Guns and Roses

Bianca

How do you know you are living the day that will shift the very earth under your feet? That a single flimsy, seemingly unimportant decision will be the one that uproots your very being, turns your world upside down?

On the night that death came for me, I went outside because I wanted to stuff my face with too-sweet pastries, and daydream my way through streets that never slept. I had no idea my life was about to change forever.

Florence pulsed with life even after midnight, tourists drinking in the view like the cheap house wine the cafes pushed on them. I clutched the pastry box tighter, muttering a curse as I weaved through the damp alleyway behind Via del Moro. The front of the bakery had closed half an hour ago, but Pietro had let me in through the back. Perks of working next door.

“Idiot,” I hissed to myself. I should’ve gone straight home.

But the nice old man had offered me extra cannoli. What was I supposed to do, say no?

Now the rain was coming, fat drops teasing the cobblestones, and the streetlights barely flickered to life. I picked up my pace. My flat was only six blocks away. Maybe if I cut across—

The voices came first, breaking the silence like splinters.

They were low and unfamiliar, not Italian, not the casual bark of Florentine dialect. It sounded much harder; throaty, clipped, precise in a way that made me slow my steps and hold my breath. I ducked instinctively into the alcove between a locksmith’s and a defunct flower shop, pressing my back to the wall.

From the mouth of the alley ahead, a figure moved into view, then another, dragging a third man between them. The one being pulled wasn’t walking; his heels scraped across the stone, leaving smears of gore that I didn’t want to look at. His hands twitched weakly, but he didn’t speak.

The man leading stepped forward, calm, poised, and absolutely in control. His black coat swept behind him, and in his gloved hand, I saw something metallic catch the alley light. He said something I couldn’t understand, short, final, and then he raised the blade.

What happened next didn’t take more than two seconds, but it carved itself into my mind with the precision of a blade to flesh. I will never forget it till the day I die.

The knife came down with brutal speed, clean and deliberate. The sound it made was soft and wet, not like the screams you’d expect from movies, but more like meat hitting a countertop. Then the body slumped sideways, and the head—

It rolled. Right toward me.

Try as I might, I couldn’t scream, not at first. My hand flew to my mouth, voice caught suddenly in my throat, my pulse jackhammering in my ears, and still I stood there frozen as ice, trying to convince myself it wasn’t real.

But it was, and they’d seen me.

The leader turned his head slowly, his eyes narrowing, his mouth curling into something cold.

“Bring her,” he said in that same foreign accent, and that was all it took.

A higher power must have given me strength that day because I ran, my heels nearly touching the back of my head, blood rushing in my ears as my heart threatened to leap out of my chest.

The box dropped from my hands and burst open on the ground, cannoli and wrapping paper scattered in the trail of my panic. A stray cat hissed as I turned over the garbage can it was resting on, yowling as it came crashing to the ground. I turned left, then right, not thinking, only moving, the pounding of my feet drowned by the louder, faster stomps behind me. They were gaining. I could hear one of them yelling, maybe giving directions, maybe calling for backup, but I didn’t stop long enough to find out.

The streets blurred past, stone and shadow and the smell of diesel from a passing Vespa. I knew these roads, had walked them a hundred times before, but tonight they stretched like a labyrinth, offering no end, no safety, no one who looked away from their business long enough to help. My legs started to burn. My breath came in ragged pulls.

I reached the mouth of another alley and slammed into someone solid.

His hands caught me before I could fall, steady and strong, and the instant our eyes met, something in me stalled.

He wasn’t one of them.

If anything, he looked like he might be worse.

His face was too clean for a street fight except for a crooked nose, like it had been broken but had long since healed, his jaw set like stone, his black coat tailored to a man who didn’t run from anything. I opened my mouth to speak, but he moved first, pushing me behind him with one arm while the other reached inside his coat.

The men chasing me came into view seconds later, skidding to a stop at the other end of the alley. Their momentum stalled the moment they saw him. They didn’t speak, didn’t even blink. For a beat, no one moved.

Then they turned and walked away.

The stranger waited until their footsteps disappeared before turning back to me. His expression didn’t soften.

