There was a shift in the room—I couldn’t see it, but I felt it.The kind of silence that wasn’t empty, but loaded.Like something had just been dropped between them that changed everything.
My pulse picked up.
What the hell?
Raze spoke again, quieter this time.
“Who are you, really, Popovich?”
The question slid through the crack in the door.I felt like a guilty interloper, as though I were stealing classified information not meant for my ears.
For a second—there was nothing.Archie didn’t answer.There was no movement.Then someone exhaled—Archie, I presumed.It was slow, resigned.Like whatever he was about to say required more effort than he was willing to give.
“In Italy, I’m just Archie Popovich,” he said.
He paused.
“But in my home country, I’m known as the Pope.”
Everything inside me went still.Not physically.Something deeper, colder.Visceral.
No.No.
My fingers curled against my knees, breath catching in my throat as the words replayed in my head.
The Pope.
The Pope.
The Pope.
I’d heard the name before.I’d heard the stories.The Pope was a ghost whose reputation had outgrown reality—because no one could confirm what was true and what wasn’t.Only that wherever he went—chaos followed.
And there was nothing holy about him.
I shook my head slightly, like that would dislodge it.Like it would make it make sense.
“…heir to the Popovich Bratva.”
It was Archie’s voice again.Calm.Controlled.Like he wasn’t dismantling everything I thought I knew about him.
My heart slammed once.Hard.
The Popovich Bratva wasn’t just powerful.It was—untouchable.An Eastern European syndicate of old money and bloody violence.A dynasty with the kind of power that didn’t need to prove itself because it had already erased anyone who dared to question it.
And he had been walking amongst us like he was just another man.
My stomach twisted.Because suddenly—everything shifted.Every interaction.Every moment.Every time I’d dismissed him, snapped at him, treated him like he was something beneath the line we’d drawn between us and them.
He wasn’t beneath anything.He was above it.Above all of it.If he wanted to be.
I pressed my lips together, trying to steady the sudden rush of thoughts.
He could crush us.Not easily, and not without consequence.But he could make it hurt.He had the reach.The resources.The kind of backing that could destroy empires.
And yet—he hadn’t.Not once, even when he had reason to.
That was the part that didn’t make sense.
