Page 16 of Devil Among Men

“I’m agreeing. With conditions.” I hold up a hand before she can celebrate too fast. “You work intel, recon, information gathering—the things you’re actually good at. You don’t run into gunfire. You don’t put yourself directly in the path of Vito’s men without backup. And you listen when Maurizio or I tell you a job’s too dangerous.”

“That’s fair.” She doesn’t argue, which surprises me slightly, though I catch the determination settling into her expression, already three steps ahead of where I am. “I’ve been thinking about how I can actually help. My old contacts, sources I built covering the Belluccis before any of this happened. People who talk to reporters who’d never talk to soldiers.”

“That could work.”

“I know it could.” A small, satisfied smile crosses her face, the first real one I’ve seen from her in days.

“I’m good at my job, Rafael. You’re about to find that out firsthand.”

“I never doubted it.”

“You kind of did, actually.” She raises an eyebrow, though there’s no real anger behind it now, just the familiar spark of someone who enjoys being right. “But I’ll let it go. This time.”

I reach for her hand, and she lets me take it, lacing our fingers together, the grip still new, still careful, both of us relearning how to hold onto each other after everything that broke between us.

“Thank you. For pushing me on this. For not letting me keep treating you like glass.”

“You’re welcome.” She squeezes my hand once. “Now stop being sappy. It’s weird coming from you.”

I laugh and it pulls at the wound just enough to remind me I’m still healing, still fragile in ways that have nothing to do with the argument we just settled, still learning how to be a different kind of man than the one who wasn’t in this bed three days ago.

The pain medication loosens my guard later that night, wearing down a wall I’ve kept standing for longer than I can remember, mortared shut with years of practice and violence and the discipline it took to survive Vito’s world at all.

“Tell me about that night. What you actually remember. I need to know, Rafael.”

I close my eyes. “I don’t remember much. I told you that.”

“Try… please.”

The dark behind my eyelids shifts, pulling me back toward a night I haven’t let myself look at directly in years, buried under everything I became after—the soldier I was forced into, the mask I eventually learned to wear myself, the split that grew out of surviving things a sixteen-year-old was never built to.

“I was young. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Still new to Vito’s crew. Still believing every word he told me about loyalty and family and what it meant to belong to an organization bigger than blood.”

“Where were you?”

“A warehouse. Somewhere near the water, I think. I can hear it—the water, lapping against metal, a hull maybe.” My jaw tightens, the memory sharpening despite every instinct telling me to stop pulling at this thread. “Vito told me to wait outside. Guard the door. I didn’t ask questions back then. You didn’t ask Vito questions.”

“And then?”

“And then I heard it. Screaming. A woman’s voice, and a man’s voice underneath it, both of them cut short too fast.” My chest tightens, breath coming faster now, old panic rising in a body that still remembers even when the mind’s tried for years to forget. “I should have stayed outside. I should have kept my head down like I was told.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I looked through a gap in the door,” I say. “And I saw him.”

“Saw who, Rafael?”

“The mask. Vito, in the devil mask. I didn’t understand it then. Didn’t understand what it meant, what it would come to mean for the rest of my life. I just saw the leather, the eyeholes, black and empty, and blood on his hands, and I couldn’t move.”

“What else? What else do you remember?”

“Portia—”

“Please.” Her grip tightens on my hand. “I need more. Please try.”

The memory cracks open wider than I mean to let it, pulling harder now, dragging up pieces I’ve spent years burying—a man slumped beside a woman, the particular silence that follows violence once it’s finished doing its work.

My skull starts pounding, pressure building behind my eyes like a second presence clawing its way up from underneath everything I’ve built to keep it contained. I recognize the sensation even through the pain. I’ve felt it before, every time Il Diavolo pushed close to the surface, every time the split threatened to take the wheel from me entirely.