VOWS WRITTEN IN BLOOD

RAFAEL'S POV "No — please don't kill me.His voice cracked across the empty dock, ragged, desperate. I watched him stumble toward the edge, arms out like he could bargain his way back from whatever was coming."Please don't do thisA gunshot tore through the silence. His body jerked, then folded, and the water swallowed him whole.I jolted upright, gasping, my chest heaving like I'd been the one who couldn't breathe. Sweat soaked through the sheets beneath me. The image of his face — Cristiano's face — was still burned behind my eyes when the knock came."Come in."Enzo stepped through the door. My consigliere, tall, dark-haired, the kind of loyal that had been earned over a decade, not bought. His expression told me before his mouth did."We have an active location. Cristiano was last spotted there. A body was found."I was already moving.My room had never been comfort — it was proof. Floor-to-ceiling windows I kept curtained against the city that watched me too closely, a bed no one else had ever been allowed to sleep in, black Egyptian cotton and Italian leather because I'd decided a long time ago that if I couldn't have peace, I'd have excellence instead. I dressed in silence. Black, always black. It was easier than deciding.Downstairs, the house held its usual quiet — not peace, control. Every creak of the staircase under my feet was the only sound in a mansion full of people too disciplined to make one of their own. Wealth was on the walls. Authority was in the air.Three of my men were waiting at the door when I reached it, backs straight, hands loose at their sides in the specific way of men who'd earned the right to stand near me. The doors opened. Two Mercedes idled in the driveway, engines already running, black paint catching the gray morning light like something alive.Enzo and I took the first car. My men fell into the second only once I was seated — that was the order, always. The gates rolled open, and we disappeared onto the road in formation, like we were going to war instead of a warehouse.I didn't say anything for the first ten minutes. I didn't need to. Enzo knew better than to fill silence that wasn't his to fill.Cristiano wasn't just anyone in my dreams. He was the other half of something that was supposed to be whole. Born four minutes apart, raised behind the same gates, taught the same lessons — and somehow we'd ended up in completely different worlds despite sharing one house, one blood, one name.We didn't play like other children. Wooden guns became real ones before we were old enough to understand what that meant, and every game ended with someone declared a winner, though neither of us ever understood why there had to be one.I was built for it. I marched around the gardens with a toy pistol tucked into my waistband barking orders at staff twice my age, and it felt like breathing. Winning felt like breathing. My father's lessons about power and fear and loyalty sank into me like they'd always belonged there.Cristiano learned the same lessons and drowned in them differently. Where I saw a target, he saw a person standing behind it. Where I felt nothing when we won, he wondered what it cost the ones who lost. He felt everything — every hard word, every cruelty dressed up as discipline — while I learned that feeling it at all was a weakness men like us couldn't survive.He was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder when we were fourteen. He never hurt a soul because of it. People still called him the weak one — the one who drank himself numb when our father died while I buried myself in spreadsheets and blood debts instead. I never told him I respected that. That facing what he felt instead of burying it took more nerve than anything I'd ever done. I just tossed it aside, the way I tossed everything aside that made me uncomfortable.He is the only person on this earth I have ever actually needed.And he's been missing for a year.We'd fought the night he disappeared. I don't even remember what about anymore — something small that felt enormous in the moment, the way everything does with family. He stormed out. A month later, we filed a report. Since then I've told myself he's probably dead, because the alternative — that he's alive and hasn't come home — is worse.The car slowed as we hit the outskirts of Rotterdam, gravel crunching under the tires outside an old warehouse. A man in a blue collared shirt stood waiting to lead us in. My men went first, hands drifting to the guns at their waists in that slow, practiced way that meant they were ready before I even gave the word.Inside, a man rose to meet me, smirking like we were old friends."Rafael. What brings you here — please, sit.""There's information on my brother. Or so I was told.""Your brother isn't here.""Don't waste my time." I let my fingers rest against the arm of the chair, calm, patient — the kind of patient that should have terrified him more than shouting would have.He swallowed hard. "I've told you, I don't know anything.""No." A faint smile pulled at my mouth. "You've given me nothing useful. Make this trip worth it, or don't.""I swear I know nothing.""You know exactly where he is. You've just made your choice not to say it."I lifted two fingers, barely a gesture. My men understood it before he did. The room went loud — gunfire, his men falling before they'd even fully drawn their weapons. I stood, straightened my jacket, and looked down at what was left of his composure."I asked you for honesty," I said quietly. "You gave me excuses."The color drained from his face in real time."Fine — Cristiano was last spotted leaving for Mexico. That's all I know.""Mexico?""Yes. Mexico." His voice shook on the word like it might save him."Okay." I smiled, because it cost me nothing to be kind to a dead man. "I meant no harm, of course."I turned to leave. Enzo fell into step beside me before we'd even reached the car."Where to, boss?""Home. I need more information — reach out to the company's investigator."We drove off in silence, and somewhere past the warehouse gates, one thought settled into me like a verdict I'd already passed.If Cristiano is really dead, I am going to make sure everyone who touched him dies slower than he did.