Reputation and control

Luciano:

She called.

Right on time.

I didn’t bother smiling. It wasn’t my style. But the satisfaction curled inside me like smoke wrapping around a fire. Precise. Predictable. So was she.

Ava Rivera was exactly the kind of woman who would fight her own instincts until she bled. But in the end, she called. They always do.

I stood in front of the tall windows, the city sprawled beneath me in chaos and filth, lit by ambition and rot. A reflection of my kingdom. My prison. My legacy. I watched the skyline like a man watching obsessed—never moved by sentiment, only by power.

The call had been short. Clean. Controlled. She’d tried to set boundaries. Tried to bite. She was sharp, sure. But not sharp enough to cut me.

Not yet.

Still, there was potential.

I turned slowly, the creak of my leather shoes filling the air as I stepped away from the window. The fire in the hearth was dying low, casting long shadows across the shelves lined with books I’d never read, gifts I didn’t care about, weapons I didn’t need. Everything in this room was for show.

Except her.

Ava Rivera wasn’t part of the plan. She was an improvisation—a beautiful, reluctant piece in a game I was rigging from the inside out.

The kind of woman who thought principles were enough. Who believed in justice the way children believe in monsters under the bed. But monsters weren’t under the bed.

They sat in courtrooms.

In tailored suits.

With pens instead of knives.

I admired her for fighting it. The moral line she gripped with white knuckles. But I knew better than anyone how easily that line could blur.

Especially when money, reputation, legacy—control—hung in the balance.

“Ava,” I said her name aloud, testing it on my tongue. Clean. Elegant. Strong.

My men had sent the surveillance footage. She’d paced for an hour before calling. Stripped her heels off like they offended her. Swore at the wine bottle. Tried to convince herself not to do what she was always going to do.

A woman like that doesn’t walk away from a man like me.

She walks straight into the fire and convinces herself she’s immune to the burn.

I sat down at my desk, the wood cold beneath my palms, and opened the folder I’d had compiled on her. Ten years of spotless defense records. Clean. Controlled. Cold when she needed to be, passionate when it suited her. Always played the system from within—never breaking it, just bending the rules until they nearly snapped.

Her father’s past was an anchor she carried without even knowing it. His name still whispered through certain circles like a cautionary tale. Funny how legacies worked. She wanted so badly to be nothing like him, and yet… here she was.

On my payroll.

In my world.

One step closer to the edge.

She thought she was in control. Thought this was her choice. But choice was a myth. What Ava didn’t realize was that she’d already been chosen long before she walked into that room.

I’d seen dozens of attorneys before her. Slick ones. Greedy ones. Scared ones. I didn’t need someone who would say yes. I needed someone who would say no—then show up anyway.

Conviction wrapped in denial. Fire hidden in frost.

Ava Rivera was exactly that.

She’d try to tame this case like it was a courtroom drama with rules and ethics. She’d try to draw lines in the sand. But sand shifts. And by the time she realized that, she’d be standing on nothing but ash.

Good. Let her burn a little.

I didn’t want easy.

I wanted her.

Not because she could save me. I didn’t need saving.

Because she wanted to.

Because she believed she could.

And belief is the most dangerous weapon of all.

I picked up my glass of scotch and leaned back, letting the silence press in around me. I had empires to unravel. Enemies in every direction. Blood in the water.

But right now, all I could think about was Ava Rivera’s voice—steady, clear, trying so damn hard not to flinch when she looked at me.

She’d flinch soon enough.

But not out of fear.

Out of recognition. Out of obsession. Out of the slow, rotting truth that once you enter my world, there is no walking away.

And I’d be waiting when that truth finally broke her wide open.