“DROP YOUR FUCKING WEAPONS OR I’LL BLOW HER FUCKING BRAINS OUT!”The world froze.“My sun…” Dante whispered.There she was.Amid smoke and rubble.Her wedding dress torn, stained with mud and blood.Her hair undone, disheveled.She was trembling, eyes wide open—filled with fear... with tears.And the gun.Black. Cold. Pressed hard against her head.Nikolai’s hand shook—with rage.“No…” Dante felt the ground vanish beneath him.Behind Nikolai, several men had their weapons aimed at his people. His mother. His little brother...“DROP YOUR GUNS!” Nikolai roared. “NOW!”“Drop them!” Dante echoed, his voice breaking.Everyone obeyed, and silence fell—more brutal than any bullet.Nikolai smirked, lips curling.“Look at me, Bellandi. Checkmate, Italian mutt.”Dante couldn’t breathe.Her. His sun. His everything. She had a gun to her head.He couldn’t move. Not while that bastard held her like that.She looked at him—silent—but her eyes screamed for help.Tears carved paths of ash down her fa

The candlelight flickered across the mournful faces, as if even the flames were unsure whether to burn that night.Dante Bellandi turned to face them.Men hardened by blood, bullets, and loyalty bought with fear. Their faces were a gallery of scars, wrinkles, and suspicion. And they all looked at him the same way—waiting to see if he would fall… or rise like his father.There was no room for doubt.No time to grieve.With slow, deliberate steps, Dante approached the coffin. Each stride a sentence, each stare a silent judgment. When he reached it, he looked down. At the fallen titan. The monster. His father.Vittorio Bellandi rested among shadows, eyes closed as if merely asleep.But he was no longer fearsome.Not anymore.Dante swallowed hard.The silence was thick. Sharp.Then he spoke.“My father was a man of iron,” he said, his eyes never leaving the body. “What he built was more than an empire. It was a curse. A legacy of power, yes… but also of death.”Some of the men exchanged g

Dante jolted awake, gasping as if he'd just run a marathon.It wasn’t a dream. It was the brutal truth.There it was, heavy on his shoulders—the legacy and curse of his father. Vittorio Bellandi.The man who had etched his name into the Calabrian mafia with blood and fear, but who now lived only in shadows that refused to fade.The cold floor greeted his bare feet as he stood. Heart racing. No time to think.The dark suit waiting for him felt like a yoke. He grabbed it, slipped it on, yanked the tie tight with one swift pull, the weight of responsibility crushing down on him.His brown eyes met their reflection in the mirror—his father’s eyes.Tired. Determined. Haunted.“It’s your turn, Dante,” he murmured, neither pleading nor commanding.He walked toward the meeting room like a man approaching the gallows.The scent of leather, tobacco, and betrayal clung to the walls.Fabio was already there, upright, silent. He stood when he saw him.“Sir.”Dante nodded, aware of the eyes on him.

Throughout the day, Dante found himself trapped in a whirlwind of endless meetings, negotiations with leaders of rival clans, and critical decisions about shipments and alliances that, under any other circumstances, would have demanded his full attention. But this time was different. No matter how hard he tried to focus, his mind always wandered back to her: the dancer. That ethereal figure that had embedded itself in his thoughts with an unsettling familiarity, teetering on the edge between memory and obsession.Meanwhile, Svetlana had been returned to the austere room assigned to her in the villa on the Calabrian coast. Plans to present her to Dante had been postponed due to urgent matters occupying his time: agreements with rival families, decisions about trafficking routes, and constant surveillance against internal betrayals. The young woman spent the hours submerged in a mixture of anxiety and resignation, struggling not to succumb to the fear threatening to consume her. Every c

The room where Svetlana was being held was small, yet decorated with a restrained luxury that only deepened the irony of her situation. The curtains, pristine white, clashed with the reality of the prison they represented, and the window—secured with wrought-iron bars—let in a faint light that barely softened the chill of dawn in Gambarie d’Aspromonte. From there, a mist-covered mountain landscape unfolded—a cruel reminder of the freedom that had been taken from her.Svetlana paced back and forth, arms tightly crossed over her chest, trying to quiet the storm raging inside her. She stopped in front of the bed, a piece far too elegant for someone treated as a mere hostage, and let herself collapse onto it. The urge to cry was suffocating, but she wouldn’t allow it. Every tear would be a concession to her captors, a sign of weakness she refused to show.The metallic click of the lock snapped her out of her thoughts. The door opened slowly, revealing a familiar figure. It was the same wo