Page 33 of Devil Among Men

Rafael crosses the distance between them in three strides, grabbing the mask and tearing it free from Don Vito’s face.

“You’ll be exactly like me eventually,” the Don rasps, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. “You already are. I made sure of that a long time ago.”

“You made a soldier.” Rafael crouches, gun in hand. The same gun I’d stolen from the guard. “I made myself into a man you never accounted for. The curse ends with you. Right here.”

He raises the stolen gun and fires point blank.

The sound echoes across the empty coastal road, and then everything goes still, the only movement the distant crash of waves against rocks below us.

He admires his former boss and mentor’s dead body, then turns and walks to the cliff’s edge. He hurls the devil mask out into the dark water below. It disappears under the waves within the next second.

Headlights appear behind us. My body tenses when I recognize the car pulling up, until I see Maurizio behind the wheel. Adagio’s in the passenger seat, and Jayla’s safely in the back.

“You’re alive.” Jayla gasps. She scrambles out, yanking me into a fierce hug the second I’m within reach. “We heard the shots. We thought⁠—”

“We’re okay, Jay. I’m okay.”

Maurizio surveys the wreckage, grim satisfaction crossing his features. “Get in. We need to move before anyone else shows up.”

“What happened to you three?” I ask.

“Our driver got overconfident,” Adagio says. “Jayla distracted him. Asked him some question about his mother, of all things. Bought Maurizio enough time to break his neck before he registered what was happening.”

“You broke his neck,” I repeat.

“He got off easy. The other guard didn’t put up much of a fight after that. Adagio handled him.”

“I handled him extremely well, for the record,” Adagio adds, a slight grin to his mouth.

Jayla shakes her head, exhausted laughter bubbling up despite the horror of the night. “You’re both insane. I nearly had a heart attack.”

Adagio helps clear the last guard’s body from the road while Rafael and I climb into the back of their car.

I glance back once as we pull away, watching Vito’s body grow smaller in the distance, the coastal road empty and dark behind us.

It’s over.

I don’t know yet what that actually means, or what comes next for any of us, or even how I’m supposed to reconcile what I learned about Dad.

Vito’s dead, and with him, the immediate threat hanging over our heads for the past weeks. But grief doesn’t announce itself politely, nor does it wait for a convenient moment. It’s already gnawing away inside me, tangled up with relief in a way I don’t fully understand.

Rafael cups his hand over mine, and we sit in silence as we drive off, exhausted but committed as always.

For the first time in months, the immediate threat is gone, and we’ve officially survived. We’ve made it out of this war alive and well.

A sense of calm washes over me.

Tomorrow will bring its own reckoning. Tonight, I let myself have this instead.

17

RAFAEL

ONE MONTH LATER…

A few weeks since the coastal road incident, and Sicily becomes less like a place where we’re hiding and more so a place we’re thriving.

We killed Anthony Senior three weeks ago, on a quiet street in Palermo, two precise shots and gone before anyone realized what happened. Maurizio planned it down to the second, and I pulled the trigger myself, watching the man who served as my capo for years drop onto the cobblestone ground.