The three men returned to Giovanni's office, still thinking about that innocent kid they had hired, about their own stories, about how and why young people were untouchable to them.
The organization Giovanni now led had taken a very different form under previous management. It was a classic pyramid structure, where power concentrated at the top and flowed downward in a rigid and ruthless hierarchy.
Giovanni's parents had been part of that elite. His father, known in criminal circles as "The Boogeyman," was one of the organization's most feared assassins. His reputation was such that mothers whispered his name to scare children who wouldn't behave. But behind that mask of terror, he had met the woman who would change his life.
His mother was Dr. Isabella Blackwood-Santorino, a brilliant scientist and forensic medicine expert who had found her own way to eliminate targets: undetectable poisons, toxins that simulated natural death, methods so sophisticated they never left a trace. She was an assassin as lethal as she was elegant. They both met during a job and were smitten with each other from then on.
Giovanni was born two years after they met, in a mansion that had been the family home for decades. His mother and father, despite their profession, had always wanted him to be different. To have options that she and her husband never had.
And for almost all of his childhood, he was. Giovanni grew up as a relatively normal child by the standards of a wealthy criminal family. He had private tutors, piano lessons, and a personal library that his mother filled with medical and science books. But he could also be like any child—he had friends and played with toys and video games, had birthdays and the freedoms that a child of that age had.
When Giovanni was eight, his parents didn't want him to be alone and yearned for a large family. At nine years old, his parents had another son: Joseph. The contrast between the brothers was notable from birth. While Giovanni was an exact copy of his father—brown hair, piercing blue eyes, strong build—Joseph looked completely like his mother. Bright green eyes, golden blonde hair, and that smile that reflected the pure love that had been characteristic of Isabella before life hardened her.
Giovanni vividly remembered how he had grown up alongside his younger brother. How they played together, how when Joseph had nightmares he would look for him, when he got hurt Giovanni would carry him and take him to their mother, or even when she wasn't there—which was rare—he would take care of healing him himself. He loved him with an intensity that only older brothers can understand. Their mother taught them about medicine and anatomy, turning lessons into fascinating games. Their father taught them about weapons and combat, but always with the warning that it was only for self-defense.
Neither parent ever forced them to follow in their footsteps. In fact, Isabella had insisted they have different lives.
Giovanni had decided to study medicine. He had all the resources to go to any university in the world, and had begun planning his future since late high school. He was in his final months of prep school when everything collapsed.
His father had been sent on a mission that he suspected was a trap. His instinct had been correct. The organization had begun to distrust the Santorino family, considering them too independent, too powerful. But Isabella and her husband had prepared a plan for that contingency.
If something happened to her husband, Isabella would activate a poisonous gas she had discretely installed in the homes of all the organization's important families, including that of the boss at the time.
The plan was executed exactly as they had foreseen. The father was murdered and his body was hung in front of the family home as a message. When the assassins came to confirm the job, Isabella received them at the door with a serene smile.
"The Boogeyman sends his regards," she had said before activating the device.
But in the process, the family home became a war zone. The hitmen who had come to assassinate the family began shooting when they realized what Isabella had done.
Giovanni, seventeen years old, watched his mother fall with multiple bullet wounds, protecting Joseph's small body with her own. His eight-year-old brother died instantly from a bullet graze to the neck. His mother lasted long enough to look into his eyes one last time.
"Take care of what remains," she whispered before dying.
Giovanni hid while bullets flew, waiting for the right moment. When the shooting stopped, he headed to his father's secret armory. He chose one of the many weapons, came out, and methodically eliminated each of the remaining attackers.
At seventeen years old, Giovanni Santorino had become the new head of a devastated criminal organization.
Many families that had survived Isabella's gas chose to stay and support him, including the Blackwoods, his mother's family. They backed him in power and helped him bury his family in the ancestral Blackwood cemetery—which is why he had a connection with Jonathan as cousins.
Giovanni took charge of completely restructuring the organization. Instead of the rigid pyramid of the past, he opted for a circular form where each section specialized in something specific: forensic medicine, drug distribution, contract killing, and other activities. He created a system of subcircles within subcircles, where everyone worked together instead of competing for power.
But the changes brought enemies. Many tried to assassinate him during the following three years, seeing the young boss as a threat to their own interests.
At twenty, he met Santos.
Santos had been a gang kid who had lost everything that mattered to him. His mother was a drug addict and his father was an alcoholic who beat them. The only person he had was his younger brother, David. Unfortunately, at fourteen, he had been killed for refusing to join a rival gang. It was exactly the type of senseless violence that characterized the city's most dangerous streets, and Santos became a killer in the streets, hunting down each member of the gang involved.
Giovanni had run into Santos when he was torturing one of his brother's killers in an abandoned warehouse. Instead of interrupting, Giovanni waited for Santos to finish his work.
When he finally introduced himself and offered work, they went to a bar where both told their stories. Santos accepted with one condition: that he be given complete freedom as an assassin, but never against innocent people.
Giovanni accepted, but established an unbreakable rule: never kill good people or innocent young people.
Santos became his personal bodyguard and one of his most trusted men.
Marcus had arrived a year after Santos, but under much more complicated circumstances. He had tried to poison Giovanni under orders from a rival organization that had threatened to kill his younger son Alex.
Marcus's son was nineteen years old, studying engineering, and had no idea about his father's work. When they kidnapped him to force Marcus to act against Giovanni, he had done exactly what any father would do: obey.
But Giovanni had discovered the betrayal before the poison took effect. Instead of killing Marcus, he had sent his best men to rescue the son.
They arrived too late. The kid had been tortured for days and died in a way that Marcus had never allowed himself to remember completely.
When Giovanni offered him work after the funeral, Marcus accepted with only one condition: he would never again participate in anything that involved hurting innocent young people.
Giovanni not only accepted, but made that condition a rule for the entire organization.
Now, sitting in the office after having met Alleinad, the three men understood perfectly why they had reacted so strongly to the kid's story.
Giovanni saw in Alleinad the memory of his beautiful younger brother Joseph: young, brilliant, and afraid. Santos saw the younger brother he hadn't been able to protect. Marcus saw the son he had lost for not being able to protect him from a criminal world that devoured the innocent.
None of them said it aloud, but they all knew that Alleinad Gilbert had awakened in them the same protective need that had defined their moral rules for years. This kid wouldn't be another victim of a system that destroys young people. Not if they could help it.
Giovanni finally broke the silence:
"That kid is going to have more protection than he's ever had in his life. And everyone who participated in selling him is going to pay dearly for what they did."
It was both a promise and a declaration of war. One that would avenge a young man who was barely living his life, who had lost his innocence.