Page 85 of His Savage Ruin
Her pupils take a moment to adjust to the dim light, and when they focus on my face, I see worry there mixed with the lingering haze of satisfaction. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know yet." I press a kiss to her forehead, then pull away to find my clothes. My shirt is somewhere on the floor, trousers tangled near the bed. I dress quickly while she watches from the pillows, the sheet pulled up to cover herself in a way that makes something possessive curl through my chest.
When I open the door, Rafael is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed and his jaw locked tight. The hallway light catches the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers are drumming against his bicep in that nervous pattern he only does when he's trying not to punch something.
"What’s going on," I ask, pulling the door shut behind me so Alessia doesn't have to hear whatever this is.
"Three men down at the Southside club." Rafael's voice is clipped, controlled, but I can hear the rage underneath. "Found them twenty minutes ago when the night manager called it in. It's bad, Matteo. Real bad."
My stomach drops, but I keep my expression neutral as I process this information. The Southside club is one of our most profitable operations, a converted warehouse where we run underground fights three nights a week. Good money, loyal crowd, never had trouble there before.
"Dead?"
"Very." Rafael pushes off the wall and starts walking toward the stairs, and I fall into step beside him. "Manager says they were fine at midnight when he did rounds. By one AM they were bleeding out on the floor of the equipment room."
One hour. Someone killed three of my men in one hour, inside a building that should have been secure, in a neighborhood that belongs to me. The implications make my hands curl into fists at my sides.
"What about the cameras?"
"All down. Whoever did this knew exactly where to cut the feeds." Rafael's boots hit the stairs hard enough that the sound echoes through the empty house. "This wasn't random,fratello. This was planned."
We reach the garage in silence, and I'm already running through possibilities in my head. The Morettis would be the obvious suspects, but this feels too surgical for Emilio's usual style. He likes spectacle, likes sending messages that everyone can see and fear. Cutting cameras and killing men quietly in an equipment room doesn't fit his profile.
"Get Enzo on the phone," I say as Rafael starts the engine of the SUV. "I want every camera feed from every property checked tonight. If someone's targeting our operations, I need to know if this is isolated or if we're looking at multiple hits."
Rafael nods and pulls out his phone while I stare through the windshield at the dark driveway ahead. My mind is still half backin that bedroom with Alessia warm and satisfied in my arms, and I have to force myself to shift gears mentally because this requires focus. Three men dead means three families who will need to be told, three funerals to arrange, three lives ended on my watch.
The drive to the Southside takes twenty minutes through empty streets, and I spend it trying to prepare myself for whatever scene is waiting. Rafael talks quietly on the phone beside me, coordinating with Enzo and Dante to pull security footage from our other clubs and warehouses. I catch fragments of the conversation—timestamps, camera angles, backup servers—but most of my attention is on the road ahead and the growing certainty that this attack is connected to everything else that's been going wrong lately.
The ambush during Alessia's transport, the leak of operational intelligence, the notes taunting her about secrets, and now this.
Someone is systematically dismantling my organization from the inside, and I still don't know who.
When we pull up to the club, the street looks normal enough. There are no police lights, no crowds of witnesses, just the usual late-night quiet of an industrial neighborhood. The front entrance is locked, but the side door stands open with one of my men posted there looking pale.
"Boss." He straightens when he sees me. "They're in the back. Manager's waiting for you."
I nod and move past him into the building, Rafael close behind me. The club smells like sweat and blood and the cheap beer we sell at the bar, familiar scents that usually mean profit but tonight just make my stomach turn. We walk through the main floor, where the fighting cage sits empty under harsh fluorescent lights, then down a hallway toward the equipment room where they store gloves and mouthguards and the medical supplies we keep on hand for when fights get messy.
The door is open, and the smell of blood hits me before I see anything else.
I step into the doorway and take in the scene. Three bodies on the concrete floor, arranged in a rough line like someone wanted them displayed. All three throats cut deep enough that their heads are barely attached, blood pooled underneath them in dark lakes that have already started to congeal at the edges.
But it's the positioning that makes my jaw clench. They're not just dead, they're staged. Hands bound behind their backs with zip ties. Knees on the ground like they were made to kneel before the killing blow came. This wasn't a fight that went wrong, self-defense or even a crime of passion.
This was execution.
"Cristo," Rafael breathes beside me, and I hear genuine shock in his voice even though he's seen plenty of bodies before.
"Someone sending a message." I force myself to move into the room, stepping carefully around the blood to crouch beside thenearest body. The man's eyes are still open, staring at nothing, and I recognize him as Tony Grimaldi, one of the regular security guys who worked fight nights. Good man, loyal, had a wife and two kids waiting for him at home.
Now he's just meat on a floor.
I examine the wound across his throat—clean cut, probably a very sharp blade, done by someone who knew exactly where to strike for maximum damage. No hesitation marks or signs of struggle beyond the zip ties. Whoever did this was fast and professional.
"Check the other two," I tell Rafael, standing up and pulling out my phone. "I want to know if they were killed the same way or if there's variation."
While Rafael examines the bodies, I dial Enzo. He answers on the second ring, and I can hear the clatter of keyboards in the background that means he's already deep into the security footage review.
