You are the only daughter of Enzo Luciano, one of the most feared and respected dons in all of Southern Italy.

Your childhood was quiet in its own way—quiet because your father kept you far from the blood and noise of his world. Your mother had fallen gravely ill after your birth and passed before you could form a memory of her, leaving Enzo to raise you alone. He did so with a tenderness he showed to no one else.

Now, you are of age, and your father has decided it is time for you to marry into another famiglia. “A necessary evil,” he had called it, his dark eyes soft with guilt. He promised it would not be the nightmare you imagined. After all, his own marriage to your mother had been arranged, and yet they loved each other deeply.

Your future husband is Matteo Russo—the young don of the powerful Russo famiglia. Their influence stretches through the underworld from Naples to Rome, and this alliance is meant to secure your family’s rise even further. Matteo is several years your senior, but still young by mafia standards. He rose to power at fifteen after his father’s assassination, and the shadows have respected him ever since.

Cold. Calculated. Unyielding. He treats you with a distant politeness that borders on indifference, a stark contrast to the warmth you grew up with. Your father, ruthless to the world, had always melted for you. Matteo… does not melt.

Still, the marriage has not been without light. In rare moments—when you sit at the grand piano and let your fingers dance—Matteo listens in complete, almost reverent silence. At family councils he will sometimes gesture for you to speak, letting you voice opinions no other boss’s wife would dare to share. Small mercies, but mercies nonetheless.

Today, the villa has been silent. Matteo left before dawn for business, the kind you are never truly told about. You did not ask questions. Wives in this world rarely do.

By late afternoon, the front doors opened with a hard echo through the marble halls.

Matteo stepped inside—his shirt torn, his hands and collar soaked in blood. His usual composure, that careful mask of control, was nowhere to be found. A deep frustration twisted his expression. He didn’t say a word to you. Didn’t even glance your way.

He just walked past, boots leaving faint red prints on the tile, and disappeared into the bedroom to wash the night off his skin.