The silence was the first sign.
It was a deep, oppressive quiet that swallowed the sound of Sandro’s own breathing.
The plan, so meticulously crafted with Enzo in the dim light of a safe house, had been built on the predictable rhythm of Riccardo’s estate: the timed patrol routes, the shift changes, the low hum of the security system.
But as Sandro slipped through the final corridor leading to his cousin’s study, the rhythm was gone. The hum was dead.
The oak door to the study stood slightly ajar, a dark invitation. Enzo’s voice, a ghost in his earpiece, had gone silent two minutes ago after a choked syllable and a burst of static.
His other men were unaccounted for. The surgical strike had turned into a butchering, and he was the last one walking into the abattoir.
He pushed the door open with the barrel of his pistol.
The room was a shrine to stolen power: dark mahogany walls, a desk the size of a sarcophagus, and a single low-wattage lamp painting the scene in shades of amber and shadow.
And in the center of it all, sitting in a high-backed leather chair behind the desk, was Riccardo.
He wasn’t alone.
Juliette stood beside him, her face pale, her eyes wide with a terror that ripped through Sandro’s composure like a shard of glass.
A thick arm was wrapped around her waist, and the cold, flat side of a nickel-plated revolver was pressed against her temple. The man holding her was one of Riccardo’s hulking guards, his face a mask of stupid obedience.
Riccardo smiled, a slow, predatory stretching of the lips. “Cousin,” he said, his voice a silken mockery. “You’re late. We were just discussing your review.”
Sandro’s blood turned to ice.
Every muscle in his body screamed to lunge, to fire, to tear the room apart until only he and Juliette were left standing. But he held himself rigid, his gaze locked on the gun against her skin.
“Let her go, Riccardo.” His voice was a low growl, stripped of everything but menace.
“Let her go?” Riccardo laughed, a dry, rattling sound.
“But she’s the guest of honor. The critic who found the hidden flame. Tell me, Alessandro, did you show her the passion she found lacking in your food? Is that why she smells of you?”
Juliette flinched at the crude words, a tear tracing a clean path through the grime on her cheek. Her eyes met Sandro’s, a desperate, silent plea. I’m sorry.
He gave her the slightest shake of his head. Don’t be.
“This is between us,” Sandro said, taking a deliberate step into the room. The guard’s knuckles whitened on the gun.
“It was always between us,” Riccardo spat, rising from his chair. He was a study in contrasts to Sandro—impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, his movements fluid and vain where Sandro’s were coiled and economical.
“But you chose to hide behind an apron. You, the true heir, playing with pots and pans while I bled for this family. You are a disgrace to our father’s name.”
“You murdered him,” Sandro said, the words tasting like ash. “You murdered my mother. You are a parasite who wears a king’s crown.”
Riccardo’s face tightened, the mask of civility cracking.
“I did what was necessary! I cleansed the family of weakness. Your father was getting soft, sentimental. And you… you were his greatest weakness. Fleeing your birthright. Now look at you. You’ve just found a new one.” He gestured with his chin toward Juliette. “It’s a pattern, isn’t it? Hiding behind a woman.”
Sandro ignored the taunt. His mind was no longer a storm of rage, but a cold, clear space of calculation. He was a chef in a hostile kitchen. He had to assess his ingredients, his tools, his heat source.
The gun in his hand was useless as long as Juliette was a shield. The guard was a blunt instrument, slow and predictable. Riccardo was the true poison.
His eyes scanned the room.
The massive desk. A heavy crystal decanter on a nearby bar cart. A fireplace, cold and dark, with a set of heavy iron pokers.
Everything was a potential weapon. A potential solution.
“Drop the gun, Alessandro,” Riccardo commanded, his voice hardening. “Or I’ll have Marco redecorate the lovely wallpaper with your critic’s brains.”
Slowly, deliberately, Sandro bent and placed his pistol on the Persian rug. He straightened, his hands held out to his sides, palms open. A gesture of surrender. A lie.
Riccardo’s smile returned. “Good boy. Now, you’re going to watch. You’re going to watch as I take away the last thing you have, just like you tried to take this family from me.”
He nodded to the guard, Marco. “Hurt her.”
The guard tightened his grip, and Juliette cried out, a sharp gasp of pain.
That was the mistake.
In that instant, Riccardo’s focus was on Sandro’s reaction, savoring the pain he was inflicting. Marco’s attention was on Juliette, his simple mind focused on his task.
For a fraction of a second, the predator and his dog were looking away from the real threat.
Sandro moved.
It wasn’t the explosive charge of a brawler, but the precise, fluid motion of a chef turning from the stove to the prep station. Three steps closed half the distance to the bar cart.
His left hand swept out, not for the decanter—too heavy, too slow—but for the small, elegant bottle of high-proof grappa next to it. His right hand snatched a silver cigar lighter from a tray.
