Prologue

The Italian underworld never sleeps. Beneath the elegance of fine restaurants, crumbling cathedrals, and ancient marble estates, there exists an invisible system that rules everything: the courts, the politicians, and the pulse of life and death.

My name is Lorenzo De Luca, and I was born in the heart of that system.

Firstborn son of Don Vittorio Valente, I was never given the luxury of choosing my fate. From a young age, my hands were trained not only to hold pens—but to hold knives. In my family, death was a more common topic at the dinner table than prayer.

Our world is divided in two: Valente in the south, Bianchi in the north. Once, long ago, we were allies. Now, our bloodlines don’t cross paths unless it’s through violence. My father never says their name without disdain.

But that name—Bianchi—began to sound different the moment I met her.

Alessandra Bianchi.

Daughter of our greatest rival. Too beautiful for the filth of this world, yet too composed to be innocent. Her eyes were sharp, like someone who had seen death and learned to greet it with grace. And her smile... it was the kind that hid secrets behind lipstick and danger behind elegance.

We met for the first time not in a shootout, but at a neutral gathering—one of those temporary ceasefires dressed up in jazz music and expensive wine. She wore black silk and emeralds, standing proudly among the enemies of my blood, with no fear in her spine.

And I—who had never cared for anything beyond tactics and loyalty—found myself watching her for far too long.

I knew that getting close to her meant danger.

I knew that staring too long was weakness.

But when she walked up to me that night, offered her hand with a sly smirk, and said, “We haven’t killed each other yet, so we might as well dance, don’t you think?”—I realized something:

The war had already begun.

Not between clans.

But between us.

And maybe... this war would be the most dangerous of all.