On Your Knees.

On Your Knees.
They keep coming, greedy, hungry for violence, thinking the smoke and chaos make them untouchable. But the Donatello men aren’t idiots. They’re not going to let our house burn without a fight. As soon as the first few of their boys go down, the balance shifts. Our side presses in; theirs splinters.
“Grab her, careful of the baby!” my father barks to the men in front of him, voice calm and clinical like he’s arranging chairs. His eyes never flicker; he’s perfected that look—the animal that thinks it owns the world. I don’t slow down. Every second counts. A man lunges, and Ariana is on him before he can finish the motion. I see the flash of her metal against his throat, and then his hands go slack. Isla’s a cyclone, elbowing through a cluster of men, a heel smashing into a jaw and a pistol skittering away. The made men—our made men—are picking up the rhythm now, moving like they do when the family needs them: precise, quick, lethal if required.

Some of his boys try to back him up, but they’re picking them off in ones and twos. A Donatello pushes through with a shattered candelabra, smashes a gun from a hand. Another hauls a man down by the collar and slams him face-first into the stone. The yard becomes a tangle of bodies and firelight and the sound of things breaking. The smoke parts enough for me to see him clearly. He’s there, hands tucked behind his back, slouched in the arrogance of a man who thinks he can buy violence and call it justice. I feel my whole body narrow until everything is about getting to him.
“Alina,” he says, as if naming me summons some ancient obedience. As if I’ll stop because his voice expects it.
My blood drums in my ears; Bean kicks like he knows what’s coming. I step, then another, forcing my way through the ring of men that still tries to bar him. Every time one of them reaches for me, Ariana or Isla hits them first, fast and brutal, stealing them before they can react. They flank me like wolves; together we’re a fucking unit of destruction.
“How do you want to do this, baby girl?” Ariana asks, her voice a rough whisper in my ear as she shades me from a spray of sparks.
For a second I see nothing but his face—smooth, unswept, the man who thought he could decide my life. I taste metal and sugar and the heat of everything we’ve clawed through to stand here. My fingers close harder on the chair leg.
“I think I want to tear out his fucking throat,” I say.
Isla grins, blood on her teeth. “Yeah. I’m down for a little murder today.”
Ariana’s eyes flash, not shock, not horror, only pure, clear permission. “Then let’s do it the Donatello way.”

We move as one. Every man who steps forward meets a pair of hands and a promise. Ariana takes one down with a sweep of her leg and a shoulder into his ribs. Isla drives a fist into another’s face so hard he forgets how to stand. I shove past, chair leg swinging, catching a forearm, twisting, sending a pistol skittering into a pool of confetti still steaming in the heat. My father takes two stumbling steps backward, for the first time not immaculate. His men try to form a line; they’re ragged and missing the heart for this. The yard answers with a roar, our men rising and closing the perimeter, sealing off exits. Those who try to press out get caught by Hunter and Luciano, pulled down and restrained. We’re methodical; there’s no wanton slaughter, no, this is reclaiming.

Ariana moves in behind him now. She reaches out, fingers slipping under the cuff of his expensive suit. The crest—our crest, his crest—sits there like a medal he’s earned from cruelty. She peels it off with one smooth motion, like unfastening a dog tag.
“You don’t deserve to be the head of any family,” she says, voice low and brutal.
He blinks, the faintest flinch of surprise crossing his face. Pride is a fragile thing when stripped. He swallows. “You’ll regret—” he starts, but the words die against the look Ariana gives him.
She shoves him with a hand, and he stumbles, falling to one knee in the dirt. The movement is small, but in the smoke and light, it’s everything. “That’s more where you deserve to be,” she spits.
Isla isn’t satisfied. She’s smiling in that feral way that makes me trust her with my life. She kicks him harder, and he pitches forward so his forehead skids in the grit. Her heel follows, planted against the side of his face, pushing until his cheek is pressed to the earth. Dirt, dust and soot mix with the sweat on his brow.
“I don’t think he’s low enough,” Isla says, voice flat, like she’s reciting the weather. She presses more weight onto his skull until his mouth makes a sound that isn’t quite a plea.
They both look at me then. Up close, I can see the burn marks on Ariana’s fingers, the wet streak where Isla’s blood has dried. We’re bruised. We’re messy. We’re magnificent.
“Do the honours,” Ariana says, her eyes bright and terrible.

Everything goes quiet for a heartbeat. The yard holds its breath. Even the fire seems to hush, watching me decide what kind of woman I’ll be. My throat burns. My hands shake. The chair leg feels suddenly absurd and holy at once. I can feel Bean like a small thunder rolling inside me, an echo of the life that will come after tonight. I look at my father, and for the first time, I don’t see the ghost of my childhood, the man who taught me to be small. I see him for what he is: a man who traded humans like currency and thought he could purchase his way back into power.

I could tear out his throat. I could let Isla and Ariana finish him here in the dirt. I close my hand around the chair leg, feel the blood on my knuckles, the taste of smoke in my mouth. I look at Ariana, at Isla—the women I would die for, the women who would die for me—and then I look down at my father, beneath a shoe and the grit and his own disgrace.
“Stand up,” I say, voice low as the thunder. “Look me in the eye.”
He does, shaking, and when he meets me, his face is small, ridiculous with fear. "We could be great, Alina, we could be powerf-"
I strike the wooden chair leg from over my shoulder and into his throat.
"I am powerful." I declare, as I watch him fall back to his knees, eye wide, hands clutched around the wood as my father's blood spills across the earth. "And I don't need any man to do that for me."