Page 77 of Brutal Union
The sisters lock eyes, and this is it—the real test. Everything hinges on this moment. My phone buzzes with updates from Luca about Irish movement on the south side, but I ignore it. The copper tang of blood never quite leaves my mouth, mixing with bitter coffee as I watch them circle each other with words.
Now Alice leans forward, and I see the steel that runs in the Bernardi women. "Let him go. He's broken, beaten. Let him disappear."
"He doesn't deserve mercy," Valentina says.
"Neither do any of you. But here we are." Alice's fingers drum against the table, a nervous tell she probably doesn't know she has. "I'll go to college. Leave this life. Never come back to Chicago." She pauses, letting the weight of her next words build. "But only if you let him live. Those are my terms."
Valentina looks at me. I nod slightly—her family, her choice. Whatever she decides, I'll support. And whoever needs to die because of it, I'll handle. The morning light catches the black ink circling her ring finger as she reaches for my hand. The nervous energy radiates from her—the same tension that had her gripping her coffee cup like a lifeline before Alice arrived.
"Fine," she says after a long moment. "But he leaves everything. The territory, the money, the connections."
"Everything becomes yours?" Alice asks, a bitter smile playing at her lips.
"Everything becomes ours," Valentina corrects, her fingers sliding through mine. The tattooed rings align. Even this simple touch makes my cock twitch—three days since the chapel, and my body still responds to her like I'm starving. We fuck like animals after violence, and today's been all sharp edges.
The truth sits darker underneath: I'd do it again. Kill anyone, destroy anything, to have her. That's what makes me the monster her mother tried to escape. But looking at Valentinanow, seeing the power she's claiming, I know she's becoming something just as dangerous. My queen with teeth.
She loves her sister. And so she is letting her go.
The medical facility reeks of antiseptic two hours later, no other scents surviving the industrial disinfectant. Valentina and I find Alonzo in a private room, his left hand heavily wrapped, face bruised but conscious. The beeping of machines marks time like a countdown.
"My daughters," he rasps, voice raw from screaming or crying or both. "Both lost to me."
"You lost us the day Mom died," Valentina says, no emotion in her voice.
I stand by the door, checking exits, watching sightlines, scanning for threats while she handles what needs handling. This is her moment, her closure. My role is to ensure she gets it. And to put a bullet in anyone who tries to stop her.
She produces papers from her bag, setting them on his bedside table. "Sign these. Everything transfers to me."
His right hand shakes as he reaches for the pen, the left too damaged to use. "Then you disappear," she continues. "As soon as you're out of hospital. Never return to Chicago."
The scratching of pen on paper fills the silence. Each signature another nail in the coffin of the Bernardi empire as it was. With trembling fingers, he signs away everything—territory, accounts, connections. A lifetime of blood and violence reduced to ink on paper.
"I didn't want to kill her," Alonzo blurts out, voice cracking under the weight of all he's lost.
The pen slips from his fingers, landing on the crisp manila folder with a soft, final-sounding tap. For one vertiginous second, the only sound is the medical monitor's slow, steady beep. His chest rises and falls in shallow, frantic movements, the oxygen tube fluttering at his nostrils.
He doesn’t look at us when he says it, his gaze fixed on the blank wall across from his hospital bed, as if he can will himself into another universe where the past is reversible. He’s not the man who ordered a dozen executions over the phone, not the man who stormed through the Bernardi townhouse with a pistol and a prayer; right now he’s just a battered old wolf, cornered and desperate, haunted by the only kill that ever mattered.
Valentina’s whole body goes rigid, her hands curling into fists by her sides. She’s practiced this confrontation a million times in her head, replayed every possible permutation of his last words, but nothing could have prepared her for this—the sudden, ugly vulnerability of a father too cowardly to save the one thing that made him human. I watch the tremor start at her jaw, a faint shiver that travels down her throat and settles in the knuckles of her right hand.
Our eyes catch for a nanosecond, and I see her calculation: How much of this is performance? How much should she let herself feel? She’s always said closure is a myth, but some part of her still wants it, still aches for the neat, surgical ending that only exists in movies. Instead, all she gets is this: a broken man, and a confession with nowhere to land.
He keeps talking, voice barely more than a whisper. "That night… I tried to save her. I didn’t just stand there and watch her burn like you said. But it was too late. The accident—" He squeezes his eyes shut, and tears carve lines through the grime on his cheeks. "I failed. I failed her. And you."
I want to walk over and break every remaining rib in his body. But Valentina just stands there, as if rooted to the floor, and listens. She’s the one who deserves to rage, to scream, to throw a chair through the window and let security drag us out. But instead, her expression freezes over, and she inhales once, deeply, like she’s drawing the pain through a straw and crushing it in her lungs.
He tries to reach for her with his good hand, but the IV tugs him back. "I loved her, Val. Maybe you’ll never believe me, but I did."
He breaks down, sobbing openly, the kind of weeping that sounds like it’s tearing his throat to ribbons. I almost turn away, but Valentina’s eyes are fixed, unblinking, drinking in her father’s agony as if it’s the only justice she’ll ever get.
She kneels at the foot of the bed, not close enough to touch, but close enough for him to know she’s listening.
"You’re wrong," she says, her voice raw but steady. "You didn’t just fail her. You failed me and Alice, too."
He tries to protest, but she cuts him off with a sharp gesture. "No.You listen. All our lives, you taught us that survival is an act of war. That love is a weakness. Every time you made us choose between you and her, you made sure we never forgot it." The bitter laugh that follows is almost a sob. "Well, congratulations, Papa. We remember."
He shudders, the reality of her words sinking in. For the first time, I notice how gaunt his face has become, the flesh hanging loose on his bones. He’s a relic now, a warning from a dying era.
