Chapter 33

**A L E X**

Mateo doesn’t smile. Doesn’t sneer. He just stares at me, and in that moment, I’m thrown back, forced to relive it all. The blood. The fear. The way my hand shook when I first held the knife.

I hadn’t been ready for it. Not really. Not for that. But there I was, standing over Senior Rossi’s body, heart pounding so loud in my ears it drowned out the rest of the world. I’d stabbed him while he slept—unarmed, defenseless. My first real kill. And not in a fight or a duel—no, I had done it in the shadows. I hadn’t been trained for the kind of cold-blooded assassination that night demanded, but there I was. With a blade dripping in blood.

I remember the way the room felt—too hot, like I couldn’t breathe. The metallic scent of blood mixing with the heavy cologne Senior Rossi wore. I just wanted to get out. To run. But that’s when I saw him.

Matteo. He wasn’t a child—not really. He was nineteen or twenty, but the way he stumbled into the room, eyes wide and hollow, made him seem younger. Fragile, even. There was something about him then that made me freeze. Tall, yes, and broad-shouldered, but in that moment, he looked… broken. Shocked.

He wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to see it.

But he did.

I’ll never forget his face. The way his eyes locked onto his father’s body, then slowly, painfully, rose to meet mine. He didn’t scream. He didn’t cry, not at first. He just… stared. The silence between us was suffocating. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t some hardened killer back then—hell, I was barely older than him.

But then he moved. Launched at me, fury taking over where shock had once been. And that’s when everything went to hell. I didn’t think, I just acted. It was instinct, pure survival. He came at me, and I swung the knife.

The blade cut across his face, from his throat to his ear. I felt the resistance, the way flesh gave way beneath the steel. His blood sprayed across the room, across my face, across his father’s corpse. It all happened so fast, but in that moment, time slowed down. I can still hear the sound it made—the sickening, wet noise of skin splitting open.

He fell. Hard.

And then the screaming started. He clutched his face, blood pouring between his fingers, his cries echoing in my skull. And all I could think was, run. Get out. Leave before more of them showed up.

I didn’t care if he lived or died at that moment. All I cared about was escaping. So I ran.

The guilt didn’t hit me until later. Until I saw the aftermath—the way they cleaned up the bodies, the way everyone whispered about it. How Matteo had told anyone who would listen that it wasn’t my uncle who did it. That it was me.

But no one believed him. Not when my uncle claimed the charges, not when he stood trial in the court just for the sake of the world to see and neither when he spent five measly years in the luxurious facility they called ‘jail’ for the like of us. There was no justice in this world of crime but the one you brought with your own hands. That’s what I’d hoped to do that night. Murder Sr. Rossi in his bed to avenge my father, who he murdered in my own backyard. But when I walked out of the Rossi mansion, I carried not the satisfaction of revenge but the guilt of a criminal.

That was the day I finally realised there was no such thing as true fairness in this world. It was subjective to whoever help the power to declare it. With a knife in my hand, I was the one with power that night. And Matteo was left with nothing but his scar and the memory of my face. A scar he’d carried for years. A scar that told me every time I saw him that he remembered everything.

He was waiting. Biding his time.

And now here he is. Standing before me, cool and collected, like he’s already won. Today was the first strike—stealing the deal from me this morning was just the start. But he’s not come for my business. He’s come for blood.

As he switches his legs sitting comfortably in his couch, I see that Matteo Rossi isn’t some kid anymore. He’s not weak, not broken. He’s spent years sharpening himself into something else.
He’s not the same Matteo I left bleeding on that floor all those years ago.

But I’m not the same either.

He wants to take me down, wants to see me on the ground like his father was. But I won’t give him the satisfaction. Not again.

I’ll be ready this time. I just first need to solve the ‘Grace Millers’ problem.