The nightmare shattered like glass.
Aquila jerked awake, gasping, his chest heaving as though he'd been running.
Cold sweat plastered his shirt to his skin, made the owl tattoo on his neck feel slick and foreign.
His heart hammered against his ribs with the frantic rhythm of a man who'd just escaped drowning.
"What the hell was that?"
The dream, if it had been a dream was already slipping away like water through cupped hands.
Fragments remained; a man with brown hair and a red coat, electricity crackling around him like a living thing…..Two figures in green cloaks. An explosion... Blood that glittered like gold.
Aquila pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes until he saw stars.
"American movies," he muttered, his voice rough from sleep. "Too many goddamn American movies."
The room was pitch black except for a single ray of afternoon light that filtered through the gap in the heavy curtains, illuminating a small rectangle of stained carpet.
The light caught the dust motes floating in the air, made them look like tiny stars in the cosmos.
For a moment; a single, blessed moment, Aquila couldn't remember where he was.
Then it came crashing down.
Giorno.
The betrayal.
The hunt.
The previous week replayed in his mind with the unwanted clarity of a film reel stuck on repeat.
His father, Fabio Totti; Capo of the Province of Latina, bearer of that title for fifteen years, a man who'd built an empire on blood and silence had finally named his successor.
Aquila. The eldest son. The logical and obvious choice.
His stepbrother had taken it as a declaration of war. Giorno's goal in life was to have it all.
Giorno Totti was younger by three years, leaner, prettier, and infinitely more ambitious.
He'd always been their father's favorite in the ways that mattered; charming at dinner parties, ruthless in negotiations, capable of smiling while planning your funeral.
He'd spent the last five years quietly building alliances, whispering poison in the right ears, positioning himself as the future.
When Fabio had chosen Aquila anyway; chosen the 'barbaric son of a whore', as Giorno so often called him, his stepbrother had moved with surgical precision.
Within forty-eight hours, Giorno had swayed the majority of their father's allies.
Within seventy-two, he'd secured the support of three other Capos in the Lazio mafia.
Within a week, Aquila was a dead man walking, protected only by the technicality that Giorno couldn't officially claim the title of Capo while the rightful heir still drew breath.
So here he was. Hiding in a shithole motel on the outskirts of Latina, in a building his father had brought him to once, years ago, for reasons Aquila had spent most of his adult life trying to forget.
He sat up slowly, the cheap mattress groaning beneath him.
His left ear felt heavy with the weight of the golden star earring; a gift from his mother before she'd died, back when he'd still believed in things like gifts and mothers and futures that didn't end in shallow graves.
The watch on his wrist read 3:47 PM.
He'd slept through most of the day, his body finally surrendering to exhaustion after three nights of running and hiding from his stepbrother.
This room.
He knew this room. It held dark memories for him.
He was nine years old.
The room had been darker then, or maybe that was just how memory painted it.
A man knelt on the floor in front of him, hands bound behind his back with wire that had already cut deep enough to paint his wrists red.
His face was a ruin; one eye swollen shut, nose clearly broken, lips split in three places.
Blood dripped from his chin in a steady rhythm.
Drip… drip…drip.
Six men stood around the room like statues.
Watching. Judging. Waiting.
Fabio stood behind his son, one massive hand resting on Aquila's shoulder.
The weight of it felt like destiny pressing down, almost inevitable as gravity.
"Aquila." His father's voice was warm, almost gentle. He'd always been gentle when teaching lessons. "Do you know who this man is?"
Aquila shook his head.
"He's a police informant. He's been feeding information to the carabinieri for six months. Because of him, we lost two shipments and four good men." Fabio squeezed his son's shoulder. "He's a threat to our family's peace."
The man began to sob. "Please. Please, I had no choice. They knew my daughter, they said they would…."
"Everyone has no choice," Fabio said quietly, cutting the man.
He pressed something cold and heavy into Aquila's hands.
A crowbar.
The metal was already warm from his father's grip.
"Show me you understand, son. Show me you're a Totti."
Aquila looked at the crowbar. At the man. At the six pairs of eyes watching him, measuring him, deciding whether he was worthy of the name he carried.
The man was still begging. "A second chance. Just one more chance. I have kids to feed, I have…."
"This is a pain in my arse," Aquila heard himself say. His voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. Someone older. Someone dead inside.
