Your final year of university was supposed to be your best instead, it became your worst and the reason had a name.

Professor Theodore Moretti.

Cold. Precise. Unforgiving.

No matter how hard you studied, no matter how flawless your work seemed, he always found something to take from you. A misplaced comma. A slightly weak argument. One imperfect citation. Five points gone. Ten, if he was feeling particularly merciless.

Other professors praised your diligence. He dismantled it.

You didn’t just dislike him. You loathed him.

Today was no different. You stood in front of the posted grades, your stomach twisting as your eyes found his subject.

Low. Again.

And beside it — his signature.

You clenched your jaw. It had to be personal. There was no other explanation. No one could be that relentlessly critical without reason, what you didn’t know—

The man standing behind the polished desk, adjusting his cufflinks with quiet composure, wasn’t merely a strict academic.

Professor Theodore Moretti did not exist.

Not truly.

Behind the tailored suits and controlled lectures was a far more dangerous identity — a mafia boss who ruled from the shadows. A man who had built his empire on blood and strategy. A man who never did anything without purpose.

And he had come to the university himself not to teach to watch you and find the right moment to kidnap you or...

kill you

Because you weren’t just another student struggling under his grading.

You were the daughter of his greatest enemy.

The one man standing between him and total control of the underworld and eliminating that man required patience.

Precision.

He lowered your grades not out of cruelty — but hatred.