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Alessio

The warehouse looms before me like a mausoleum, silhouetted against the midnight sky. Rain pounds against my shoulders as I approach, each drop, another heartbeat counting down to whatever waits inside. My Beretta sits heavy against my ribs, a cold comfort against the fire burning through my veins.

Isadora is in there. With him. My half-brother. The not so golden son.

I check my watch—11:47 PM. Thirteen minutes early, but patience has abandoned me the moment I knew he had her. Twenty years of methodical planning shattered by the desperate need to reach her, to touch her, to know she’s unharmed.

“This is suicide,” Vittorio had warned when I refused backup. “At least let me position men outside.”

But Luca’s words echo in my head: Come alone, or I’ll send her back to our father in pieces. So here I stand, soaked to the skin, a ghost about to face his past and possibly his end.

The rusted side door yields to my touch, hinges groaning like a warning. Inside, darkness cloaks abandoned machinery, the scent of oil and neglect heavy in the air. I move silently, each step measured, senses hyperalert for any sign of her.

“Welcome home, brother.”

Luca’s voice cuts through the shadows, and lights flicker on overhead—not the full industrial fluorescents, but strategic spotlights creating pools of visibility in the vast space. He stands twenty feet away on a raised platform, looking every inch the mafia prince in his tailored suit despite our surroundings.

And beside him, bound to a metal chair, is Isadora.

The sight of her hits me with physical force—dark hair falling loose around her shoulders, emerald eyes wide with a mixture of fear and fury, a bruise darkening her cheekbone. The need to kill surges through me, primal and unrelenting.

“Let her go,” I say, voice dangerously soft. “This is between us.”

Luca smiles, the expression not reaching his eyes. “Is it? Because her diary suggests otherwise.” He strokes the leather-bound book in his hand. “Quite the storyteller, our Isadora. Especially about your... encounters.”

Isadora’s eyes lock with mine, communicating something urgent beyond words. Be careful. He knows everything.

“I’m here now,” I say, moving closer, cataloging every detail—two visible guards by the far exit, the slight bulge under Luca’s jacket indicating a shoulder holster, the way Isadora’s fingers work subtly at her restraints. “Release her, and we can discuss whatever you want.”

Luca laughs, the sound echoing off metal and concrete. “Ever the negotiator, Alessio. Or should I call you Stefano?” He descends the metal steps with theatrical casualness. “My long-lost brother, back from the dead to destroy our father. Poetic, really.”

“You’ve known,” I realize, studying the lack of genuine surprise in his expression. “How long?”

“Years.” He shrugs, circling toward me like a predator. “Mother told me on my fifteenth birthday.”

Understanding dawns, sharp and unexpected. “You’ve been planning your own move against Giancarlo.”

“Smart boy,” Luca mocks. “While you built your ghost identity, I built my power base from within. Waiting for the perfect moment to take everything.” His smile turns cold. “Your revenge provides excellent cover for my coup.”

I let him talk, using the distraction to move incrementally closer to Isadora, whose fingers continue their subtle work on her bonds. Every nerve in my body screams to rush to her, to touch her, to verify with my hands that she’s whole. Instead, I focus on Luca, keeping his attention fixed on me.

“Why tell me this?” I ask. “Why not just kill me and be done with it?”

“Because I’m offering you a choice, brother.” Luca stops circling, his expression serious for the first time. “Join me. Together, we dismantle Giancarlo’s empire and rebuild it stronger, smarter. Two Calvino sons united rather than divided.”

The proposal hangs between us, unexpected enough to make me hesitate. “You tortured your own fiancée to propose a partnership?”

“Hardly torture,” Luca scoffs, glancing at Isadora with dismissive contempt. “Just ensuring her cooperation. Besides, she was never really mine, was she?” His gaze returns to me, sharper now. “You made sure of that.”

Heat flares in my chest—possessiveness, pride, something deeper I’m still afraid to name. The memory of Isadora’s body against mine, her whispered confessions, the way she says my real name like a prayer—mine in ways Luca could never understand.

“She makes her own choices,” I say, unable to keep the edge from my voice.

“Does she?” Luca raises an eyebrow. “Or did you manipulate her into betraying her family, her future, everything she was raised to be—just to further your revenge?”

The accusation cuts deeper than it should, finding the doubt I’ve tried to bury. Did I use her? Did I allow my need for vengeance to put her in danger?

“Don’t listen to him.” Isadora’s voice rings out, clear and strong despite her position. “He’s trying to get in your head.”

She’s right. I can see Luca measuring my reaction, looking for weaknesses to exploit. I’ve spent twenty years crafting Alessio Gravano, learning to hide every vulnerability. But Isadora herself has become my greatest vulnerability—and my greatest strength.

“No deal,” I tell Luca, taking another step forward. “Release her, walk away, and you might live to see morning.”

