Page 61 of Ruthless Silence
"Dante." Marco's voice cuts through. "They left this."
A brown envelope, my name scrawled across it in block letters. My hands shake as I tear it open. A single photo falls out. Ana, unconscious, laid out in what looks like a van. A bruise blooms on her temple, purple against her pale skin. Her dress, the blue one she wore this morning, the one I helped her zip while kissing her neck, torn at the shoulder. But she's breathing. Alive.
The photo smells wrong. Male cologne, cheap. Someone else's scent on her image. My vision goes red at the edges.
I flip it over. The message is simple, impossible:
"Your queen for your kingdom. All territories, all operations, everything Rosetti. Midnight. Six hours. Or we sell her to the highest bidder. Many want the Rosetti whore."
The paper crumbles in my fist. They called her that. They dared to call her that.
My throat burns again, trying to roar, to scream, to make any sound that matches the rage tearing through me. This morning she traced the scars on my throat, kissed each one, signed "your voice is in your hands, in your touch, in how you love me." Now those same scars burn with the need to scream her name.
The door opens again. A kid, maybe eighteen, shaking like a leaf. Detroit's messenger. He's brave. Stupid. Dead.
"Mr.Rosetti," his voice cracks. "I'm supposed to wait for an answer."
I move before thought forms. My hand wraps around his throat, lifting him off the ground. Not strangling, not yet, just holding him suspended while his feet kick uselessly. His pulse hammers against my palm. Frightened prey in the grip of something that's stopped being human. I can feel his voice box working, the thing I lost, the thing they took. He can scream. I can't.
Marco doesn't intervene. Neither does Nico. They know better than to get between me and anything connected to Ana's taking. I see them exchange a look. They've never seen me this far gone. When I came back from torture, I was silent, contained. This is different. This is what happens when you take the only thing that makes a monster want to be human.
The kid's eyes bulge. "Please, I'm just, they made me."
I drop him, then grab his wrist. The bone snaps with a satisfying crack that makes him scream. A warning. A promise. A preview of what's coming for everyone involved. His scream echoes what my throat can't produce, and I want to break every bone until his screams match my rage.
"Tell them," Marco translates my signs while the kid whimpers. "Tell them they're all dead. Every last one. But they'll wish for death before he's done."
The kid scrambles out, cradling his broken wrist. Good. Let him carry that message back. Let them know what's coming.
"Brother." Luca's voice drifts from the doorway, that wrong cheerfulness that means violence is near. "I heard we're finally getting to play properly."
He enters with that terrible smile, already knowing everything. Of course he does. Luca always knows when blood is coming. But even he steps carefully around me, recognizing something different in my eyes. This isn't the controlled violence he's seen before. This is something else. Something that doesn't care about collateral damage or consequences.
Alex arrives next, phone already out. "Calling in every marker, every favor. Full intel in twenty minutes."
My family mobilizes without question, each sliding into their role. But all I can see is that photo. Ana unconscious, vulnerable, in enemy hands because I failed to protect her. My knuckles are still bleeding from the wall, the window, the destruction, but the pain doesn't register. Physical pain is nothing. This hollow ache where she should be, that's agony.
My hands move desperately: "Two hours. She's been gone two hours?"
"Since this morning," Nico confirms. "They timed it perfectly. Wanted you trapped in the meeting when the message arrived."
Two hours. Two hours of them having her, touching her, maybe hurting her. The bruise on her temple screams my failure. This morning I traced my fingers over her unmarked skin, memorized every freckle, every scar, every inch. Now they've marked her. Put their violence on what's mine.
"Intelligence coming in," Luca announces, checking his tablet with that academic interest he brings to violence. "Warehouse district. Abandoned Patrilli building. Twenty men confirmed, possibly thirty."
He looks up, those pale eyes bright with anticipation. "And brother? Your wife already injured two of them. Bit clean through one's finger, broke another's nose. They had to sedate her."
Pride wars with terror. That's my Ana, fighting even drugged, even outnumbered. But they sedated her. Put their hands on her. Forced chemicals into her body to make her comply. The image of her unconscious, unable to fight, unable to sign for help, makes my scarred throat convulse again.
Mine to protect. Mine to avenge. Mine to burn this city down for.
"Arsenal," I sign, already moving.
The weapons room opens to familiar steel and gunpowder. But tonight it's different. Tonight I'm not selecting tools for a job. I'm choosing instruments of torture. This knife, serrated edge for the one who bruised her temple. This gun for whoever gave the order. These brass knuckles for anyone who called her that word.
I catch my reflection in the polished steel of a blade. The man staring back isn't the one Ana kissed goodbye this morning. That man was learning to be human, to be gentle, to be worthy of her love. This thing in the reflection is what remains when you rip away that humanity. The demon she once thought I was, now becoming exactly that because they took the only thing that made me more.
My brothers arm themselves efficiently, but they keep watching me. I'm taking too much, more than I can carry, more than makes tactical sense. Weapons strap to every available surface. Overkill for what's coming.
