Good. Feel what the sting of betrayal is like.
His recovery is too quick, but I’m ready. I launch a barrage of short, hard punches aimed at his torso—liver, ribs, solar plexus. The kind of shots that fold a man regardless of his pain tolerance.
But Jino turns his hip, creating space. His blocks are tight, practiced. The counter elbow across my jaw comes out of nowhere.
Crack.
My head snaps sideways. Teeth click together. Copper floods my mouth.
He just hit me in the face.My fucking face.
The fight spills across the control room. The bank of monitors showing the rear of the house flicker as we crash into them. Glass cracks. An alarm beeps pathetically.
I grab Jino by the throat, driving him backward until his spine connects with the brick column running through the center of the room. His windpipe compresses under my thumbs.
He twists violently, fabric tearing as his shirt comes away in my hands. A feint, a hook, and suddenly my ankle is swept out from under me. The floor rises up to meet us both.
We roll across the floor. Blood smears between us. Fists hammer into flesh—ribs, face, kidneys. Whatever target presents itself. This isn't the controlled violence of business. This is primal. Personal.
I taste more blood. Mine or his, I can't tell.
We struggle to our feet, neither willing to stay down. My punches grow wilder, fueled by thirty-one years of mafia blood and the image of his hands on what's mine. Pure savage instinct.
Jino is different. Technical. Each movement measured even in chaos. He redirects my momentum, turning my strength against me with joint locks and choke attempts.
I rip free each time, refusing to submit. Muscle over method. Rage over technique.
I drive him backward across the room. His head connects with the heavy oak door leading to the dungeon stairs. Wood splinters around his skull. His eyes lose focus for half a second.
Not enough. His knee drives straight into my gut.
Air abandons my lungs. I double over, trying to remember how to breathe.
We stagger apart, circling each other in tight arcs. Both breathing hard. Blood trickling from split brows, busted lips. Our eyes lock with the recognition of decades. I know the rhythm of his strikes, the angles of his feints. He knows the weight behind every one of my tells.
As children, we spent years circling each other on the mats, drilling the same patterns until they stitched themselves into muscle memory. Same teacher. Same flow. Same devotion to the routine that made us brothers in combat before it made us rivals.
Now we're trying to destroy each other.
And neither of us is going down.
Bodies wrecked. Knuckles torn. The initial explosion of rage burns out, leaving only the coals of something deeper. We stand locked in standoff, both refusing to yield.
"You're a traitor." The words tear from my throat, rough and raw. My breath comes in harsh pants. Blood slides warm down my chin, drips onto my chest. "You touched what's mine." I spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor. "With your fucking bare hands. You bathed her. Youkissedher."
Each accusation lands like another blow. Jino wipes blood from his nose with the back of his hand. His lip is split at the corner, swelling already.
"You abandoned her," he throws back, chest heaving. "You left her alone after eleven hours of conditioning. Aftercare isn't a choice, Giovanni. It's the rule. That makes you unfit to collar her. You're too proud to meet her needs."
My veins thrum with fresh rage. I jerk upright, fists clenching. "You're finished." My voice drops to something lethal. "Fired. Done. Get the fuck out of my house."
Jino spits blood, drags the back of his hand across his mouth. The grin he gives me is half-mockery, half-memory. “There are rules, Giovanni. And they matter. At least to me. You signed our contract. And your pride isn’t enough to zero it out. You can't just fire me. Maybe you don't take this shit seriously, but I do. And if you try and cut me out—if you put your own ego over her well-being—then I'll take your motherfucking ass to court and make you pay—both literally and socially. I will splash your fucking name all over the news. And overnight, you will be 'that Bavga boy.' The one who hurts women. The one who can't control himself."
Did he just threaten me? "Did you just threaten me?"
Jino shrugs, still gasping for breath. "Take it any way you want, cousin. But you're not gonna break this girl through ignorance. You do it properly, or you don't do it at all."
For a moment, the words don't make sense. Then… clarity. "So all this blood is because you don’t like my fucking technique?”