The city woke to sirens and silence.
Rain had scrubbed the night clean, but the scent of gunpowder still clung to the streets outside the Queens apartment. The sky was the color of bruises — pale violet streaked with gray — and inside, the air hung heavy with everything that hadn't been said.
Elena sat on the edge of the bed, a blanket around her shoulders, staring at the dried blood on her hands. She'd washed them three times already. It didn't matter. The stain lived somewhere deeper now.
Rafael's blood.
Lorenzo's brother.
A monster and a man — both born from the same darkness.
Across the room, Lorenzo stood by the window, shirt half-buttoned, bandage darkening where it met his skin. He hadn't spoken since dawn. His gun lay on the table, dismantled, cleaned, reassembled — over and over. The ritual of a man trying to hold himself together.
Elena finally whispered, "You haven't slept."
"I don't deserve to." His voice was low, rough. "Not after last night."
"You saved me."
He looked at her then, eyes shadowed. "No. I ended what I should've ended years ago."
She flinched at the cold finality in his tone. There was grief there — buried under iron — but also something else. Something she didn't recognize yet. The slow, creeping calm of a man who had nothing left to lose.
She stood, crossing the room until she was close enough to feel the heat of him. "What happens now?"
He exhaled, slow and bitter. "Now the city eats itself. The underbosses will smell blood. The cops will want answers. And someone will come looking for Rafael's body."
Her throat tightened. "So we run?"
"No," he said, looking down at her. "We burn what's left and build something new."
She frowned. "You can't build anything from ashes."
A faint smile touched his lips. "You'd be surprised what grows in ruins."
---
By midday, Matteo arrived — soaked, silent, eyes rimmed with exhaustion. He handed Lorenzo a phone, murmured something low, and left again without meeting Elena's gaze.
The loyalty in the Moretti house was shifting. She could feel it — like the foundation itself was cracking beneath their feet.
Lorenzo sat on the couch, scrolling through names, messages, updates. Every few seconds, his jaw clenched harder. Finally, he set the phone down.
"Half my men think I've lost control," he said flatly. "The rest are waiting to see who moves first — me, or the other families."
Elena hesitated. "Can't you reason with them?"
He gave a quiet laugh. "You don't reason with wolves, Elena. You bite first."
The words chilled her. Because beneath the violence, she could hear something else — resolve. A decision already made.
She knelt beside him. "You don't have to become him."
He looked at her slowly. "You still don't get it. I already was him. I just pretended not to be."
Silence stretched, thick and trembling.
Then, softer — almost a confession:
"When I saw you with Rafael… I wasn't afraid he'd hurt you. I was afraid of what I'd do if he did."
She met his gaze, her pulse a slow ache in her throat. "And what would you have done?"
He didn't answer. But the look in his eyes said enough.
Whatever mercy Lorenzo had left had died in that apartment.
---
That night, the rain returned — softer now, whispering against the glass.
Elena couldn't sleep. Every creak in the walls sounded like footsteps. Every gust of wind felt like a warning. She turned toward the man beside her, half-expecting him to be gone.
But he wasn't.
Lorenzo lay awake, staring at the ceiling, a cigarette burning low between his fingers. The smoke curled like ghosted thoughts. His hand rested over hers, heavy and warm, grounding her even as his mind drifted somewhere far away.
"Do you ever wish," she whispered, "that you'd never met me?"
His lips curved faintly. "Every day."
Her heart sank.
Then he added, "Because before you, I didn't know what it meant to fear losing something real."
The confession hit her harder than any bullet.
She shifted closer, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. "You don't have to protect me from this world, Lorenzo."
He turned, eyes catching hers in the dark. "I'm not protecting you from it, cara mia."
His hand slid to her neck, thumb tracing the pulse there.
"I'm protecting it from you."
The words sent a shiver through her — equal parts warning and desire.
Because she could feel it now — the change in him. The slow unraveling. The way guilt had fused with need, turning him into something more dangerous than ever before.
And as thunder rumbled in the distance, she realized the truth:
The storm wasn't over.
It had only changed names.