“What the hell are you doing out here? You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Now you’ve seen something you were never supposed to see. That makes yet another problem I’ll have to fix, another dumpster fire I have to put out.”

I shook my head, my voice catching as I tried to explain, but he was already guiding me toward a black car parked half on the sidewalk. I should’ve resisted. I should’ve screamed, fought him, backed away. I didn’t. I let him open the door and push me inside, the smell of leather and cologne enveloping me as the engine hummed to life.

We drove for several minutes in silence. The city blurred past in streaks of light and rain.

“You’re not going to kill me?” I asked finally. A million questions ran through my mind, but that was the only one I could manage to get out.

He didn’t answer right away, but when he did, his voice was even yet there was annoyance in the set of his jaw.

“Do you think I would’ve bothered saving you if I was? If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have caught you. I’d have let them finish the job.”

“But- But- That doesn’t mean I’m safe, right? What if they come after me again?”

He turned to glance at me then, giving me one cold, unreadable look.

“It doesn't, and they can.”

I turned to him, heart pounding again. “Who are you?”

He kept his eyes on the road.

“Matteo.”

“No last name?”

He gave a small, humorless smile. “If you knew it, you’d sleep even worse than you will tonight.”

I swallowed.

“Why did they leave when they saw you?”

“Because they know who I am, and what I'm capable of.”

My hands curled into fists in my lap, fingers digging into my palms, drawing blood. I couldn’t catch my breath. “I need to go home.”

“It doesn’t matter what you need.” He said it simply, as if stating a fact. “You witnessed an execution. You were seen. That means they will come for you. You take one step out of this car without my protection, and you’ll disappear before morning.”

I stared at him, desperately searching his profile for a crack in the mask, some sign that he was lying or exaggerating.

He wasn’t.

“That doesn't make any sense. Why are you helping me then, if its such a risk?”

“Helping you?” he asked. “I’m handling you. The least you could do is keep quiet and let me do it in peace.”

“Hold on a second. Thank you for getting to me when you did, but you can’t just take me somewhere and decide my life for me.”

His gaze never wavered as his eyes burned deep into mine. “Cara Mia. It's too late, I already have.”

His hands stayed loose on the wheel, but there was something final in his voice that made me fall silent, my head buzzing with all the words I couldn’t speak. The streets began to change as we left the city center, the buildings farther apart, the stone replaced with pale gravel. A wrought-iron gate opened for us without stopping, and the car crept up a long, winding drive that ended in front of a villa large enough to house five families. It was beautiful, shadowed, and completely silent.

The moment we entered, the air shifted. The marble floor was cold under my feet, the lighting low, the hallway wide enough to echo. He didn’t speak again until we stopped in front of a dark wooden door.

“You sleep here. There are clothes in the wardrobe. You will stay inside, and you will follow the rules I give you. No one else’s, mine. Capisce?”

“What happens if I don’t?” I asked, voice tight.

He turned the handle and opened the door without looking at me.

“You want to risk a lack of protection from one of the biggest mafia families in Italy so you can skip back home and do what? Are you suicidal?”

The room was large, warm, and too quiet. I walked in slowly, expecting to hear the door close behind me, but it didn’t.

I turned back toward him.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Patience. I haven’t quite decided yet.”

Then the door clicked shut, ominous silence filling the space around me. All I did was go outside for some food. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

Bianca

The bed was too soft, the silence too thick. I lay there for what felt like hours, eyes locked on the ceiling fan that turned slowly above me, its blades barely stirring the air.

I hadn’t changed clothes, I hadn’t touched the wardrobe, I didn’t trust any of it. Some part of me was still waiting to wake up on my couch in San Lorenzo with the hum of city traffic outside my window and a box of cold pastries on the counter.

But that world was gone.

I’d seen a man die, I’d seen his head roll across a blood-slicked alley, and now I was locked in a villa owned by a man who made murderers vanish with a look.

I sat up slowly, the edges of the blanket dragging against my legs. The room was warm and dim, and somewhere in the distance I heard low voices, too far away to make out the words.

I didn’t want to care, but the sound tugged at me.

I needed to know where I was, what this place was, and what Matteo planned to do wit