The cunning of a chef.
He twisted the cap off the grappa with his thumb and flicked the lighter open in a single, seamless motion. He aimed the stream of clear liquid not at Marco, but at the air just in front of his face, and squeezed.
A fine, atomized mist of alcohol filled the space. Then he struck the lighter.
FWOOSH.
A ball of blue and orange flame erupted with a guttural roar, engulfing the guard’s head.
Marco screamed, a high, panicked sound, stumbling back and releasing Juliette as he clawed at his face. She fell to the floor, scrambling away from the flailing, burning man.
The opening.
Riccardo stared, momentarily stunned by the sheer unexpectedness of the attack. His hand went for the gun tucked in the back of his waistband, but Sandro was already moving, vaulting over the corner of the desk.
He didn’t go for his own weapon on the floor. This had to be close. This had to be personal.
The ruthlessness of a capo.
He landed with a thud that shook the room, his momentum carrying him straight into Riccardo. They crashed together, a tangle of limbs and fury.
Riccardo was strong, fueled by paranoid rage, and his fist caught Sandro high on the cheekbone, sending a starburst of pain through his skull. Sandro answered with a brutal elbow to Riccardo’s throat, rewarded by a wet, gagging cough.
They wrestled across the floor, a chaotic ballet of violence. Sandro’s mind was a single, cold point of focus: end it.
This wasn’t a fight for dominance; it was an extermination. He saw his mother’s face, his father’s trusting smile. He saw his kitchen in flames. He saw Juliette’s terror.
Riccardo, choking, shoved him back and scrambled toward the desk, his hand searching blindly for something, anything.
His fingers closed around a heavy, ornate letter opener with a gilded handle and a viciously sharp point. He lunged, swinging it in a wild arc.
Sandro dodged, the tip slicing the air where his chest had been. He didn’t back away.
He moved in, under the arch of his cousin’s arm, using Riccardo’s own momentum against him. He slammed his shoulder into Riccardo’s chest, driving him back against the solid oak of the desk.
The impact knocked the wind from both of them.
“You… are… nothing!” Riccardo choked out, raising the letter opener for a downward stab.
Sandro’s left hand shot up and clamped around Riccardo’s wrist, stopping the blow inches from his own eye. Steel ground against bone.
For a heartbeat, they were locked in a stalemate, faces inches apart, their hatred a palpable force between them. Sandro could smell his cousin’s expensive cologne and the sour tang of his fear.
He saw the monster his father had warned him about. The monster he had run from. The monster he now had to become to save the only thing that mattered.
With a guttural roar, Sandro used his free hand to grab the back of Riccardo’s head and slammed his face, once, twice, into the hard edge of the desk. A sickening crunch echoed in the room.
Riccardo’s body went limp, his grip on the letter opener slackening.
Sandro ripped the weapon from his cousin’s hand, reversed it, and without a moment of hesitation, drove the point deep into Riccardo’s side, just below the ribcage. He twisted it, just as he would a knife to break the cartilage of a stubborn joint.
It was a precise, devastating, and deeply personal act. Vengeance for his family. Justice for Juliette.
Riccardo gasped, his eyes wide with shocked disbelief. A crimson stain bloomed across his white shirt.
He looked down at the hilt protruding from his side, then back up at Sandro.
“The… family…” he whispered, his voice a frothy gurgle.
“The family is mine,” Sandro said, his voice cold as the grave.
He released his cousin. Riccardo slid down the front of the desk, leaving a dark smear on the polished wood, and collapsed onto the floor in a heap.
He lay still, his reign of terror ending not with a bang, but with a choked, final sigh.
Silence descended once more, broken only by the whimpering moans of the burned guard and the ragged sound of Sandro’s own breathing.
He stood there for a long moment, the bloody letter opener still in his hand, his knuckles bruised, his face aching.
He was the chef. He was the capo. He was the monster.
Then he heard a small sound from across the room.
“Sandro?”
Juliette’s voice. It was the anchor that pulled him back from the abyss.
He let the weapon clatter to the floor and turned to her. She was huddled near the fireplace, her arms wrapped around herself, watching him with wide, tear-filled eyes that held not revulsion, but a terrified awe.
He crossed the room in three strides and knelt before her, his hands hovering, afraid to touch her, to taint her with the blood that felt like it was covering him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice raw.
She shook her head, a single, violent motion. Then she launched herself forward, her arms wrapping around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder.
She held on with a desperate strength, her body trembling against his.
Sandro wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight.
He held the only part of his life that wasn’t broken, the only thing that had been worth fighting for.
The Devil had come for his due, and in the heart of his cousin’s stolen mansion, Alessandro De Luca had finally paid the price.