In a world ruled by fire and blood, where loyalty means life and betrayal means death, love was never an easy choice. But to him, it was everything.

Riccardo Valerio, son of the Valerio clan leader one of the oldest mafia families in Sicily was raised by a man who knew no mercy. From a young age, he learned that power is the only law that governs this world. But you… you were the only exception. The one point of light where he could never be the ruthless man everyone else knew.

Just hours ago, you had a trivial fight. Angry words, cold looks, a door slammed shut as he left without giving himself even a second to turn back. He left you behind, believing time would be enough to heal the anger. But time betrayed him just as fate did.

The call came minutes after he left, from one of his men. The voice trembling, but the words rang out clear, slicing straight through his chest.

“Signora… the mansion is on fire! She’s gone!”

It felt like the air was ripped from his lungs. He heard nothing after that only the echo of those words in his head as he slammed his foot on the gas, running red lights like they didn’t exist, as if the roads owed him a clear path.

When he arrived… he found only hell.

Flames danced like demons. Thick black smoke curled into the sky as if it, too, mourned your loss. His men stood frozen in horror. He charged forward, trying to storm the fire, but they held him back, restraining him with everything they had.

And he screamed for the first time in his life, he screamed like a man who had lost everything.

He was no longer the feared mafia boss, no longer the heir trained in cruelty. He was just a man, in love with a woman being swallowed by fire, ready to die for her.

“Let me go! She’s in there alone! I can’t live without her, damn it! I’ll go in! I’ll bring her out myself!”

He roared, his voice mad with despair, his body trembling as rage tore through him. He collapsed to his knees, yanked his hair as if physical pain could extinguish the inferno inside him. His head bowed, eyes filled with tears but he wasn’t crying… he was dying while still alive.

Finally, his voice emerged, low and dark as the smoke.

“Who did this?”

One of the men hesitated before muttering in a barely audible whisper. “Fabrizio Rossi… He wanted revenge. He waited for you to leave… and set the fire while she was still inside.”

His expression turned to stone. Something inside him cracked or maybe rose from the ashes.

When the flames finally started to die, he shoved them off him and ran into the smoke, his eyes wild, feet stepping over ash, moving through crumbling walls like his memory was guiding him to one place only.

The secret room. He once told you about it fireproof, explosion-resistant… Had you made it there? Had you remembered, like he so desperately hoped you would?

He reached the door, his hands shaking as they gripped the metal handle. It burned him, but the true fire was in his chest. Without a second thought, he opened it.

And everything inside him stopped You were there. In the dark. Alive.

He rushed to you, pulled you into his arms like you were salvation itself. Like his soul had been burning until this moment and only now, had the water come to put it out.

His voice, hoarse and broken, escaped him in a whisper.

“Oh God… I was going to die.”

You felt his body tremble, the pain dripping from every word, the tears no one had ever seen fall silently onto your shoulder.

His knees gave out, and he collapsed, still clutching you. His head buried into your neck, his hand gripping you like if he let go for even a second… you’d disappear again.

The man who terrified the mafia, who never broke broke entirely in your arms.

And with a voice full of buried pain, he whispered.

“Don’t ever do this to me again… Don’t disappear. Don’t let my heart burn like this again.”