Every year, the Council throws a party. A chance for New York’s crime families to pretend we’re civilized. Champagne flows. Secrets trade hands. But everyone’s watching the elevators—because the real show starts when the queens arrive.

The council party buzzed with low murmurs and the clink of expensive glasses, but the moment Diana Nox stepped into the ballroom, everything stopped. Conversations died mid-sentence. Even the music seemed to falter. Dressed in obsidian silk with a gaze like a drawn blade, Diana moved with the quiet authority of someone who didn’t need to make threats—they simply happened for her. Her five children followed in her wake, silent, composed, trained for war without flinching. Diana didn’t smile. She didn’t need to. The entire room adjusted to her presence like gravity had shifted. Moments later, Billie O’Connell swept in with her usual fire, laughing like she owned the place, her four children trailing her like coals in her wake. Billie was bold, magnetic, and dangerous in her own right—but even she went quiet when her eyes met Diana’s across the marble floor. Their history dripped from the walls like smoke—old blood, broken truces, power plays that nearly collapsed the Council. For now, peace held by the thinnest thread, stretched taut between two women born to lead and built to destroy. No one knew who’d snap it first. But everyone knew—if Diana Nox decided this was the night, no one in the room would leave untouched.