Chapter 5: The Night
1280 Words
Marco’s POV
The room shrank.
One second the air was thick with champagne and string quartets bleeding up from the ballroom below. The next, it was nothing but the sound of my own pulse hammering behind my ears and the weight of that second knock against the door.
Heavy. Deliberate. The kind of knock that didn’t ask to be let in.
Kimmie rose slowly from the armchair, her champagne forgotten. Confusion pulled her brows together, soft and human in a way that had no business being here tonight.
“Marco… who is that?”
Another knock. Louder this time.
“Open the damn door,” the voice growled, low and familiar enough to make my blood turn cold.
I swallowed. My throat felt like sandpaper.
Only one man spoke to me like that.
Enzo Gevonese.
My uncle.
And if Enzo was here—now, during the Ball, while half of Palermo’s underworld was two floors below pretending we were civilized—then something had already broken. Something irreversible.
I crossed the room in three long strides and turned the lock.
The door swung inward before I could pull it wide.
Enzo stepped in without waiting, without greeting. His suit was wrinkled, one lapel speckled dark. His silver-streaked hair clung to his forehead with sweat, and his breathing was wrong—too fast, too shallow.
But it was the stain on his sleeve that made my stomach drop.
Blood. Fresh.
“Uncle—”
“We need to leave. Now.” His voice was clipped, stripped of everything except command.
Kimmie’s eyes widened. She looked between us like she was trying to solve a puzzle where all the pieces were on fire.
“What happened?” I demanded, stepping in front of her without thinking. Instinct.
Enzo’s gaze flicked to her for half a second. Assessment. Then back to me. His jaw tightened.
“It’s your father.”
The world stopped.
Silence fell so hard I could hear the faint shatter of ice in glasses two rooms over. The music from the ballroom dulled, like someone had stuffed cotton in my ears.
My voice came out lower than I intended. Dangerous.
“What about him?”
Enzo hesitated.
That hesitation was a blade.
“He’s dead.”
The word landed like a gunshot in a cathedral.
Kimmie gasped. The champagne glass slipped from her fingers and hit the marble with a crystalline shriek. Red liquid splashed across the white floor, spreading like a wound.
“No.”
The word tore out of me before I could stop it. Raw. Ugly.
Enzo’s expression hardened, pain and duty warring behind his eyes.
“Assassinated. Thirty minutes ago. At the villa.”
My father.
Alessandro Gevonese.
The man who’d built an empire on fear and silence. The man who’d taught me that hesitation got you killed.
Impossible.
Nobody touched Alessandro. Nobody even thought about touching Alessandro without signing their own death warrant first.
“Who did it?” My voice didn’t shake. That was something. Cold was better than breaking. Cold let you think.
Enzo shook his head once. “We don’t know yet. It was clean. Professional.”
Rage detonated behind my ribs, hot and black.
The call I’d taken in the restroom. The way Marino’s voice had dropped. The way he’d said stay where you are.
They knew. They’d known, and they’d kept me dancing with politicians while my father bled out.
My fingers curled around the edge of the mahogany table. Wood splintered under the pressure.
Kimmie flinched.
“Marco…” she whispered, cautious, like I was a bomb she wasn’t sure wouldn’t detonate.
I closed my eyes for half a second.
I saw him. My father. Standing at the head of the long dining table, his expression carved from stone.
“Power is not given, Marco. It is taken.”
And now it had been taken from him.
The phone in my pocket buzzed. Once. Violent.
I snatched it out.
Marino.
I answered without looking. “What?”
His breathing was ragged. “Marco—get back to the villa. Now.”
Ice slid down my spine.
“What happened?”
Shouting. Glass shattering. Then Marino lowered his voice, pressing the phone close.
“There’s been an attack.”
The word landed like a second death.
“They breached the estate twenty minutes ago. Half the security system was shut down from the inside.”
From the inside.
Betrayal.
My grip tightened until the phone’s casing creaked. “Who’s there now?”
“Our men are trying to contain it, but—”
A gunshot cracked through the speaker, sharp and final.
Kimmie made a small, strangled sound.
Then Marino’s voice came again, quieter, frayed at the edges in a way I’d never heard before.
“They’re looking for something, Marco.”
“What something?”
Silence. Heavy. Deliberate.
Then:
“They keep saying her name.”
The room tilted.
Slowly, I turned.
Kimmie stood frozen three feet away, her face pale under the chandelier light. Innocent. Terrified. Completely out of her depth.
“What…?” she whispered.
Marino’s next words felt like a knife under my ribs.
“Kimmie Woods.”
Silence.
Everything clicked into place with sickening clarity.
The strange call. The attack. My father’s murder. Kimmie appearing at the Ball like fate had dropped her in my lap.
It wasn’t coincidence. It never was.
They knew about her. They’d known before I did.
“How the hell did they know her?” I said it out loud, but it wasn’t a question for anyone but myself.
Kimmie stared at me, horror widening her eyes. “Marco… what is going on? Why would they say my name?”
I couldn’t answer.
She was the leverage.
My weakness, gift-wrapped and delivered to my enemies.
Enzo moved closer, his voice urgent. “We need to move…now!!!”
“Why me?” Kimmie’s voice cracked. “I didn’t do anything! I don’t even know these people! Why am I caught up in this?”
I looked at her. Really looked.
She was shaking, but she wasn’t running. She was scared, but she was still standing here, asking questions instead of screaming.
Innocent.
Dragged into this by nothing more than being near me.
And to them, that was enough.
My phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A distorted voice laughed, low and amused, like this was a game.
“Tick-tock, Marco.”
My chest tightened.
“You brought the girl home exactly like we planned.”
The line went dead.
Kimmie’s phone vibrated on the side table.
She picked it up with trembling fingers. Her eyes scanned the screen.
And then all the color drained from her face.
Her knees buckled. I caught her before she hit the floor, my hands steady even as my world tilted.
She stared at me, breath coming in short, panicked bursts.
A message glowed on her screen.
One sentence.
“DON’T TRUST MARCO GEVONESE. HE KILLED YOUR FATHER.”
The room went silent again.
But this time, the silence had teeth.
Kimmie looked up at me, tears brimming but not falling yet. Betrayal and fear warring in her eyes.
“Marco… did you?”
I opened my mouth.
And before I could speak, the lights cut out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
From somewhere in the hallway, I heard the unmistakable sound of a silenced pistol being c****d.
A voice, calm and cold, spoke from the shadows beyond the door.
“Good evening, Marco. We’re here for the girl.”
Kimmie’s hand found mine in the dark, her grip like iron.
And for the first time in years, I wasn’t sure I could keep her safe.
- Writer
