Chapter 9
1325words
Lorenzo let out a roar like a wounded beast—a sound fueled not just by rage, but by absolute, soul-crushing despair.
BANG—
A single gunshot shattered the heavy, expensive silence of the living room.
Isabella’s shrill, manic laughter stopped instantly, like a radio being smashed to pieces.
A dark red hole appeared right between her eyes. Her stare remained wide, frozen with that same crazed, smug expression she’d worn a second ago, but her body lost all its strength. She buckled and slumped backward.
With a heavy thud, her corpse hit the thick Persian rug. Blood began to bloom across the fabric like a dark, poisonous flower.
Lorenzo’s arm hung limp, smoke still curling from the barrel of his gun. His eyes were completely hollow.
The room went dead silent.
No one screamed. No one even rushed over to check on her.
Luca and Dante just stared at the body on the floor, their faces like stone. Matteo closed his eyes, took off his glasses, and began to wipe them clean.
In this world, there was no trial. There was no family council, and no explanation was needed. This was the Mafia’s way—death to the blood traitor.
Half an hour later, Matteo’s tech crew confirmed the digital trail. The money was a match.
Isabella had used a secret offshore account to pay a massive deposit to the Ivanov family.
The man in the video—the one who enjoyed the killing—was Ivanov’s top psycho, a butcher they kept for their dirtiest work.
Lorenzo listened to the report without a single flicker of emotion.
He simply turned and walked out the front door of the Falcone estate.
Standing on the marble steps, he pulled out his phone and made one call.
"Assemble every soldier we have."
"Tonight, Brooklyn runs red. I want the Ivanov family erased. Man, woman, and child."
That night, Brooklyn became a war zone.
A torrential rain lashed the streets, but it couldn't wash away the heavy scent of copper and gunpowder.
Lorenzo fought like a man who had forgotten how to feel pain. He didn't wear a vest. He walked into the heart of the Ivanov stronghold with two modified Glocks, kicking the front door off its hinges.
Muzzle flashes lit up the dark warehouse in rhythmic bursts.
Bullets zipped past him like angry hornets, but he didn't even flinch.
He kept moving forward. With every pull of the trigger, another Russian went down.
The Caruso soldiers behind him had never seen their boss like this. He wasn't just fighting; he was looking for a grave.
He carved his way to the very back of the warehouse.
There sat the Don of the Ivanov family and the butcher from the video.
When the butcher saw Lorenzo—covered in blood, looking like a demon crawled out of hell—he finally felt true terror.
Lorenzo tossed aside his empty guns and pulled a tactical knife from his belt.
It was the blade he had once given me for protection—the one I’d left in his car.
"This one is for her legs."
Lorenzo lunged, ignoring a slash to his shoulder as he buried the knife deep into the butcher's thigh.
"This one is for her tongue."
He ripped the blade out and drove it straight into the butcher's throat.
The man who had laughed while hurting me now clutched his neck, making a wet, gurgling sound as he bled out on the floor.
The Ivanov Don raised his piece and fired several rounds into Lorenzo’s chest.
Lorenzo’s body jerked, but he didn't fall. With his final ounce of strength, he threw himself forward, driving the same knife that had pierced my heart into the Russian’s chest.
"And this one... is for Elena."
Then, it was over.
At dawn, the wail of sirens echoed across the city.
When the SWAT team breached the warehouse, they found nothing but a graveyard.
Lorenzo was leaning against a bullet-riddled wall, sitting in a pool of his own blood. Life was draining out of him fast, but his face showed no pain.
He feebly raised his hand, his palm clutching that blood-stained engagement ring.
The morning sun peeked through the high, broken windows, hitting his face.
He stared into the empty air, a final spark of light returning to his dull eyes.
"Elena..."
He whispered my name to the shadows, a faint smile of relief touching his lips.
"Don't be scared... I’m coming to find you... It’s too dark there... you shouldn't be alone..."
"In the next life... don't ever meet a bastard like me again..."
His hand went limp. The ring rolled onto the bloody floor with a soft, metallic chime.
Lorenzo was dead. The Caruso family, left without an heir, was torn apart by rivals within weeks.
The Falcone and Caruso empires—the two titans of the city—crumbled overnight.
The three brothers found no peace in Isabella’s death. Instead, as the investigation continued, every detail they uncovered only served to remind them that they were the ones who pulled the trigger on me.
A month later, Luca was in the middle of a street war when he saw a young runaway girl being shot at. In his delirium, he thought Elena had come back. He threw himself over her, taking a dozen bullets to the back.
"Elena."
"I was a failure of a brother."
As he died, he felt as if he had finally protected the girl he owed everything to. He closed his eyes for the last time.
Matteo went insane.
He stopped sleeping. He spent his nights staring at the phone that had recorded my final call. The guilt shattered his mind, and he began to hear voices.
He could hear me screaming for help on the other end, but no matter how hard he pressed the screen, he couldn't "answer" the call.
One thunderous night, he couldn't take the haunting anymore.
He wrote a suicide note only three words long: “I am sorry.”
Then, he took the silver pistol that symbolized his rank as Consigliere, shoved it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
Dante, the strongest enforcer the family had ever known, chose the most pathetic way out.
He became a junkie. Only under the influence of high-grade heroin could he see the version of Elena who still smiled at him, rather than the broken corpse in the morgue.
Six months later, they found a body in a gutter in the slums.
He was skin and bones, covered in maggots, clutching a childhood family photo in his cold, dead hand.
My parents lost all their children in the blink of an eye.
They stayed in that hollow, tomb-like Falcone mansion.
Every day, they had the staff prepare a massive feast, setting five extra plates. They talked to the empty chairs, pretending their children were still there.
In the end, they drifted into a world of dementia and rot.
I hovered in the air, watching it all.
I watched the estate go to seed. I watched the headstones multiply. I watched every person who ever hurt me meet a miserable end.
Strangely, I felt nothing.
In a vast, white void of nothingness, I saw Lorenzo’s soul.
He was covered in scars, but the filth and blood were washed away. He was wearing the same white shirt he wore the day we first met, looking clean as he walked toward me.
He didn't dare touch me. He didn't even dare look up. He simply fell to his knees before me, weeping silently.
Then came my brothers—Luca, Matteo, Dante.
They stood behind him with their heads bowed like children who had realized they were wrong, kneeling in a row.
This time, there was no family honor, no Mafia rules, and no goddamn favoritism.
They were just four souls drowning in regret.
I looked at them and let out a soft sigh.
"Let's go," I said quietly, without looking back.
"In the next life, let's not be family."
(THE END)
