Chapter Twenty-Four

The Devil Knocks Softly

The silence in the estate was deceptive.

Not peace.

Not calm.

Just a pause between storms.

Amara stood on the balcony at sunrise, arms crossed against the Sicilian wind. Below, the courtyard was empty, but inside — she could feel it. The whispers. The waiting. The loyalty that held like a tight wire strung between fear and ambition.

And it would only take one more pull to snap.

Behind her, the door creaked.

She didn't turn.

“You're up early,” Luca said.

“I didn't sleep.”

He came closer, warm against her back. “Still thinking about Alessandro?”

“No.” Her voice was low. “I'm thinking about who comes next.”

They didn’t kill Alessandro.

Not yet.

That was the part that left a taste like rust in her mouth.

He was still breathing in the dark, screaming at walls no one would answer. Still bleeding arrogance. Still baiting her with half-truths and memories from a past she thought she'd buried.

But she needed him alive — for now.

There were names he hadn't given.

And one in particular that haunted the corners of her thoughts like smoke.

Dante Romano.

The Devil of Naples.

The man her father once feared enough to pay off instead of confront.

The man who hadn't surfaced — until now.

Silva brought the news mid-morning, her voice clipped through the secure community.

“We have a problem.”

Amara raised a brow. “Which one?”

“A message. Unsigned. But we traced the encryption route. It came from Naples.”

Luca stiffened beside her.

“Romano?” He asked.

Silva nodded. “His signature style. Triple bounce through Vatican servers, then re-coded using old Moretti ciphers.”

“He's flexing,” Amara muttered.

“No,” Silva said. “He's warning you.”

The message was short.

Eight words..

“Kings fall. Queens bleed. Thrones burn. Time's up.”

No signature. No emblem. Just ash folded into code.

Amara stood at the screen.

Luca said nothing.

Because there was nothing to say.

Only one man would dare write that.

Only one man believed he could end her reign before it truly began.

That night, she gathered her inner circle in the war room.

Silva. Mateo. Zeyna. Luca.

No advisors. No dons.

Only the ones who would die before betraying her.

“We need to talk about Dante Romano,” Amara said.

Silence.

Then Mateo spoke, low. “The Devil doesn't come unless he smells weakness.”

“He smells Alessandro.”

“He smells war,” Silva added. “He wants your seat.”

“He can try to take it.”

“You can't fight men like him in the open,” Zeyna said. “You fight with ghosts. Secrets. Shadows.”

“I don't want him dead,” Amara said. “I want him erased.”

For three days, they planned.

Moved assets.

Scrambled safe houses.

Set fire to the ports Dante had once used as passages.

Amara didn't sleep.

Didn't blink.

She moved like a woman haunted, because she was.

Haunted by her father's face when he said, “We don't fight Romano. We survive him.”

Haunted by the way Alessandro whispered “You'll never be more than his puppet.”

But mostly, she was haunted by herself.

By the girl she'd been before Sicily, before Luca, before blood soaked the soles of her boots and made her queen.

Then the first bomb dropped.

Literally.

A Moretti-owned warehouse in Trapani exploded at midnight.

Five men killed.

Fifty million euros of weapons gone in fire and smoke.

Romano didn't claim it.

He didn't need to.

Amara watched the footage on loop, jaw locked, teeth grinding.

“This is his opening move,” mateo said grimly.

“No” she said. “It's his mistake.”

She called him.

Used a line only five people in Italy knew still existed.

He picked up after three rings.

“Bold of you,” he said.

His voice was smooth. Refined. Brutal.

Like poison in a crystal glass.

“Cowardice never looked good on me,” she replied.

Silence.

Then laughter.

“You sound like your fathet.”

“I'm better.”

“Are you?”

“You lit a fire in Trapani,” she said.

“You're the queen. You should know — ashes make fertile ground.”

“I'm coming for you.”

“I hope so,” he said. “Because I'm already here.”

The line went dead.

Panic didn't ripple through her.

Rage did.

Controlled. Cold.

She snapped her fingers. “Sweep the estate. Every room, every level. He's not bluffing.”

Luca was already on the move.

Amara followed.

But even as they swept hall after hall, floor after floor — nothing.

No breach.

No trace.

Just the eerie sense that someone had touched the air and left footprints.

“He's got in,” Silva said through the comm. “Not physically. Digitally. The entire system's been shadowed. We've been blind for twelve hours.”

Amara stood in the center of the Great hall.

“Romano’s not here,” she said.

“But he's watching.

That night, she slept for the first time in days.

But only because Luca held her.

And only because her gun was under the pillow.

Dreams came like knives.

Memories of her mother screaming

Of her father falling.

Of men with no faces whispering that power was an illusion unless someone feared you for it.

She woke before dawn.

Eyes wide.

Heart like steel.

It was time.

By morning, Dante Romano’s photo was printed on every target sheets in the training yard.

His name whispered through the halls like a threat and a prayer.

Amara stood before the army.

And said what needed saying.

“Tjus is the final storm. You stay, you bleed. You run, you'll be hunted. You betray me, I'll carve your name into stone and feed it to your family.”

No one moved.

No one blinked.

Then —

Zeyna stepped forward.

Raised a fist.

“For the Queen.”

The others followed.

A dozen.

Then twenty.

Then a of them.

Amara nodded.

And turned toward the fire.

Far away, in the catacombs beneath an abandoned monastery, Dante Romano poured himself a glass of Barolo and studied the feed of Amara on his monitor.

“She's ready,” he murmured to the shadows behind him.

A voice responded. “Then we begin.”