"I didn't expect the Bratva's tech queen to be quite so... captivating," Lorenzo's voice dripped with irony as he observed Galina, who was absorbed in deciphering a web of encrypted data.
Galina's gaze remained fixed on her screens, her expression a...
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The air in the meeting room was thick, pressing down on my chest with an unbearable weight. It hung in the corners, a heavy shroud of unspoken words, too raw to speak but too sharp to ignore. I could almost taste the tension—a bitter metal tang that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. The long, polished mahogany table gleamed in the dim light, reflecting the faces of men I had spent my life pretending to understand. But now, as I sat at the table, a silent spectator to the unraveling, I could feel the gnarled threads of this fragile unity begin to snap, one by one.
Orazio's voice, raw and jagged, slashed through the stillness. It sliced the air like a sword drawn from the sheath of fury, its force so powerful it almost knocked the breath from my lungs.
"That's bullshit!" he spat, his fist crashing onto the table with a violence that rattled the crystal glassware. The force of it made the room shudder, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
His face was flushed with rage, eyes burning with an intensity that would've sent anyone else scrambling for cover. His jaw was clenched tight, and his shoulders—broad and unforgiving—tensed like coiled springs, the muscles straining beneath his tailored suit. I saw the veins bulge in his neck, a storm raging behind his eyes, as if he were one heartbeat away from shattering the fragile veneer of civility that had held us together this long.
To be fair, I couldn't blame him. His anger was an open wound, raw and exposed, but it mirrored something deeper within me, something I had learned to suppress. Here we were, the heirs to our fathers' empires, gathered in this cavernous room—an arena for a game of power where the stakes were higher than any of us dared to admit. Our families had been building these bloody, twisted legacies for decades, each line of loyalty and treachery passed down like sacred scripture. And we, the next generation, were expected to follow the same path, to solidify alliances, to hold our ground, and above all—to never waver in our duty to the empire.
But it wasn't as simple as it seemed. Far from it.
Working with the other mafia families was a damn nightmare, a dance of knives and whispers, betrayal masked by smiles. But when the politics bled into your bloodline—when the betrayal hit so close it bled into your own flesh—it became something else entirely. It was no longer a matter of business; it was a matter of survival. Of loyalty, family, and betrayal so intimate it could only be measured in heartbeats.
