Rain fell with the purpose of transforming the Inferni property into a mausoleum.
It fell in sheets against the stone walls, dripping and blackened, pouring from the gargoyle gutters as if tears from demon mouths. The skies above Naples churned, low and thick with storm clouds, as if the skies themselves were afraid of the family that ruled below them.
At the center of everything was Dante Valerio Inferni, silent as stone, honed out of contradictions. He was young—scarcely more than twenty-six—but what he carried weighed him heavier than centuries. He was a war machine: tall and chiseled like marble, wrapped in a charcoal suit that shone softly with the wet.
And his blond, ash-bright hair was slicked back in neat defiance of the storm, a stark contrast to the dark legacy chiseled into his lineage.
He stood on the marble balcony of the highest tower, gazing out over the large courtyard below, where black cars stood like sentinels, their wetness glinting in the rain.
Men moved quietly among them—leather coats, gloved fists, unwritten oaths of loyalty. Dante did not need to see their faces. He knew them. His father's wolves.
And they would soon belong to him.
A creak behind him of an opened door was absorbed by the thick Neapolitan wind. Dante didn't look back.
"You leave for London tonight."
The voice was unmistakable.
Don Salvatore Inferni.
The old lion. His father. The shadow king.
His voice was gravel wrapped in velvet—cool, calculated, but laced with menace. Every syllable a knife.
Dante did not answer at first. His gaze remained fixed on the distant horizon, where the sea pounded against ridged cliffs as if trying to break free from the land.
City lights quivered through the haze like dying embers. He could smell smoke. Rain. And something else.
Change.
"To kill him?" Dante finally asked, his voice low, and sounding bored.
"To test your loyalty," the Don replied. "And to warn our enemies that the Inferni do not forgive."
The him in question did not need to be named. Giovanni Moretti.
Dante's wayward uncle by blood. A man who vanished into self-imposed exile two decades ago, to reappear only in innuendo and rumor—living quietly in London, removed from the family business. A betrayal the Don never forgave.
Their history had come before Dante's awareness. His great-grandfather had conquered the underworld with an iron fist, but his daughter, Giovanni's mother, had fled to Ireland, where she'd tried to find life beyond blood and darkness. When Dante's grandfather came into the empire, he'd tracked down his sister's son and wooed him into the business, promising power and success. Giovanni had been young and naive and, for a time, he'd accepted the shadows.
But then he'd left. Just walked away, leaving Dante's father to face the wolves alone.
"I've never met Giovanni," Dante said.
"He's family."
"So am I," Dante shot back.
The pause that followed was brief but icy.
Don Salvatore finally appeared, flanked by two of his mute bodyguards. The years had bent his back and turned his hair gray, but his beard was still silver-streaked and neatly trimmed in the old style of the south. But his eyes… those eyes could still shatter a man. Coal-black and moonless. Eyes that remembered every face, every treachery.
"You sound like a poet," the Don stated. "But you were born for war."
I molded you for this. Instructed you. Burned the softness out of you."
Dante moved, slowly, his expression unchanging.
"Assuming there's still some softness there?"
Salvatore regarded his son for a long time. Then, silently, handed him a small leather folder. Inside: a passport, and a stack of photographs—some official, some candid, some clearly taken by the family's London contact. The first was Giovanni Moretti, grey-haired and exhausted, with a younger woman in a white gown, her head turned, only her profile visible.
"Who is she?" Dante asked.
"His daughter. Fianna," the Don said.
"And what am I supposed to do with her?"
"She's none of your concern."
"She's in the photo."
"So is the furniture. Don't confuse sentiment with strategy."
Dante thumbed through the rest. There were candid shots: Fianna on a sunlit beach, chasing seagulls, her curls wild; another, more recent, showed her laughing, shoulders hunched, hand across her mouth, eyes creased from too much sun and light. These were not meant for sentiment, but for strategy.
Thunder rolled behind him out across the bay.
Later that night, Dante sat by himself in his room, the folder open before him. His walls were granite grey, his shelves lined with books that had not been read since boyhood. There was only one candle on the bed. Outside, the storm continued to rage.
He glanced between the images—the mysterious girl, Giovanni's daughter, and the candid moments that revealed more than any dossier could.
Fianna.
That was her name.
He could feel it.
The beach photo—it couldn't be anyone else. The same black curls, the same wild glint. A younger Fianna, caught at a moment of uncontrolled joy. And now, the newer photo, alive and uncompromisingly real.
For the first time in too long, something shifted inside him that felt uncomfortably like hope.
The Inferni jet stood at the ready.
And London teetered on the edge of burning.