He raised the crowbar.
The first strike caught the man on the temple. The sound was wet, heavy. The man's begging became a choked gurgle.
The second strike was easier.
*The third was casual.
By the fourth, the man had stopped twitching.
Aquila stepped back, his hands slick with blood that looked black in the bad light. He dropped the crowbar. It clattered against the concrete floor, the sound echoing like bells.
The six men looked at him with something between horror and respect.
Fabio smiled. He pulled Aquila close, one arm around his shoulders, and leaned down until their eyes were level. His breath smelled of espresso and expensive cigars.
"Remember this, Aquila. The Tottis always eradicate whatever threatens our peace. Always. This is who we are."
Aquila nodded.
Inside, where his father couldn't see, where the six men couldn't judge, a nine-year-old boy thought; This is disgusting. This family is disgusting. And I am becoming disgusting too.
*******
The door to his room exploded inward.
Aquila's hand went automatically to his waistband, fingers closing around the grip of the Beretta tucked there, but he didn't draw. Not yet.
Lorenzo di Murano burst through the doorway, panting like he'd run a marathon.
His dark hair; usually tied back neat and professional hung loose around his face. His lean frame was wound tight with panic.
"Aquila….."
Then Aquila heard it. The unmistakable music of gunfire. Shouts. The screech of tires on asphalt.
"Giorno found us!" Lorenzo's voice cracked on the words. "We need to move, now!"
Aquila was already on his feet, adrenaline burning away the last cobwebs of sleep and nightmare.
"How?" He grabbed Lorenzo by the shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "How the fuck did he find us? Only you, me, some of the boys and my father knew about this place!"
Lorenzo's face twisted. "Tony's girlfriend…."
"That cazzo…." Aquila spat in anger as he released Lorenzo and rushed to the window, yanking the heavy curtains aside.
The afternoon sunlight was blinding after so long in darkness.
He squinted, counting vehicles. Fifteen black SUVs, arranged in a loose perimeter around the motel building.
Men in dark suits moved between them with military precision, taking positions, cutting off escape routes.
A red dot appeared on the window frame, two centimeters from Aquila's head.
He threw himself backward as the sniper round punched through the glass, exactly where his skull had been. The bullet buried itself in the opposite wall with a flat crack.
"Lousy shot," Aquila smiled, his heart racing so fast it felt like a single sustained note.
"Tony's girlfriend ratted us out," Lorenzo finished, his voice hollow. "She called Giorno an hour ago. Told him everything."
"I knew Tony was a fucking idiot." Aquila grabbed his brown coat from where it lay crumpled on the mattress, shrugging it on over his black shirt. "But I didn't think he was that much of an idiot."
More gunfire erupted, closer now. Voices shouted in Italian, the words lost in the chaos but the meaning clear: Find him. Kill him.
"Back entrance," Lorenzo said, already moving toward the door. "If we can make it to the alley…."
"Lead the way."
They burst into the hallway, Lorenzo in front, Aquila two steps behind.
The motel's interior was a maze of identical doors and stained carpet that smelled of cigarettes and failure. Somewhere below, glass shattered. Someone was screaming.
Lorenzo reached the stairwell.
The bullet caught him in the back of the head.
For a fraction of a second; less than a heartbeat, Lorenzo di Murano remained standing.
His body hadn't yet received the message that it was dead.
Blood and brain matter sprayed forward in a fine mist, painting the stairwell door red. Then he collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
Aquila didn't think. Thinking would get him killed.
He dove sideways as automatic gunfire chewed through the hallway where he'd been standing, bullets punching through cheap drywall like it was paper.
He crashed through the nearest door; it was unlocked. He thanked every saint his dead mother had ever prayed to and rolled, coming up in a crouch.
A window.
Aquila looked at the window. Looked at the door, where shadows moved in the hallway and voices called out in clipped tones.
Looked at his hands, still steady despite everything, despite Lorenzo's blood on his coat, despite the dream he couldn't quite remember and the memories he couldn't quite forget.
'The Tottis always eradicate whatever threatens our peace.'
"Yeah," Aquila whispered to the ghost of his father, to the boy with the crowbar, to the man with the glittering golden blood from a dream that wasn't a dream. "And what happens when we're the threat to our own peace, old man?"