Disappointment flashes across his features, genuine enough to surprise me. “I did hope we might find common ground, brother. We’re more alike than you realize.” His hand moves toward his jacket. “Both sons were discarded by the same cruel father. Both seeking power through different means.”

“We’re nothing alike,” I snarl, tensing for what comes next.

“We’re exactly alike,” Luca counters, drawing his gun with practiced smoothness. “Just playing different sides of the same game.”

I dive for cover as the first shot rings out, rolling behind a massive rusted machine press. In the same motion, I draw my Beretta, returning fire strategically—not to kill, but to keep him pinned while I close the distance to Isadora.

“You could’ve had everything!” Luca shouts, his voice echoing across the warehouse floor. “We could’ve ruled together! Built something greater than Giancarlo ever dreamed!”

“I don’t want to rule!” I call back, sliding between shadows toward the platform where Isadora strains against her bonds. “I want justice!”

His laugh is bitter, broken. “Justice? There’s no justice in our world, brother. Only power and those too weak to seek it!”

Another shot pings off metal inches from my head. I return fire, calculating angles, creating cover as I advance. The guards by the exit move to flank me, but I’m faster, taking one down with a clean shot to the leg, the other diving for cover as my bullet grazes his shoulder.

Not killing shots. I need them alive to testify against Giancarlo. To ensure his fall is complete and irreversible.

I reach the platform in a final desperate surge, vaulting over rusted railings to land beside Isadora. Her eyes lock with mine, wide and fierce and alive.

“Took you long enough,” she whispers, half a rope trailing from one wrist. She’s nearly free.

“Traffic,” I mutter, and for a heartbeat, we’re just us—Stefano and Isadora, caught in our own gravity, everything else falling away. I brush my fingers across her bruised cheek, cataloging injuries, noting the split lip, the rope burns on her wrists. “Can you run?”

“Better than you.” There’s a flash of her defiance, the fire that drew me from the start.

Our moment shatters as Luca appears at the edge of the platform, blood trickling from a graze on his temple where debris must have caught him. His gun is trained directly at my chest.

“Touching,” he sneers. “The ghost and the princess. Did you really think you could have her? That after destroying both our families, you’d ride off into the sunset together?” He laughs, the sound harsh and brittle. “You’re still living in a fairy tale, brother.”

I position myself between his gun and Isadora, calculating my odds of reaching him before he pulls the trigger. Not good.

“It doesn’t have to end this way, Luca.”

“It always had to end this way,” he counters, his finger tensing on the trigger. “One Calvino son standing, one fallen. Just like our father planned.”

Time slows. I prepare to lunge, knowing it’s likely futile, but unwilling to die without fighting. For Maria. For my mother. For Isadora.

But as Luca’s finger whitens on the trigger, Isadora explodes from behind me—a blur of movement, her restraints falling away as she throws herself sideways into Luca’s midsection with surprising force. The gun fires, the bullet embedding itself in the concrete inches from my foot.

They grapple on the edge of the platform, a desperate tangle of limbs and fury. I surge forward, reaching for Isadora as she twists away from Luca’s grip. For a heartbeat, our fingers almost touch.

Then, something cracks against the back of my skull, sending pain exploding behind my eyes. I stagger, vision swimming, barely registering the third guard I hadn’t accounted for as he raises his weapon for another blow.

I drop to one knee, fighting to stay conscious as Luca manages to pin Isadora, his gun now pressed against her throat.

“Enough!” he shouts, breathing hard. “One more move and she dies!”

The world narrows to this moment—Isadora’s defiant eyes, Luca’s desperate fury, the pounding in my skull threatening to pull me under. Blood drips warm down my neck as I straighten, hands raised in surrender.

“Let her go,” I manage. “Take me instead.”

“Noble,” Luca sneers. “But I think I’ll keep you both. Father will want to see his lost son before deciding how you die.”

Isadora’s eyes find mine, communicating without words. Together. We fight together. Her hand inches toward something in her sleeve—a shard of glass, perhaps, or a makeshift weapon she managed to conceal.

But before either of us can move, the massive loading bay doors at the far end of the warehouse slide open with a thunderous crash.

Silhouetted against the nightstands a figure I’ve spent twenty years preparing to face—silver hair immaculate despite the hour, shoulders straight with unassailable confidence, amber eyes so like mine scanning the scene with cold calculation.

Giancarlo Calvino. My father. The man who ordered my mother’s murder, who thought he’d erased me from existence.

“What a disappointment you both are,” he says, voice carrying across the silent warehouse. His gaze shifts from Luca to me, lingering with dawning recognition. “Hello, Stefano. Welcome home.”

The warehouse falls silent except for the distant rumble of thunder, nature’s accompaniment to a family reunion dripping with blood and betrayal. Isadora’s eyes find mine across the space that separates us, and I read the promise there—the same one I make silently to her.

Whatever comes, we face it together.

Even if it costs us everything.