-Lucien.
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"Grab him!"
Those were the last words I remembered before everything blurred into darkness—before hands grabbed me, before the cold smothered the noise, and silence became my only language.
Now, as my eyes peeled open, the light above me flickered—a dull, yellow kind that belonged more to basements and backrooms than anything civilized. My body ached, but not in a way that felt broken—just disoriented, stiff. My head throbbed faintly, like the memory of violence hadn't fully left yet.
The room looked familiar.
Painfully so.
Concrete walls. One grimy window far too high to reach. The door—metal, bolted from the outside. The kind of place you send people you don't want remembered. I'd been here before. I could trace the outlines of memory into every crack on the wall. But this time, I wasn't bound.
And that told me something was off.
I pushed myself up, slowly, carefully, testing my legs. They held. A little shaky, but I could move. I tried the door, knowing it was pointless, and when it didn't budge, I slammed my palm against it—just once. Just enough to make a sound. Not desperate. Just… a knock.
Because they were always listening.
And sure enough, they came.
Two of them.
Familiar faces. Not because I remembered their names, but because I remembered the way they looked at people—as if pain was an obligation, not a job. They didn't carry weapons, at least none I could see. Which meant they thought I wasn't a threat.
They always thought that. Until it was too late.
"What's up?" I said, voice dry, cracking slightly at the edges.
The answer was a fist. It came fast and landed harder than I expected—a clean shot across my jaw that rattled the inside of my skull and snapped my head to the side. The taste of iron flooded my mouth immediately.
But more than the pain—it was how he hit me. Personal.
I wiped the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand, looked at it, then laughed—low, humorless.
"You sure about that?"
I didn't wait.
I lunged forward, catching him off guard, my fingers curling into the collar of his shirt as I drove my knee into his ribs. He folded on instinct, breath leaving his body in a sharp grunt, and I used that momentum to slam him backwards into the wall. The thud echoed like punctuation. My fist connected with his jaw once, then twice, then a third time—something cracked beneath the knuckles, whether his bone or mine, I didn't care.
The second one moved fast, coming at me from the side, aiming for my temple. I ducked under his arm, twisted, and drove my elbow into his side with a satisfying crunch. He stumbled, but not far enough. He swung again—I caught his wrist, twisted it sharply, and kicked the inside of his knee. He dropped.
I was already on him.
Fists, forearm, whatever I had—I didn't stop until his breath turned to wheezing and he stopped trying to get back up. My breathing was ragged, my body buzzed with the rush of it—pain and adrenaline like lightning under my skin.
Then I heard it.
Footsteps.
More than two. More than four.
Shit.
The door swung open again, and this time, it wasn't subtle. Four, maybe five more came in. No introductions. No warnings.
"Oh, fuck," I muttered.
And then they charged.
I didn't think. Just moved.
I swung first—elbow into a nose, shoulder into a gut, fists clenched so tight my knuckles were already going raw. I caught one in the throat, heard him choke as he went down, but they kept coming. One grabbed the back of my shirt, yanked me backwards. I twisted, slammed the back of my head into his face—felt blood spray.
But it was too many.
Hands grabbed at my arms, my waist, my shoulders. I landed a punch, a kick, I think I even bit someone—anything. But my body was starting to slow, pain blooming with each hit I took, sharp and unrelenting.
Someone got a knee into my ribs.
Another fist collided with the side of my face.
They were trying to wear me down.
Not kill me. Not yet.
Just enough to remind me that whatever power I thought I had—whatever control I pretended to own—was borrowed.
And now, the lease was ending.
The blows came in waves, a dull, rhythmic violence that stopped resembling technique and started sounding like boots scuffing through gravel. I lost track of how many were hitting me and from which angle, only that I was still conscious, and they hadn't broken anything that mattered—yet. My mouth was full of blood, thick and metallic, and the pounding in my ears sounded like war drums muffled by water.
At some point, I dropped.
First to one knee, then the other. My shoulder hit the wall, body folding in on itself without ceremony, and still—still—I kept swinging, teeth gritted, until someone wrenched my arm back and sent another punch across my jaw. That one spun my vision sideways, fractured the room into fragments. Color drained. Sound blurred. But I stayed upright, if only out of spite.
They thought they'd won.
I could hear it in the change of their breathing—the short huffs of men who believed a message had been delivered. I heard one of them laugh, low and mean. Another muttered something like "Should've stayed down."
And then—
A shift.
Not in volume, not in motion. Just in presence.
The door opened. No slam. No warning. No barked order.
And yet the entire room fell still as if oxygen had been sucked out through the crack in the frame.
Even with my vision swimming, I knew that silhouette. Broad shoulders. Straight posture. The calculated pause of a man who never rushed—because he never had to.
Marco.
