Chapter 34 Ashes and Offers
Alessandro
They got out because Alessandro refused to die there.
Not because it was easy.
Not because it was clean.
Because instinct took over where planning failed.
Smoke filled the corridor, thick and choking, alarms screaming too late to matter. Alessandro dragged himself through it, blood slick on his hands — not all of it his. Someone was shouting his name. Someone else wasn’t moving.
He didn’t look back.
He couldn’t.
A hand gripped his arm, yanking him sideways just as another round tore through the wall where his head had been seconds earlier.
“NOW!” someone yelled.
They burst through a service exit, stumbling into daylight like men clawing their way out of hell. Tires screeched. An engine roared to life.
Alessandro was shoved into the back seat, the door slammed shut, and then they were moving — fast, reckless, desperate.
Only then did he let himself breathe.
Only then did he feel the pain.
His hands shook as he pressed them to his chest, his ribs screaming with every inhale. His head throbbed where the wound hadn’t fully healed. Blood soaked into his sleeve from somewhere he hadn’t had time to identify.
“How many?” he demanded hoarsely.
No one answered immediately.
That silence told him enough.
The car sped through narrow roads, the house shrinking behind them — untouched, pristine, victorious.
She was never there. But he knew she was. Just not when he got there.
Marco had wanted him inside.
Marco had wanted blood.
They reached a secondary safehouse outside the city. Doors slammed. Orders were barked. Someone pressed a cloth to Alessandro’s head. Another tried to take his jacket.
He shrugged them off.
“Get out,” he said.
They hesitated.
“GET OUT.”
One by one, they obeyed.
The office was dark when he finally collapsed into the chair behind the desk.
And then —
Alessandro De Luca broke.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
His hands came up to his face, fingers digging into his scalp as his breath hitched violently in his chest. Rage, grief, terror, guilt — it all crashed into him at once.
He had walked into a trap.
He had failed her.
He had failed his men.
The image replayed in his mind relentlessly: the empty house, the silence, Marco’s calm voice.
Not here. She never was.
“She trusted me,” Alessandro whispered into the empty room.
Trusted him to be smarter. Faster. Stronger.
He slammed his fist into the desk, once — hard enough to rattle the lamp.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
He stood abruptly, pacing the room like a caged animal.
She had been moved deliberately.
Marco had known.
Marco had read the letter.
Marco had waited.
And now Isabella was somewhere else — isolated, guarded, unreachable — while Alessandro was bleeding in a borrowed office with one less man standing behind him.
He stopped abruptly, gripping the back of the chair.
“This ends,” he said aloud, voice low and shaking with contained violence.
“Not like this.”
Marco
Marco left before the shooting ended.
That was deliberate.
He had seen enough.
He had looked Alessandro De Luca in the eye. Had watched the moment certainty cracked into confusion. Had delivered the truth he wanted him to carry for the rest of his life:
She was never here.
That was the punishment.
The rest was noise.
By the time the first body hit the floor, Marco was already walking away, footsteps measured, expression unreadable. His men knew better than to follow. Orders had been given long before the first shot was fired.
He did not need to witness blood to know it would spill.
Back in his car, the city unfolding outside the window like something already conquered, Marco allowed himself a single, controlled breath.
Alessandro would survive.
He had planned for that too.
Dead men became martyrs.
Broken men became warnings.
The call came as expected.
“Contact complete,” a voice said. “One down. Others escaped.”
Marco closed his eyes briefly.
Good.
He arrived at his office less than an hour later, jacket still immaculate, hands clean. He poured himself a drink he didn’t touch and waited.
When the knock came, he didn’t look up.
“Come in.”
The patriarch of the other family stepped inside — older, composed, eyes sharp with interest rather than fear. A man who had waited years for an opportunity like this.
“You saw today’s events,” Marco said calmly.
“Yes,” the man replied. “You made your point.”
“I made several,” Marco corrected. “And I’m not finished.”
The man sat across from him. “Your sister?”
Marco’s jaw tightened — just barely.
“She is no longer a variable,” he said. “She will be removed from the board.”
The man nodded slowly.
“And De Luca?”
Marco’s mouth curved into something cold.
“He will bleed without ever touching her again.”
The man leaned forward, folding his hands.
“I have a proposition,” he said quietly.
“One that will solve all your problems once and for all.”
Marco finally looked up.
"I am listening.."