Episode8
564 Words
It started with a silence that felt wrong.
The kind of stillness that came before everything shattered.
Alessia sat curled in a wool blanket, tracing the rim of her teacup while Lorenzo cleaned his gun at the table. The fire crackled softly. The air was heavy, but still.
Too still.
Then—
Bang.
The window shattered in a spray of glass. A smoke grenade rolled across the floor, hissing like a viper.
Lorenzo’s instincts kicked in fast — gun in hand, eyes scanning.
“Down!” he roared, yanking Alessia to the ground just as the back door blew open.
Figures swarmed inside, black-clad, faceless.
No words. Just bullets.
Lorenzo moved like a shadow.
Three shots. Three bodies dropped.
But they kept coming.
Alessia scrambled behind the couch, coughing, eyes burning from the gas.
Lorenzo was losing ground. For every one he took down, another crept in from behind.
She watched it happen — the moment one of them raised a knife, rushing him from the side.
“LORENZO!” she screamed.
Instinct took over.
She grabbed his discarded knife, lunged forward — and plunged it into the man’s side.
Blood. A scream.
The man collapsed.
Lorenzo stared at her, stunned.
“You—” he began.
“No time!” she barked. “Move!”
Five minutes later.
Silence.
Bodies littered the floor. Smoke curled around the ceiling like a devil’s crown.
Lorenzo’s arm bled. Alessia’s hands shook.
And Dano finally arrived, breathless. “What the hell happened here?!”
“They found us,” Lorenzo growled. “Romano soldiers. Not low-level. Trained.”
He looked at Alessia, her red-stained hands, her wide eyes.
“You okay?”
She nodded slowly. “I killed someone.”
“You saved me.”
She said nothing.
But something had shifted between them. She’d crossed a line — and there was no going back.
Later that night…
Lorenzo stood at the sink, cleaning his wound.
Alessia hovered near the door. “You think they tracked me?”
He didn’t answer.
She stepped closer. “Say it.”
He turned, eyes dark. “It’s possible. You have the crest. You’re a Romano.”
Her face twisted. “You think I set this up?”
He didn’t say no.
She slapped him. “I saved your life!”
“And I’m grateful,” he said coldly. “But trust is a luxury in this world.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Then what the hell are we doing, Lorenzo?”
His voice was flat. “We’re surviving.”
Across the city…
In a luxury suite in downtown Milan, a man stood in front of a wall of screens.
Each showed surveillance footage. Each captured the safehouse raid. The woman. The man.
“She survived,” the man said, sipping wine. “Interesting.”
His assistant spoke quietly. “Do we proceed with phase two?”
The man smiled.
“Yes. Bring the sister in.”
Back at the safehouse…
Alessia stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, the image of the man she stabbed playing on repeat in her head.
She hadn’t even flinched.
Was she becoming like them?
Lorenzo knocked once. “We leave at dawn.”
She didn’t answer.
As he walked away, he murmured, “You’re not the enemy, Alessia.”
It sounded like an apology.
But the damage had already been done.
- Writer