The room didn't acknowledge him at first, not out loud. No one dared. But I could feel the recognition ripple through them, the way feet slowly inched backward, the way every pair of eyes suddenly forgot how to blink.
He didn't say a word.
He didn't have to.
The silence became unbearable. It was the kind of silence that carried weight, that pressed against the ribs and warned: you've already made a mistake. Choose your next breath carefully.
Marco walked in with slow, grounded steps, his boots heavy on the concrete, each one louder than the last. He didn't look at me. Not yet. He was watching them. Reading posture. Gaze. Sweat.
One of the men—the one who'd landed the first punch—opened his mouth, perhaps to justify, perhaps to redirect blame, but the sound never left him. Marco raised his hand, just once, fingers spread ever so slightly.
And the man went quiet like his lungs had given up.
Without shifting expression, Marco stepped forward, shoved another aside, not aggressively, just enough to send him stumbling into the wall with a startled grunt, and then he crouched beside me.
One knee to the ground.
His head turned, and finally, his eyes met mine.
He looked at me the way someone looks at a bloodied piece of glass, not broken beyond use, but definitely dangerous to touch. I could taste blood again, thick and bitter at the back of my throat, and I watched his mouth form words slower than necessary, like each one was meant to be heard.
"Emiliano said bring him in."
His voice was quiet, controlled, but it vibrated through the bones of the room like it had been carved from stone.
"Not beat him like a fucking mutt in the street."
There was no mistaking the threat in that last word. Not hinted—declared. That wasn't disappointment. That was permission for someone to bleed.
He scanned the room slowly, and when he spoke again, it was colder. He didn't bark. He didn't yell. He simply made it clear.
"Who gave that order?"
Silence. Complete.
I could feel the pause stretching, the discomfort metastasizing. No one stepped forward. No one flinched. And I knew—they were afraid. Not of me. Not anymore. But of the man kneeling beside the bleeding body I had become.
And that, for a moment, almost made me smile.
I tilted my head toward them, throat raw, tongue thick with blood, and let my voice break the tension like a match dragged across sandpaper.
"Go on," I rasped, lifting my chin just enough to meet their gaze. "Say it. Let's see if you've got the balls."
Still nothing.
They weren't silent because they didn't know.
They were silent because they knew exactly who gave the order.
And because Marco was still kneeling beside me, waiting to hear the name said out loud—so that he could carve it into someone's bones.
I felt my pulse pounding in my jaw, in the socket of my eye, behind my ribs where the bruises were already swelling. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt more. Everything felt hot, muffled, unreal, as though my body was floating behind itself, watching from a few inches outside the skin.
Marco stood.
Still quiet. Still composed. His stare was made of stone when he looked at them, his mouth hard with something that had very little to do with protocol and everything to do with principle.
Then, without a word, he reached down.
His hand slid under my arm, pulling me up—not roughly, but not gently either. It was the grip of someone who knew where to touch without causing more damage, and didn't want to waste time asking if I could walk on my own. I couldn't. Or wouldn't.
My legs protested with sharp, blooming pain, but they held. Barely.
"You okay?" he asked, voice low.
The question hit me in the gut harder than any of their fists had.
I looked at him.
Tried to blink through the blood and sweat clinging to my lashes, my left eye swollen enough that it barely opened. My throat burned, not from speaking, but from what I wanted to say and couldn't.
So I turned my head away.
Said nothing.
Because whatever okay looked like, it wasn't this. Not beaten, not dragged out like a warning, not bleeding down my shirt while a room full of cowards stayed silent.
Marco didn't press.
He adjusted his grip, pulled my arm across his shoulders, and started walking.
The others didn't stop us. Didn't dare. They parted like the hallway had been split for him, heads down, eyes averted, like maybe if they didn't look, they wouldn't have to admit what they'd done.
Or what they'd allowed.
The walk felt longer than it should've. Each step jarred the ache in my ribs, lit sparks of pain in my thigh, sent the blood in my mouth pooling along my tongue. I didn't ask where we were going. I knew.
He was taking me to Emiliano. Of course.
The man behind the curtain. The one who said bring him in and expected obedience. Not chaos. Not a message scrawled in bruises.
Marco didn't speak again.
He just walked. One heavy step at a time, like dragging a corpse out of a war zone.
And I let him.
Because right now, in this state—bleeding, shaking, broken in ways I couldn't yet count—there was only one thing I could do.
Endure.
"What the fuck?"
Emiliano stood up slowly from behind his desk, his chair creaking with the shift in weight. His voice cut through the haze like a blade, sharp and disbelieving, but I could barely register the shape of his expression. Everything around me was a distorted canvas—blurred outlines of furniture, walls that pulsed in and out of focus, light that burned instead of illuminated. I couldn't tell what was real, only that I was sinking into it.
