Page 85 of Ruthless Arrangement

Lea retrieves the phone from my jacket pocket, now sticky with dried blood. She navigates to contacts with remarkable composure, considering the circumstances. The call connects as she turns on the speaker.

“Nephew?” Alessandro’s voice, precise and cultured as always.

“It’s Lea Song,” she answers, her voice steady despite everything she’s witnessed tonight. “Nico’s hurt. Marco’s dead. Moretti’s men hit the club.”

A beat of silence follows as Alessandro processes the catastrophic implications of those three short sentences. “How bad?” he finally asks, voice shifting to the cold efficiency I recognize.

Lea looks at me, assessing visible injuries. “Bullet graze on his side, deep cut on his shoulder, maybe broken ribs. He’s losing blood.”

“Can he move?” Alessandro directs the question to her.

I take the phone from her hand, unwilling to be discussed as if absent. “I can move,” I assert, though the claim feels increasingly tenuous as shock and blood loss take their toll.

Alessandro doesn’t waste time questioning my assessment. “I’m sending a team. Five minutes. Get to the east service entrance if you can. If not, stay put and they’ll extract you.”

Five minutes. The timeframe is both reassuringly brief and dauntingly distant. We need to move now, while Moretti’s men are still searching other areas of the building. The entrance is two hundred meters from our current position, a distance that would normally be trivial but now looms as a significant challenge.

I force myself to stand, using the back of the chair for support as the room tilts alarmingly. Pain radiates from my ribs in waves that threaten to buckle my knees.

“I need your help,” I admit to Lea. The admission costs nearly as much as the physical agony. Vulnerability has never come easily.

She steps forward without hesitation, sliding her arm around my waist, positioning herself to take my weight while avoiding the worst of my injuries. Her strength surprises me and not just her physical strength, but the steadiness of purpose after everything she’s witnessed tonight.

We move together toward the exit, each step a negotiation between necessity and physical limitation. I focus on controlling my breathing, minimizing the stabbing pain from my ribs while maintaining consciousness. One step. Another. The door. The corridor beyond.

Our progress is painfully slow. Every few meters, I’m forced to pause, leaning against the wall as dizziness threatens to overwhelm me. Lea remains steadfast, her body pressed against mine in necessary support, her expression grimly determined.

We pass the main corridor where the initial confrontation occurred. Marco’s body lies facedown on the concrete, surrounded by a pool of blood. I force myself to look, to bear witness to the consequence of my miscalculation, to burn this image into memory as fuel for what must follow.

Moretti has always been ambitious, ruthless in pursuit of territory and power. But this act…executing Marco, and attempting to eliminate me in my own club, crosses a threshold from which there is no return. The debt incurred tonight will be paid in full, with compound interest. Moretti has signed his own death warrant; he simply doesn’t know it yet.

We continue our painful progress toward the east service entrance. Twice we freeze at sounds of movement nearby, pressing into shadows until the threat passes. Lea adapts to these necessities without instruction, her body language mirroring mine with surprising intuition.

Finally, the service entrance comes into view, a utilitarian steel door illuminated by a single emergency light. I check my watch. Four minutes and thirty seconds since Alessandro’s call. His team should be approaching now.

As if summoned by the thought, the door opens. Four figures enter in tactical formation. It’s Alessandro’s personal security detail, professionals with military backgrounds and absolute loyalty. Their weapons sweep the corridor efficiently, identifying us without needing verbal confirmation.

The team leader, Danny, former special forces, approaches with contained urgency. “Secure for transport,” he says, gesturing to his men. Two of them move to flank us, providing support while the others maintain perimeter security.

“Marco,” I manage, gesturing back toward the corridor. “Retrieve him.”

Danny nods once. “Secondary team is already tasked. Clean extraction, full protocol.”

The assurance steadies something in me. Marco will receive appropriate handling. His body retrieved, and evidence eliminated. Small comfort, but necessary.

They guide us toward an armored SUV waiting just outside, engine running, windows tinted to opacity. The transition from the building to the vehicle passes in a blur of coordinated movement and professional efficiency. Lea remains at my side throughout, her presence a constant in the shifting chaos.

As we pull away from Purgatorio, I turn to watch through the rear window. The building recedes. My club, the center of my operations, the physical manifestation of everything I’ve built over the past decade. Now compromised. Violated. Stained with Marco’s blood.

In the SUV’s climate-controlled interior, the immediate danger receding, adrenaline begins its inevitable decline. Pain floods my awareness with renewed intensity. Each breath brings a stabbing reminder of broken ribs. Blood continues seeping through makeshift bandages applied by Danny’s team.

Lea sits beside me, her hands still stained with dried blood, mine and the man she killed to save me. The initial shock has faded from her expression, replaced by something harder, more resolute. She’s crossed a line tonight that cannot be uncrossed, transitioned from observer to participant in the violence that defines my world.

“He died because of me,” I say hoarsely. Not to Lea specifically, not to anyone in the vehicle. Simply a truth that demands acknowledgment, a failure I must own before I can address it.

Lea’s hand finds mine in the dim interior of the SUV, her fingers intertwining with mine in a gesture that should feel intrusive but somehow doesn’t. “He died protecting what matters to you,” she corrects, her voice soft but firm. “And so would you.”

I turn to look at her fully, really see her for perhaps the first time. This woman who just killed to preserve my life. Who’s witnessed me at my most vulnerable: wounded, failing, losing. Who should be running from me and my world as fast as possible, yet instead sits here, holding my hand, covered in blood that isn’t hers.

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