disposable pawn. A marriage of convenience that was anything but convenient. Ambition crushed. A RICO case born from pure, festering resentment.
I’ve seen this before. Families torn apart by power. By ambition. By the fucking game we all play.
“I wanted respect,” Marco snarls. “They gave me a badge. A title. But I was always just... disposable.”
“Welcome to the family business,” I drawl. But the words taste like ash in my mouth.
Twenty minutes. That’s all it takes to crack him. To understand the poison eating away at the Russo family from the inside.
I check my watch. Alessa’s waiting. Always waiting.
“The Commission wants you to dismantle the RICO case,” I state flatly. “Otherwise, you die.”
“Fuck the Commission,” he spits.
I shrug. One last look. One last moment of something almost like pity. “Your funeral.”
The hospital corridor feels suffocating. Sterile. Fake. Everything I hate.
I grabbed her something she could be comfortable in, so I bought a pair of sweatpants and those ugly-looking Uggs my personal shopper said were a ‘hot trend.’ I would have packed her makeup if I knew what to pack. Nonetheless, I know she’ll look perfect once I roll her out of this place.
A nurse rushes beside me, carrying a piece of manila paper, hitting the black duffel bag I’m carrying. She gives me an apologetic smile before she runs towards Alessa’s suite.
I pivot right towards the room, knocking twice on the door before entering the room. Alessa is perched on the edge of the bed, one hand digging into the mattress to keep herself steady, the other clutching the IV pole like a weapon. My weapon. My everything.
Tough as nails, even now.
I drop the bag on the floor as I rush towards her, but she dismisses me with a wave of her hand, shifting her hips slowly on the bed.
“Where the fuck have you been?” she snaps out loud, and the doctor who’s reading the paper the nurse just brought in tries his best to act as if there’s a glass wall between us.
“I needed help standing up to piss and you weren’t here.”
“Okay, okay,” I chant softly as I sit on the bed beside her, stroking her back. So gentle it’s almost a contradiction to everything I am. Everything I’ve just done. “I’m here now... I’ll always be heretesoro. Do you still want to go to the bathroom?”
“I just went,” her body immediately collapses against mine like it knows I’m going to cradle her. I take her free hand, squeezing it tight, and she immediately hums, her body vibrating against mine. “I’m ready to go. Doc said he’s going to give me the strongest painkillers.”
“Yes, I brought you—”
The doctor clears his throat. Serious tone. Weight of the world in those words.
“Actually, Ms. Russo,” the doctor interrupts, and both our heads snap in attention at the seriousness of his voice. “You’ll be taking a raincheck on those painkillers…It appears—”
We both freeze. Time stops. Breath catches.