Page 15 of The Seventh Circle (The Lost Cantos #1)

LORENZO

"Together, then," he agreed, the words a low prayer between us. "God help us both."

We left the villa's dusty sanctuary, stepping back into a world that did not know or care for such fragile things as the pact we had just made. The afternoon sun felt harsh, unforgiving. The spell was broken. Paolo waited for us at the end of the cobblestone lane leading to the Benedetto family villa, leaning against the side of my father’s black automobile, a thick cheroot clamped between his teeth.

His presence was a block of granite, solid and unmovable, a stark reminder of the world we were re-entering.

"Took your time."

"We were ensuring we weren't followed," I lied, the words tasting like ash.

Paolo grunted, unconvinced. He pushed himself off the car. "Torrino's dogs are holing up near the old tannery. Smells like piss and rotten hides. Suits them." He climbed into the driver's seat without another word.

Antonio met my gaze for a fraction of a second before getting into the back.

I saw the same feeling mirrored there: the warmth of our moment in the villa extinguished by the cold reality of duty.

I followed him, the scent of his wool coat a stark contrast to the cloying sweetness of the cheroot smoke that already filled the car’s interior.

The journey was short and silent. Paolo drove with an aggressive certainty, muscling the automobile through narrow streets where startled cart drivers cursed and pulled their mules aside.

We left Benedetto territory and entered the decaying industrial fringe that the Torrinos claimed.

The buildings grew meaner, their stone faces stained black with coal dust. The air grew thick with the acrid stench of the tanneries.

This was a place of work and misery, not of power and respectable fear like my family's domain.

Paolo killed the engine in a narrow alley overlooking a derelict courtyard. "Down there," he said, his voice a low rumble. "They've been using the old foreman's office."

We got out. The smell was overpowering, a mixture of chemicals, wet animal skin, and filth.

From our vantage point, we could see them.

Vito Torrino, his posture a study in forced arrogance, stood with four other men.

One leaned against the wall, his face vaguely familiar from the marketplace.

Another, taller and with a nervous energy, kept glancing up and down the alley.

I recognized him instantly. He was the one Antonio described, the one whose face was now etched into my memory from Paolo’s report. The man who watched Antonio’s family.

"The one on the right," Antonio murmured, his voice tight. "That's him."

My hands curled into fists. The violation felt personal, a direct strike not just at a Benedetto soldier, but at Antonio. At his home. At Enzo.

"Let's not keep them waiting," I said.

We moved down the stone steps into the courtyard, our footsteps echoing in the quiet. Vito’s head snapped up. A smirk spread across his scarred face when he saw us.

"Well, well. If it isn't the Benedetto prince, out for a stroll with his muscle." He ostentatiously drew one of his knives, tossing it from hand to hand. The polished steel caught the weak sunlight. "Come to apologize for ruining my suit?"

"We came to deliver a message, Vito," I said, my voice even. I stopped a few paces from him, letting Antonio and Paolo flank me. "Your men are sniffing around places they don't belong."

Vito laughed, a sharp, unpleasant sound. "My men go where I tell them. This is my territory."

"Your territory ends where my father says it does," I corrected him. "And your little scout," I flicked my eyes toward the man who had been watching Antonio's building, "has been looking at things that aren't his concern. Family is off-limits. You know the rule."

The scout paled, his nervous energy curdling into fear. Vito’s smirk tightened. He was losing control of the situation.

"The Romanos aren't your family, Benedetto. They're hired help. Hired help can be replaced." Vito took a step forward, raising his knife. "Maybe I should show you how."

That was the only invitation needed.

It was not a brawl. It was a dismantling.

Antonio moved with a fluid economy that was terrifying to behold.

He sidestepped a wild punch from one man and drove his elbow into the man’s throat, dropping him to his knees.

I met the charge of another, turning his momentum against him and slamming his head into the brick wall with a sickening crunch. He slid to the ground, unconscious.

Vito, for all his posturing with blades, was clumsy.

He lunged at me, and I simply stepped aside, my foot catching his ankle.

He went down hard, his precious knife skittering across the grimy cobblestones.

Antonio was already on the fourth man, disarming him with a quick twist of the wrist that elicited a scream of pain.

In less than ten seconds, it was over. Four men were down, groaning or silent on the ground. Only the scout, the watcher, remained on his feet, frozen in terror. Paolo hadn't even moved. He had watched the entire exchange with a look of detached appraisal, his cheroot still jutting from his mouth.

Now, he moved.

