The sky split open the moment Vincenzo Moretti took his final breath.
Not a dramatic death — not the kind meant for cinema or whispered in reverent tones at a funeral. Just a slow fade in a damp prison infirmary, half-forgotten by men who once feared his name. The morphine dulled the pain, but not the memory. The stench of antiseptic and rusted metal merged with the ghost of Neapolitan rain — a phantom scent that clung to his chest even as it ceased to rise.
The walls had once echoed with screams. Not from Vince — not anymore. Those days of fury had dulled into resignation. He had long since stopped punching walls, stopped glaring at guards, stopped believing that his name could shield him. The world had moved on, and so had his empire, crumbling like a sandcastle beneath the tide.
Then: silence. Not peace, just the blank weight of nothing. He drifted out of breath like a man stepping off a ledge, not falling, not flying — just... dissolving.
And then: wind.
It howled through him, not around him — as though the marrow of his bones was caught in some tunnel between dying and being born. Darkness folded in on itself. No tunnel. No light. Just sensation — raw, wet earth, wind like knives, and breath dragged into lungs that shouldn't work anymore.
When his eyes opened, he was on his knees in a forest.
No prison walls. No machines. No heartbeat monitor to flatline.
Only moss. Cold wind. Bark wet with dew. And silence thick enough to choke on.
Vince knelt there, coughing. Dirt filled his mouth — sharp, mineral-rich, not the chemical dust of cement and soap. He spat, gagged, touched his throat. Skin. Whole. Scarred, still — the old wounds from a dozen street fights, the bullet that once tore through his thigh — all still there. But no IV. No hospital gown. Just... a coarse tunic, unfamiliar boots, and aching muscles, as if someone had molded him from clay that hadn't set yet.
He stayed like that for minutes — or maybe hours — letting his senses reorient. The air was thin, but real. Trees loomed above him like stone pillars. Everything felt raw. No hum of electricity. No distant traffic. Just the wilderness, sprawling and silent, save for the occasional bird call or rustle in the underbrush.
His hand curled into a fist. That old reflex. Control. Assess. Survive.
"Where the fuck am I?" he croaked, voice rasping through raw cords.
The trees said nothing.
He stood slowly. Every joint protested. His breath fogged in the air. Autumn — or something like it. Leaves the color of blood and rust. Birds too quiet. No road. No skyscrapers. Just wilderness, primitive and still.
Was this hell?
No. Vince didn't believe in that. Hell was a metaphor. Naples taught him that. Hell was waiting for your enemies to strike. Hell was remembering your children's faces as the sirens blared. Hell was watching everything you built rot from the inside.
He walked.
Not aimlessly. Not yet. The land sloped downward — a trickle of instinct said: find water. Then shelter. Then food. Then answers. The mafia taught him order. The prison taught him patience. Now he needed both.
Each step hurt. His legs remembered years of beatings, of crouching in corners, of running. But his body was stronger than it had been in years. It responded, if sluggishly. Hours passed. The sun remained low, shy above the tree line. A stream appeared, silver-bright and cold. He knelt to drink.
It tasted real. Clean. Metallic.
He paused. Reflected in the water was not the frail man from the infirmary, but a younger face — maybe early fifties, not pushing seventy. Beard grown but healthy. Shoulders still broad. As if time had peeled him back.
"What the hell..." he muttered.
Evening approached when he found the village.
Or what passed for one.
Huts — crude things, rounded with thatched roofs, no iron nails or cement, only mud and bone and reed. Smoke drifted lazily from fire pits. Chickens roamed loose. No walls. No gates. Vulnerable. Primitive.
He stood at the edge of the clearing, watching.
No one screamed. No guards raised weapons.
Instead, a child spotted him and ran — not in terror, but in curiosity. Within moments, half a dozen faces emerged from huts and doorways: sun-darkened skin, layered robes, eyes sharp with suspicion. But no panic. Just stillness.
Then, a woman stepped forward.
Middle-aged. Face lined from wind and work. She said something in a tongue Vince didn't know — a whispering language, soft-edged but fast. Her tone was not hostile, but firm. A leader, perhaps. A matron.
He raised his hands. Not in surrender, just visibility.
"I'm not here to harm you," he said. "I'm just—"
She interrupted. A single word, firm.
"Khaam."
Then she gestured. Not to him, but to the ground.
Sit.
He obeyed. Slowly.
They brought him water in a carved wooden bowl. He drank. It tasted like rain and dirt and life. They watched him, murmured, touched his coat, inspected the seams. His tattoos drew whispers. The snake around his wrist. The angel on his shoulder. The faded name: Lucia.
No one asked where he came from.
No one told him where he was.
They simply let him be — on the outer edge of their world, fed but not spoken to, left alone as the days turned to twilight and back again.
That night, they gave him a space near the fire. He lay on dry grass beside a crumbling stone wall, his back to the flames, facing the forest. The stars here were brighter than he'd ever seen — like frost frozen in the sky. He stared at them, his mind too tired for questions, too stunned for grief.
He whispered his daughter's name once before sleep claimed him.
Lucia.
And for the first time in decades, the name didn't echo through concrete or come back hollow.
Just stars, and the crackle of a fire, and the cold silence of a world that didn't know his name — yet.