Page 119 of Mason

Bright lights, clean floors, the constant buzz of machines pretending to be alive—it’s all window dressing. Scratch the surface and you’ll find the truth: this is a place where people come in whole and leave in pieces… if they leave at all.

I’ve walked these halls more times than I care to count. Blood on my knuckles. Someone else’s or mine—it never mattered. The ache in my gut was always the same. Familiar. Like an old war buddy you never wanted to see again.

But this? This feels different. It’s not just another bullet wound or another bad decision carved into someone's flesh. This is the kind of wait that crawls up your spine and whispers that maybe—just maybe—you won’t be walking out with the person you came in with.

The worst I ever saw? That was Sophia.

Maxine’s twin.

Sophia came in on a stretcher, unconscious, barely breathing, skin pale and slick with sweat. She’d been pumped full of every kind of poison you could imagine—whatever herkidnappers could get their filthy hands on. A cocktail mixed by monsters. There was nothing we could do but watch the machines try to keep her tethered to the earth.

They failed.

She flatlined in front of us.

I remember the sound of it. That flat, screaming note that stole the air from the room. We lost her that day—lost her to the same hell Maxine had been dragged into. A hell we couldn’t reach.

Only Maxine didn’t die.

No, Maxine disappeared.

She vanished. Taken, sold, vanished into a world none of us were equipped to navigate. A year passed. A full goddamn year. And while the rest of the world kept turning, we scoured the shadows, pulled every string, shook every tree until something fell loose. We didn’t even know if she was still alive.

She came back… but not in one piece. Not really.

Maxine walks around now with pieces missing. She doesn’t talk about what happened to her in that year, and I don’t ask. I see it in the way she flinches when a man raises his voice, in the way she avoids mirrors, in the haunted look she carries like it’s stitched into her skin. Altin Kadri—if you can call a parasite like that a man—kept her locked in his world. A pretty thing he thought he owned.

When she returned to us, she was broken, bruised, but breathing. And none of that would’ve happened if it weren’t for Rafi Gatti.

Rafi… kid’s got too much heart for this life, but he never let that stop him. He took it all personal. Obsessive. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep. He was going to find her or die trying. Not because she owed him anything, not even because she was family by extension. No, Rafi was trying to prove something—to his brothers, to himself. That he had what it took. That he belonged in the same room as the Gatti kings.

And damn if he didn’t prove it.

He got her back.

But not without a cost.

He nearly lost his soul in the process. Spent so long chasing ghosts that he forgot he was alive. Until Tayana Kamarov came along. That woman didn’t just bring him back—she dragged him out of his own grave and made him feel again. Love has a way of doing that. Cutting through the noise. Making you remember who the hell you are underneath the scars.

Still, as I sit here now—watching Maxine trace invisible paths along the floor, counting tiles like she’s marching to some silent metronome—I realize none of us got out clean.

We’re all a little haunted.

Some of us just hide it better than others.

Everyone is here, all the Gatti brothers and their wives, huddled in their little corners, and I’ve never been more grateful for this family that I’ve forged.

They showed up.

Like they always show up.

And fuck if that doesn’t do something to my chest.

It’s hard to remember that this all started with me crashing into their world, not as a brother or a soldier, but as a desperate man—just a father hunting for his daughters in a city that eats girls alive. The Gattis didn’t owe me anything. But they answered anyway. Took one look at my pain and said we’ll help you carry it. Scar, Brando, Lucky, Rafi—they didn’t flinch. They moved mountains, broke bones, crossed borders.

What I got back wasn’t everything—but it was enough to keep me breathing.

Sophia didn’t make it.

---