Page 257 of Rosetti Family New York
Rafe finally steps forward, a shadow, a tower.
"You're lucky," Rafe says, his voice low, hard. "You're lucky you're the closest thing she has to family, or you'd be a lot worse off."
Lucas doesn't flinch. He doesn't fight back.
He just takes it because it's all he can do.
"Please," Lucas says. "Please don't leave me like this."
We turn away. We leave him like this.
We reach the fire door, and I stop. I look back, and Lucas is smaller than I've ever seen him, the wind ruffling his hair and loose clothes.
I thought I was falling. I thought the city was rushing up to break me.
But it's not the city.
It's the truth. It's Maddy. It's everything I lost when she died.
I thought I was falling, but it's worse than that. I'm not falling at all.
I'm frozen, suspended, waiting to crash.
30
Rafaele
Isit in my car outside the warehouse, knuckles white against the steering wheel, replaying Lucas's confession on that rooftop over and over in my mind. The rage I felt watching Sloane crumble, seeing her face when she realized her friend's own brother betrayed her, it's still burning through me, a slow, steady fire that won't die down.
I haven't told her where I'm going tonight. What I'm about to do.
It's better this way. She's still processing what Lucas did, still trying to make sense of a world where people she trusted could do the unthinkable. I've seen that look before, the one she had when we left Lucas on that rooftop, the shattered trust, the desperate need to believe there was another explanation. It's the same look Carmela had when she first understood what our family really does. The same look that haunts me sometimes when I catch my own reflection.
Family dinner at Nanna's just hours ago seems like a different life now. Sloane laughing with my brothers, fitting in like she'd always belonged there, her eyes bright and alive. The wayeveryone accepted her, even Dom, who never accepts anyone. For a few hours, I'd seen a different future, one where maybe I could be more than what I was made to be.
But reality has a way of bleeding through. Lucas's confession changed everything. Not just for Sloane, but for me too.
I check my gun, methodical, the familiar weight of it against my palm. Dale Callahan has always been a friend, or as close to a friend as someone like me gets in this business. We grew up together, ran the streets together. But he used Maddy, got her killed, and hurt the one person I've started to care about more than I should.
The old Rafe wouldn't have hesitated. Would have seen this as just another job, another body, another message to send. But now there's Sloane, and I can't stop thinking about what she'd say if she knew what I was about to do. The disappointment in those green eyes. The fear that maybe she was wrong about me.
I should walk away. Should find another solution. One that doesn't add more blood to hands already stained beyond redemption.
But this is who I am. This is what I do. And no matter how much Sloane makes me wish I could be different, some debts can only be paid one way.
I get out of the car, the cold February air hitting me like a slap. The warehouse looms ahead, silent and waiting. I adjust my gloves—the ones I didn't wear at Nanna's dinner, the ones that separate the man Sloane thinks I can be from the man I've always been.
Dale Callahan has to pay for what he did to Maddy. For what he did to Sloane. And I'm the one who's going to collect.
I just hope that when it's done, when I return to Sloane with blood on my hands that she can't see but will always be there, she'll still look at me the way she did at Nanna's table. Like I'm someone worth saving.
But I know better. Men like me don't get saved. We just keep adding to the tally until someone puts us in the ground.
I take one last look at my phone, at the picture of Sloane I shouldn't have but couldn't resist taking when she wasn't looking, smiling at something Matteo said at dinner. Then I tuck it away, lock that softer part of me behind the walls I've built over years of doing the family's darkest work.
Tonight isn't about redemption. It's about justice—the only kind I know how to deliver.
The underground fighting ring stretches out before me, a barren space of concrete and grit. It reeks of blood and sweat, soaked into the floors and walls. A small bar sits in one corner, nothing but a lonely slab of wood surrounded by empty stools.
