Chapter 14 - The Word That Broke the WorldBefore Rossi could pull the trigger, the shadows behind him exploded.
A dark figure materialized out of the hallway like an avenging angel of death. Victor Castellano didn't use a gun. He moved with the terrifying speed of a apex predator, his hands closing around Rossi’s throat from behind with bone-crushing force.
There was a sickening crack.
Rossi didn't even have time to fire. His eyes rolled back into his head, his pistol clattering harmlessly against the Persian rug, and his limp body hit the floor like a sack of wet cement.
Victor stood over him, breathing heavily, his black suit jacket torn at the shoulder, blood smeared across his right knuckle. He didn't look like a crime boss. He looked like a man who had walked through the fires of hell to protect the last remaining piece of his soul.
He dropped to his knees, his eyes frantically scanning the room until they landed on Iris.
"Are you hurt?" Victor’s voice was ragged, raw, stripped of all its polished armor.
"I'm fine," Iris breathed, her knees trembling beneath her.
Slowly, Victor shifted his gaze down to the corner of the wardrobe.
Leo was still crouched there, staring at the lifeless body on the floor, then up at his father’s bloodied hands, and finally at Iris, whose bruised arm was shielding his small body from the carnage.
The entire room went dead silent. Outside, the gunfire had stopped—Croft and the remaining security detail had neutralized the Moretti advance at the grand staircase.
Inside the nursery, the air grew so thick with tension that it felt impossible to draw a breath.
Leo’s small chest heaved. His lips parted. For eight months, the whole world had tried to force him to speak—doctors with flashing lights, therapists with colored blocks, mobsters with guns, and a father half-mad with grief.
He looked up at Iris. He saw the pink bracelet slipping out of her pocket. He saw the bruise on her jaw. He saw the exact same shadow that had lived in his own heart since the morning his mother collapsed over the kitchen toaster.
Leo’s jaw trembled. His vocal cords, locked away in a fortress of trauma for 240 days, suddenly vibrated.
A single word—rough, unused, but impossibly loud—tore through the quiet of the Castellano mansion:
"...Stay."
The word hung in the air like a lightning strike.
Victor froze as if he had been shot. He stared at his son, his mouth open, tears—hot, unbidden, and terrifyingly real—finally breaking over his eyelashes and cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
May you like
Leo reached out a tiny, shaking hand, not for his stuffed elephant, not for his father, but straight toward Iris’s bruised fingers.
"...Please... stay."
