The gunshot cracked through the night, the recoil ripping up Noa’s arm, but it wasn’t his own scream that hit his ears first, it was Luca’s. The raw, broken sound of betrayal as the bullet slammed home. Noa’s hands shook around the gun, his vision swimming, his heart collapsing in on itself. The shot had gone wide not into his mother’s skull, not into Lorenzo’s smirking face but straight into the guard standing behind Luca.

Luca’s chair toppled with the force of the kill, his body ...