I could sense motion more than see it—Marco's arm around my back again, the pressure as he lowered me onto the couch. Gently, or as gently as a man like Marco understood the word. My body folded like paper. The leather beneath me was cold, firm, and it jolted through my spine like it was trying to wake me up.
Marco hovered. Uncharacteristically uncertain.
"Go grab something—or someone—to check on him, Marco!" Emiliano barked, voice rising with command.
"I think I'm falling asleep, Em—" I muttered. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, my jaw too loose, like I couldn't quite keep my face in place.
"No, no, stay awake, Rowan."
I could hear shuffling. Footsteps. Doors opening, maybe. The ping in my ears was sharp now, like a string being plucked inside my head. My limbs were heavy. Every breath took effort.
I tried to open my eyes. Once. Twice.
They fluttered, but darkness clung to the edges like smoke that wouldn't leave.
Eventually, I gave up.
"Rowan?"
The voice was closer now. Familiar. I knew it even through the fog.
My eyes opened again—this time slower. The room flickered into view.
Emiliano's face loomed too close, sharp around the edges, his expression pinched in something halfway between worry and judgment.
"He's awake now," he said, his voice slightly less tense as he turned toward someone behind him.
"What's going on?" I asked, my voice barely registering as my own—thin, slurred, raw.
"You've been beaten up badly, boy, and you've been going in and out of conscious for the past couple of hours. " another voice answered from the side, deep and grounded.
Marco.
I turned my head with effort, my neck stiff, and saw him standing by the far wall, arms crossed. Watching. Quiet. Waiting for the next move.
"I never gave the order," Emiliano said. He sounded calm now. Too calm. "I said bring you in. Not break you in."
"Then either your people are too stupid to follow instructions…" I rasped, pushing the words past the bruises in my throat, "or someone told them something different. You'd better decide soon who you believe in. Because the next time—"
"There won't be a next time," Emiliano interrupted, waving a hand. "Don't worry about that."
I stared at him. My eyes were clearer now, the fog lifting with every new drop of pain. But the look in his face—the one that wouldn't meet mine directly—wasn't resolution.
It was hesitation.
"Someone clearly disobeyed your orders," I said slowly, dragging each word. "They went around your back. Gave orders above yours. And you don't want me to worry?"
"I know it was Sandro," Marco spoke from across the room, his voice hardening. "In fact, Sandro's been doing too many things lately. Snitching on you, talking about how you leaked the route to Curb 41. How that's how the police knew where we were moving the drugs. Of course—with the help of your pretty little boy."
The words landed with the weight of accusation, but it wasn't Marco I turned to.
It was Emiliano.
And he looked back at me—not with outrage. But with doubt.
"You believe that?" I asked, my voice cracking with disbelief that bled too close to begging. "The fuck you mean standing there and not saying anything?"
"I asked to see you so we could talk about it," Emiliano said, tone dry. Not defensive. Not apologetic. Just… practical. "I was going to call you in myself, but he beat me to it."
"And?" I pushed, stomach knotting tighter with every second he didn't correct the trajectory.
"I—" he paused, shoulders squaring, like even now he was trying to make it sound reasonable. "You've been far away from the organization, Rowan. I, of course, had my doubts."
My laugh came out as a cough—hoarse and bitter.
"I didn't have a job to do," I snapped. "Why the fuck would I be around here? All my work right now is basically to launder the money until it makes sense. That's the only role you've given me. So what fucking distance didn't make sense to you?"
I had never raised my voice at Emiliano.
Not once. Until now.
"The exposed route. The timing. The police hovering over us now—"
"And it didn't occur to you," I cut him off, seething, "that he was the one who had done it?! Never, for once, you took my alerts to you seriously. You always said you'd fucking handle it. And now look at me!"
I gestured to myself, to the blood caked at the corner of my eye, the ache splitting through my ribs, the copper still coating my tongue.
"I respected you far too much for my own good," I said, my voice rising again, heat crawling up my throat, choking me. "I shouldn't have ever trusted you to handle anything."
"Watch your mouth, Rowan," Marco said, sharp, cutting across the room like a blade.
"No." I turned on him, eyes blazing. "I won't watch my mouth. Not until he watches his fucking men. I'm so sick—so fucking sick—of this shit. These stupid considerations, these fragile egos we're supposed to protect. Since when do gang members act nice toward one another, especially when one of them is acting out of order? What is this?" I laughed again, bitter to the bone. "A kindergarten for gangsters?"
No one responded.
Because it wasn't just rage anymore.
It was betrayal. Raw, thick, pulsing. And every word I threw at him came with a cost I was ready to pay.
Because for the first time, I wasn't just bleeding from the body.
I was bleeding from the trust.