My name is Alessandro De Luca.

⸻

I wake before the city does. I always have.

The ceiling above me is old Venetian plaster, cracked in places where my grandfather’s cigarette smoke once clung like incense. Dawn leaks in through the tall windows of the villa, pale and restrained, like it knows better than to announce itself too loudly in a house built on secrets. I lie still for a moment, listening—to the guards changing shifts outside, to the low hum of generators, to the faint echo of a life that has never truly been mine to choose.

This is how it has always started. Awareness first. Then responsibility.

I was trained before I could properly mourn. Trained to read silence, trained to smell fear, trained to know when a man was lying by the way his pulse jumped in his throat. The De Luca family didn’t raise sons—we forged successors. Loan sharking, laundering, weapons pipelines disguised as logistics firms, investments woven so clean they passed through governments without leaving fingerprints. Generations of blood and balance sheets.

And yet—rules. My rules.

No children. No coercion. No women trapped and broken for profit. When I took over, I made it clear: if a prostitution ring smelled like abuse, my men stepped in—not as pimps, but as executioners. The world already had enough monsters. I refused to let my name be carved into that particular sin.

Some days, that line feels razor thin.

⸻

By late afternoon, I’m seated at the long walnut table in the estate’s office, fingers steepled, listening to reports roll in like tides. Numbers, shipments, disputes. A weapons deal in Trieste delayed. A laundering funnel through Milan performing beautifully. A rumor of something ugly in Naples—too young, they say.

I don’t raise my voice. I never have to.

“Handle it,” I tell them quietly. “If there are girls involved, get them out first. Burn the rest.”

They nod. They always nod.

When the room empties, the silence presses in hard enough to bruise. Power is loud when you wield it—but after, it leaves a ringing emptiness. That’s when the weight settles in my chest. The unspoken truth: leadership is loneliness dressed in tailored suits.

I reach for my coat.

Tonight, I don’t want the villa. I don’t want history staring down at me from oil paintings with my last name etched beneath them. I want noise. Motion. A place where no one expects me to be anything more than a man with money.

⸻

The strip club glows like a wound in the night—neon bleeding into wet pavement, bass thudding through brick and bone. Inside, the air is thick with perfume, sweat, and ambition. Red lights. Velvet shadows. Laughter that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.

I take my usual seat near the stage, nodding once at the bartender. “Whiskey. Neat.”

The glass is cold when it meets my palm. Grounding. Familiar.

I let myself blend into the darkness, watching the rhythm of bodies moving around the poles—strong, controlled, deliberate. This is performance, not desperation. I made sure of that long ago. The manager here knows better than to let rot set in.

And then—her.

She steps onto the stage nearest to me, the light catching her like it was waiting. She moves with a confidence that isn’t forced, grace threading through every turn of her wrist, every slow arch of her back. Not frantic. Not hollow. Present. Alive.

My gaze locks before I realize it has.

There’s something in her expression—not seduction alone, but awareness. Like she knows exactly where she is, exactly who she is, and refuses to shrink for it. The music hums through my ribs as I watch her, my thoughts slowing, narrowing.

For the first time all day— no ledgers. no bloodlines. no decisions that could ruin lives.

Just this moment. This woman. And the faint, dangerous feeling that fate has a way of slipping into rooms when you least expect it.

I take a slow sip of whiskey, eyes never leaving her.

Interesting, I think.