Marcus' POV
The bullet hit me before I heard the gun.
I slammed against the brick wall, my legs giving out like someone cut the strings. Cold pavement rushed up to meet me. My hand pressed against my chest, and when I pulled it back, it was black with blood in the dim alley light.
"Nothing personal, Wolf."
Vinnie Romano stepped out of the shadows, gun still smoking in his hand. Vinnie. My friend for twenty years. The man whose daughter I saved from a rival gang. The guy who swore blood loyalty over whiskey just last month.
"Vinnie..." I coughed, tasting copper. "Why?"
He crouched down, close enough that I could see the regret in his eyes. That made it worse somehow. "You built too much, Marcus. Got too powerful. Made the other families nervous." He shook his head. "They offered me your territory. Your people. Everything you built. I got a family to feed."
"I trusted you." The words came out weak, bubbling with blood.
"That was your mistake." Vinnie stood up, brushing off his knees like he'd just tied his shoe, not murdered his best friend. "You always said trust was weakness in our world. Guess you were right."
He turned and walked away. Just like that. Thirty years of my life, bleeding out in a Chicago alley behind a Chinese restaurant that smelled like old grease and garbage.
My vision started going dark at the edges. I pressed harder against the wound, but blood kept pumping between my fingers. Warm. Sticky. Too much of it.
*This can't be how it ends.*
I was Marcus "The Wolf" DeLuca. I built an empire from nothing. Started as a street kid running numbers at thirteen. By twenty, I controlled three city blocks. By thirty, half of Chicago paid me respect. At fifty, I had politicians in my pocket and cops on my payroll.
I didn't steal from working people. Didn't hurt kids. Didn't sell poison to addicts. I protected my neighborhoods. Kept them safe. Made sure families could walk home at night without fear.
Sure, I broke laws. Sure, I hurt people who deserved it. But I built something. Something that mattered.
And Vinnie just took it all because someone offered him a better deal.
My hand slipped in the blood. Getting harder to breathe. Each gasp felt like swallowing broken glass.
I thought about calling for help, but my phone was in my jacket pocket. Might as well be a mile away. My arms felt like they weighed a thousand pounds.
The darkness crept closer. Not just at the edges anymore. Creeping in from all sides like a slow tide.
*No. Not like this.*
I tried to push myself up. Failed. My body wouldn't listen anymore. I was a passenger now, just watching everything shut down.
Thirty years. Thirty years of fighting, clawing, building. For what? To die alone in an alley, betrayed by a friend, with nothing to show for it but blood and regrets?
I had no wife. No kids. No family. I pushed everyone away because I learned early that love was a weakness. Something enemies could use against you. Better to be alone and strong than loved and vulnerable.
Guess I died the way I lived. Alone.
The cold from the pavement seeped into my bones. Or maybe that was death. Hard to tell anymore.
My last thought was stupid. Not profound. Not meaningful. Just... stupid.
*I should've eaten that sandwich at lunch. Shouldn't die on an empty stomach.*
Then everything went black.
---
But death wasn't black.
It was... bright?
I gasped, my lungs filling with air that didn't taste like blood. My eyes flew open.
White ceiling. Not dark sky. White ceiling with gold trim and painted angels looking down at me.
What the hell?
I sat up fast—too fast. The room spun. I grabbed onto something to steady myself and felt soft fabric. Silk. I was in a bed. A massive bed with curtains and more pillows than any human needed.
My hand—
I stared at my hand. Young. Smooth. No scars from the knife fight in '09. No burn from the warehouse fire in '15. No crooked pinkie from that time Tommy slammed it in a car door.
This wasn't my hand.
I scrambled out of bed and immediately fell. My legs were too long, too thin, wrong. I caught myself on a table—carved wood, expensive—and looked up.
A mirror. Full-length. Ornate gold frame.
The person staring back at me wasn't Marcus DeLuca.
He was young. Maybe eighteen. Tall and lean with platinum blonde hair and silver-blue eyes. Aristocratic features. Soft. Like he'd never thrown a punch in his life.
"What—" The voice wasn't mine either. Higher. Younger. Scared.
The door burst open.
A woman in a maid's uniform rushed in, saw me on the floor, and screamed. "Your Highness! Are you hurt?"
Your Highness?
Before I could answer, she was helping me up with gentle hands, guiding me back to the bed. "You mustn't move so quickly, Prince Aurelius. The physicians said you need rest after your fall—"
"Wait." I pulled away from her. "What did you call me?"
She looked confused. "Prince Aurelius, Your Highness. Are you... are you feeling well? Should I fetch the physician?"
Prince. She called me Prince.
My head spun worse than the room. This had to be a dream. A dying hallucination. Maybe I wasn't dead yet. Maybe I was still in that alley, brain firing random signals as everything shut down.
But it felt real. Too real. The silk under my fingers. The cool air. The maid's perfume—lavender and something else.
"The Council summons you in three hours, Your Highness," the maid continued, wringing her hands nervously. "They're... they're voting on your succession rights. Lord Greymont said if you're too ill to attend—"
"I'll be there." The words came out automatic. Survival instinct. Never show weakness.
She looked relieved and scared at the same time. "I'll prepare your clothes." She curtsied and rushed out.
I stood there in silk pajamas in a room bigger than my entire Chicago apartment, in a body that wasn't mine, being called a prince.
Dead. I had to be dead.
But then I felt it. A flutter of memory that wasn't mine. A scared voice in my head that whispered: *They're going to kill me.*
Not my thought. Someone else's. The person who owned this body.
And that's when I saw it. On the desk across the room. A piece of paper with handwriting I didn't recognize:
*"If you're reading this, I'm already dead. They call themselves The Covenant. They choose kings. And they're coming for—"*
The note ended there. Torn off mid-sentence.
My new heart pounded in my new chest.
I didn't know where I was. Didn't know whose body I was wearing. Didn't know what a Covenant was or why someone wanted this prince dead.
But I knew one thing for certain:
Whoever wore this body before me was murdered.
And the killers thought they got away with it.