Chapter 6 Enrico
ENRICO
Rain started by the time I left the Moretti mansion.
Marco drove. I let him. The city slid past in streaks.
I should have been cataloging details—the guards at the gate, the cars parked too long on the corner—but my thoughts kept circling back to her.
Mia Moretti. The only person in the room who hadn’t flinched.
She’d sat across from me wrapped in silver, calm as a saint and twice as dangerous. Every word, every glance, deliberate. When she said, You don’t keep peace. The truth of it slid under my skin like a blade. She’d meant it as an accusation. She wasn’t wrong.
Marco cleared his throat. “You got what you wanted?”
“Not yet.”
He didn’t ask again. He’d known me too long to mistake silence for calm.
We’d become closer over the last two years…
after he finally stopped holding a grudge that our father chose me to take over the family business.
Although, Marco would have been well suited.
To be honest, I’d bet my father chose me so he could prove that I’d fail.
“She’ll be yours eventually. I still don’t understand what’s so special about her.”
If he wasn’t driving, my hands would be around his throat. He knew better. Hell, all my men knew better. Mia was off limits. And anyone that crossed the boundary I set… there’d be bloodshed.
“You’d better be careful with your next words. That’s my future wife. Treat her as such.”
A stoplight bled red across the hood. Marco’s knuckles tightened on the wheel. “Russo won’t stay quiet,” he said, finally changing the subject. “He’ll move again.”
“I’m counting on it.”
When the light changed, we rolled forward.
The city swallowed us whole, its reflections flickering across the glass like ghosts that refused to fade.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, letting the rain’s rhythm set the pace of my thoughts.
I could rebuild an empire from ashes, but one woman’s silence could still unmake me. Hers.
By the time we reached the compound, the rain sharpened.
The guards at the gate opened it before the headlights hit them.
My men straightened as I passed, eyes down, voices clipped.
Discipline was survival here; hesitation got you buried.
Marco peeled off toward the security wing.
I headed for the office. A folder waited on my desk—a pale rectangle against dark wood.
“Report came ten minutes ago.” Matteo stood at the door, hands behind his back. “Russo’s men are regrouping. West docks. They’ve got help from outside.”
I opened the folder, pages full of grainy photos and coordinates.
“Names?”
He barely looked my way. “Not yet.”
“Find them.”
Matteo nodded and slipped out. The door clicked shut, leaving me alone.
The map on the far wall held red pins marking our holdings, blue for alliances, and black for debt. The newest red cluster bloomed like a wound along the docks. Russo’s reach crept close to Moretti territory, and by extension… to her.
Every empire has a weak point. Mine smiled at me across a dinner table.
The intercom buzzed once, a short pulse. Marco’s voice followed, calm but threaded with warning. “He’s here. Says it’s urgent.”
“Send him in.”
One of the couriers entered, rain still dripping off his jacket. He handed over another envelope, breathing fast. “They say Russo’s planning something bigger. Not just cargo this time. Names on the list include Moretti.”
My grip tightened on the paper. For a heartbeat, there was only the rain against the windows. “Clear the docks,” I said. “No mistakes.”
“And Moretti, sir?”
I looked up from the map. “Keep them out of it. For now.”
He left before I could change my mind.
The room went still again, except for the slow ticking of the clock. I told myself I was protecting an alliance. That it was strategy, not sentiment. Lies came easy when they were close to the truth.
The clock marked twenty minutes before Marco returned. Rain slicked his shoulders, darkening the fabric of his jacket. He shut the door behind him and crossed the room. “Matteo’s confirmed. They’ve got new suppliers—military grade. Whoever’s bankrolling him isn’t local.”
I turned from the map. “Cut the head, watch the rest scatter.”
Marco didn’t move. There was something in his silence. “Before we do,” he said carefully, “you should know Russo’s men have asked about Moretti shipments. And about her.”
The quiet that followed had weight.
I straightened, voice calm because calm frightened people most. “What about her?”
“He’s talking about leverage.”
Leverage. The oldest word in our vocabulary.
“Then find him,” I said. “Bring him in. Alive.”
Marco’s gaze stayed on me. “You want him to talk, or you want him to bleed?”
“Both.” I stepped closer. “No one touches her. If Russo even says her name again, you make sure he never speaks another word.”
For a moment Marco just peered at me then, quietly: “She isn’t yours to protect yet.”
“Everything in this city becomes mine to protect,” I said. “And to destroy.”
He exhaled once, somewhere between warning and surrender. “I’ll handle it.”
When he left, the door shut soft as a gun being cocked. I poured a drink I didn’t need and stared through the rain-smeared glass. Beyond the river, lightning split the sky—brief, blinding, gone.
Peace was the word we used when we were too tired to admit the war never ended.
The whiskey burned going down, smooth and useless.
I set the glass aside and crossed to the balcony.
The doors opened. Below, headlights crawled through fog, the sound of engines softened by distance.
Thunder rolled somewhere far off. I leaned against the rail and let the rain find me.
It slicked across my cuffs, my throat, the scar on my hand.
Inside, the pins marked borders that meant nothing outside the paper.
I’d spent years drawing those lines, convincing myself that owning the city meant understanding it.
Now all I could see was her face at the dinner table.
She’d gawked at me as if she could already see the man I’d let no one else notice. Not the killer. Not the king. Just me.
I’d built an empire on discipline. Then one woman spoke my name, and I forgot the rules.
Tomorrow would come with new orders, new bodies, new bargains. That was the currency of survival.
But tonight—just for a heartbeat—I let myself imagine what it would be like if peace meant more than an illusion we sold between wars.