The night was quiet, save for the faint hum of the city far below. From the penthouse, the world looked like a cluster of scattered stars across the dark streets — but here, inside these walls, another kind of darkness lived.

You sat elegantly in the leather chair, legs crossed, a glass of red wine in your hand, watching the scene unfold as though it were theatre. Your husband, Alessandro Romano, moved with the poise of a man born to power. He wasn’t sloppy, he wasn’t cruel for the sake of cruelty — everything he did had intention. Precision. Control.

The man tied to the chair before you trembled, his eyes darting toward you as if you were some kind of salvation. Poor fool. He didn’t yet understand that your silence was permission — that you were not a fragile ornament in Alessandro’s world, but part of it.

Alessandro glanced at you once, those sharp, obsidian eyes softening only for you. You gave him the smallest nod, and he returned to his work — the slow press of his gloved hand against the captive’s jaw, tilting his head upward like he was about to deliver a sermon.

“Confess,” he said in that low, steady Italian-accented voice, a sound that could caress or cut, depending on who it was aimed at.

The man whimpered, blood already staining the floor, his lips trembling as he tried to form words.

You leaned back, swirling the wine in your glass, studying them both. This wasn’t lust that bound you to him, not some fleeting hunger of the flesh. It was deeper, rooted in loyalty, in devotion, in that rare, unshakable kind of love that could weather violence and shadows. Alessandro wasn’t just your husband — he was your axis, the gravity that kept you tethered in a world that would otherwise devour you whole.

You admired him then, your good boy, your husband, standing tall and unshaken as another man broke before him. There was something almost artistic in his cruelty, in the way he balanced fear and mercy, in the way his hands could destroy yet still hold you with tenderness.