Page 22 of Break For Me
I lower the gun.
Alessandro walks up the rickety wooden steps. His two-thousand-dollar Italian leather shoes are caked in mud. His dark tie is loose. His black hair is a mess. He looks like a man who has spent the entire night burning his own life down to the ground.
He opens the door. He sees me first. I’m shirtless, swaying, covered in blood and fresh bandages. He looks at the gun in my hand.
I see the flicker of pain in his eyes. For one fleeting heartbeat, he isn't the Don. He’s my little brother. Seeing me like this hurts him. It’s an impact he can’t strategize his way around.
Then the mask is back in place. The Don returns.
"Status," he says, his voice flat.
"Killian’s alive. The doctor fixed him. Gut surgery." I look over at Adrian, who is still standing frozen in the doorway, clutching his bag. "Tell him."
Adrian’s voice is a cold, flat line, his tone a register of medical facts. "Jejunal perforation with mesenteric bleed. Primary anastomosis completed. He’s stable on broad-spectrum antibiotics. The prognosis is favorable if we can prevent sepsis."
Alessandro doesn't look at Adrian. He walks past me to the table made of a door. He stops and looks down at Killian. He looks at the waxy, pale skin and the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of the thin sheet.
He stands there for a long time. He doesn't touch him. He doesn't speak. But I see his right hand hanging at his side. His fingers are trembling. It’s the most honest, vulnerable thing he’s shown me in months.
I lean heavily against the wall. The gun weighs three pounds, but my arm feels like it’s made of lead. The dawn light turns the room a dusty, mottled gold. I watch my brother stand over his dying husband. I feel something crack in my chest that has nothing to do with my broken ribs.
Adrian is watching from the doorway. He is diagnosing the entire room. He is reading the invisible damage between us like it’s written on a medical chart.
His pale blue eyes meet mine across the small cabin. They hold.
I look away first.
Chapter Seven
ADRIAN
I hearthem through the wall.
The cabin wasn't built for privacy. The plank walls are thin. Gaps between the boards let sound pass as easily as the cold drafts snaking across the rough floor at night.
I’m in the small bedroom, changing the dressing on my own wrists. Rocco’s grip left deep friction burns—raw, abraded skin and bruised tendons that throb with every small movement. Then their voices filter through the cheap wood.
Alessandro’s voice is a flat, emotionless line. Controlled. He gives orders with the same steady regularity that most people breathe.
"The doctor stays until Killian can be moved. After that, we’ll see if he’s still an asset."
"And if the Russians track him here?" That’s Rocco. His voice is a low, guttural rumble that vibrates the floorboards beneath my feet.
"Then you handle it. That’s your job."
A long pause. I press a fresh strip of medical tape across the gauze on my left wrist and hold my breath. My heart knocks hard against my ribs.
"Rocco." Alessandro’s tone changes. It gets softer. It reminds me of a blade being honed to a microscopic edge. "Don’t break the doctor. We might need him again."
Don’t break the tool. Don’t dull the scalpel. Keep the equipment functional. The phrasing is purely mechanical. It’s how a man discusses the routine maintenance of a car, not a human being.
I close my eyes. The sticky tape pulls at the fine hairs on my skin.
Through the wall, I hear the front door groan open. Heavy boots on the wooden porch. The Audi’s powerful engine turns over, catches, and settles into a low, armored purr. Gravel crunches loudly under the tires.
The sound fades as the car moves down the mountain road. The trees swallow the noise. The silence that rushes back in feels like cold water filling a hole.
The cabin feels smaller now. The walls are closer. The ceiling is lower. The air is thick and heavy with the smell of damp wood and the inescapable iron tang of dried blood. I am alone in the woods with a dying man on a door and an enforcer who has just been told not to break me.