He walked past me, past Vito scrambling on the ground, and stopped in front of the terrified scout. Paolo took the cheroot from his mouth and carefully ground it out under his heel. His movements were slow, deliberate. Ceremonial.

"You," Paolo said, his voice soft. "You like to watch people's homes? From across the street?"

The man shook his head, unable to speak. "I... I was just following orders."

"Whose orders?" Paolo’s hand shot out and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, yanking him forward.

"Vito's! Torrino's orders!" he squeaked, pointing a trembling finger at his boss, who was now pushing himself into a sitting position, his face a mask of fury and humiliation.

Paolo smiled. It was not a pleasant sight.

"Good. It's important to know who to blame.

" He shoved the man against the wall. "My boss," Paolo nodded his head slightly toward me, but his eyes never left the scout, "is a modern thinker.

He believes in clean business. Warnings.

Measured responses." He pulled a thin, wicked-looking knife from inside his coat.

It was a filleting knife, long and flexible. "Me? I'm old-fashioned."

He pressed the tip of the blade against the man's cheek. The man whimpered, tears streaking through the grime on his face.

"You watched his brother. A boy. Did you think about what we might do if we found you?"

"Please," the man sobbed. "Please, I didn't..."

Paolo's hand blurred. There was a sickening wet sound, and the man screamed, a high, thin sound of pure agony. Paolo had sliced his cheek open from mouth to ear. Blood welled instantly, dark and thick, pouring down his jaw and onto his shirt.

"That's for looking," Paolo said calmly. He then grabbed the man’s left hand and pinned it flat against the brick wall. "And this..." He raised the knife high. "...is for where you were looking."

He drove the point of the knife straight through the back of the man’s hand, pinning him to the wall. The scream was inhuman this time, a raw shriek that bounced off the stone walls of the courtyard. The man thrashed, his body convulsing, but his hand was fixed to the wall.

I felt a wave of nausea. My gaze flickered to Antonio. His face was a pale, rigid mask, hands clenched so tight that his knuckles bleached white, and his eyes were fixed on a point on the far wall, refusing to watch but unable to escape the sounds. The same bile I tasted was surely in his throat.

Vito stared, his mouth agape, his earlier bravado completely gone, replaced by a primal fear. His other conscious goon had dragged himself into a corner, trying to make himself small.

Paolo was not finished. He worked with a labourer's methodical patience. He took the man's other hand and, one by one, he broke his fingers. The sickening cracks echoed in the yard, each one punctuated by a choked gasp or a wet sob from the pinned man.

"You use your hands to follow my boss's people," Paolo grunted, twisting a pinky finger until it snapped. "So you won't be using them again."

He stepped back to admire his work. The man sagged against the wall, held up only by the knife through his hand, his face a ruin of blood and tears, his breathing a ragged, hitching mess. Paolo looked at him the way a carpenter might look at a well-made joint. Satisfied.

Then, he turned his attention back to the knife pinning the man's hand. He gripped the handle.

"And this," he said, his voice dropping to a conversational tone directed at Vito, "is for making us come all this way."

With a single, powerful wrench, he ripped the knife sideways through the man’s hand, tearing flesh and shattering bone. The man's final scream was cut short as Paolo’s other hand came up, holding the filleting knife, and drew it swiftly across his throat.

There was a final, gurgling sigh. Blood erupted in a hot, dark fountain, spraying across the cobblestones and all over the front of Paolo’s coat. The body slid down the wall, leaving a thick, wet smear of red on the bricks. The knife that had pinned his hand clattered to the ground.

Silence descended, broken only by the drip of blood and the ragged breathing of the survivors.

Paolo calmly wiped his bloody blade on the dead man's trousers, then tucked it back inside his coat. He looked at Vito, who was staring at the corpse, his face the colour of old parchment.

"Take a good look, Vito," Paolo said, his voice now booming with authority. "This is what happens when you get ambitious. This is the Benedetto family sending its regards. Take your trash and get out of our sight."

He turned and strolled toward the exit, his shoulders back, his step light. He was covered in blood, and he was beaming, utterly delighted with his morning's work.

I stood frozen for a moment, the metallic smell of death thick in my nostrils.

I forced myself to look at Antonio. His face was ashen.

He met my eyes, and in their depths, I saw the same revulsion, the same sickness that churned in my own gut.

We had both dealt in violence. We had both taken lives.

But this... this was something else. This was not the work of soldiers. It was the joy of a butcher.

Without a word, we turned and followed Paolo, leaving Vito Torrino kneeling in the filth beside one of his brutalized men and one of his dead, a tableau of our family's true power, a message written in blood and bone.