CHAPTER 5

Leo’s POV;

They brought them to me trembling. The head maid and the chief of security, two people whose faces I’d seen for years —the kind of familiarity that usually meant loyalty was already bought — were shoved into the center of the banquet hall like animals exposed under a light. The blood on the table still shone where they’d dragged it; the room smelled of copper and perfume and a noise like a hive of bees that hadn’t yet been swatted.

I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. I walked straight to them, every man in the room suddenly aware of the shape I cut. They expected fury. They expected spectacle. They expected something loud and messy. What they got was cold.

“Lock them up,” I said. The words were flat, but they ricocheted around the chandeliers. “Take them to the underground bunker and secure them.”

Hands moved. Men grabbed the two by the arms and dragged them away, their protests swallowed by the distance to the service stair. I watched them go, watched their shoulders bounce under the weight of the order. The underground bunker was not a place people liked to visit. It was a place where explanations ceased to matter and consequences were measured.

Whoever engineered this stunt had shown professional cruelty. Leaving a head on a silver tray at a public banquet was not just a message; it was a question posed loudly, and I had an answer to make.

I stepped back up onto the dais and let the room refocus on a single point: me. The murmurs flowed in a slow current, then stopped when I lifted a hand.

“Listen,” I said. “This hall is to remain intact. We sweep for evidence. We do not let rumor become theater. You restore order. The families will be briefed in private. We will not make grief into spectacle.”

Then I turned and moved through the hall. I checked the staff logs, the kitchen line, the loading docks. Everything had an order, everything had a trail. The trick was to pull that thread until the hand that had woven the stunt was uncloaked. I had men on it already, Tiago had the chevrons and the hunger to burn someone down for him; Fon and the head waiters were rattled but useful. No one left the building without clearance. Phones were taken. Cars were held. The smallest details were the heart of the investigation.

Before I left, I called Luca. His voice came through the earpiece, measured. “Boss.”

“Have you gotten home safely?” My voice was short, not because I was angry but because I needed the simple facts stripped of drama.

“Yes boss” He paused. “Though she’s shaken.”

“Good,” I said. Not good because she was shaken; good because she was in the right hands. My voice softened, maybe for only a fraction of a breath. “Tighten security. Double the outer patrol. Even if nobody would dare touch the Villa Mancini, we do not rely on arrogance. Better safe than sure. Update me every ten minutes until I say otherwise.”

He confirmed and I ended the call. Orders like that calmed me in a way nothing else did. The plan and the execution, the two halves of the coin I lived on steadied the quick, hot pulse of rage that was building under my ribs.

There were other things to manage: private calls to the Vitale line, a terse message to Salvatore Beltram warning him that public scenes would not be tolerated on our soil, a note to the families that they were to hold until we conferred. The night needed a perimeter. That was what control looked like: a stitched seam across chaos.

When I finally left the hall I moved like a man made of purpose. The city smelled different at night: diesel and wet stone, a few stray lights. My car cut through it and took me back to the Villa. The gates opened with that familiar creak and the drive that led up to the house felt too long. I stepped inside and the villa breathed differently, quieter, heavier, as if it had inhaled the same smoke the street had.

She was asleep.

It is a strange thing, to find the person who has been traded and paraded sleeping like a child at the center of your fortress. Her hair had slipped loose from whatever pins had contained it earlier in the evening; a few dark strands fanned over the pillow. The black silk of her gown had been changed for something softer a plain night dress, maybe something Martha had insisted on and she looked smaller than I expected, a figure reduced by vulnerability.

For reasons that surprised me even as they rose, I felt afraid.

Not for myself; the fear there was different… a sharp, bright edge I used as fuel. This was a different animal: the strange, low thrum that crawls under your skin when you realize someone you hold power over has no tools to navigate the very world you’ve plunged them into. She had been plucked from a life of books and plans and near-certainties, and flung into a world where decisions ended lives or saved them. I saw the outline of it in the set of her shoulders, the way her hands had gripped mine earlier in the night, nails pressed white into my palm. She had held on to me briefly, and in that briefness, something in me recoiled and softened at once. Part of me, the animal one, hadn’t wanted her to let go.

She’s my wife, I thought. The image of her onstage, walking beside me, the breath that had left her at the sight of people watching it sits in my head like a small and dangerous thing. She didn’t understand what it meant, that night. She didn’t know the weight of the mantle she had been given. She didn’t understand what being Dona of the Crown Family meant. I should not have to teach someone the brutality of our world, but the truth is we either make them part of us, or we risk them becoming weak seams that split and unravel in the worst moments.

She must not be weak. She must not be soft when softness equals ruin. She must be courageous in a way that is practical and cold. Bold enough to make a decision when the room is frantic. Ruthless enough to watch cowardice and remove it. That is what the position requires. It is what I require of anyone who sits near me.

The idea felt like a betrayal in parts of me I rarely let meet the light. How do I make someone who is still my responsibility learn to be what this family expects? There is a difference between protecting and coddling. Between sheltering and dooming. I was not a man who would watch the former happen and allow the later to follow.

I moved quietly toward the bed and stood over her for a moment, watching the shadows play across her face. The hotel of the world had shifted for her tonight; she had been moved into a room where the ceilings were heavy and full of history. She belonged, whether she wanted it or not…. to the family that wore crowns made of other people’s fear. I felt a perverse swell of possessiveness, then immediately curbed it. Possession was not protection.

I reached for the earpiece on the table and dialed Luca again.

“Luca,” I said without preamble when he answered. “Underground bunker Now.”

“On my way, boss.” He was already aligning. Good. That’s why I kept him close. Silent, competent, necessary.

“Meet me there in twenty,” I ordered. “Bring Tiago. Prepare the training ground. Make arrangements. Nora starts training tomorrow.”

There it was, the sentence that felt like a declaration. “Nora starts training tomorrow.” Saying it felt irregular, like setting a new calendar for an old war. I did not want to coddle her, but I would not have her surprised into a fatal mistake either.

Luca did not hesitate. “Understood.” His voice had the cadence of a man who had lived a long time on plans and follow-through. “We’ll have the layout ready. Ammunition, targets, tactical drills. Physical training and situational drills. We’ll have Diego and a few of the older men rotate in. We’ll be ready by dawn.”

Good. They would be ready. I would be ready. I had to be. I was both sword and shield for this family, and now for her, whether I wanted it or not.

I replaced the earpiece and watched her chest rise and fall below my sightline. The villa was quiet beyond the immediate staff who still moved like sleepwalkers about their business. Outside, the night held its breath. Inside, everything I had built settled into a new alignment.

She would have to learn. Fast. Tomorrow would be the first day I break something in her and then teach her how to rebuild it stronger. That was how we survived. That was how we stayed the crown.

I stood there until the first thin strip of dawn began to gray the windows, until the whole house felt like a living thing that had waited for a new command. Then I left the room, and the house, and the world of sleep to the responsibilities that would define the next chapter: men to interrogate, alliances to secure, the kinikan to prepare. I had blood to answer with blood and protection to shape into a weapon that could be wielded.

She slept on, and for the first time since this had begun, I allowed myself a thought that had nothing to do with power or revenge.

I would teach her to keep her hands open when she wanted to hold mine, and to close them when she had to make someone else open theirs