CHAPTER SIX - FIRE, BLOOD AND MIST

Lucia froze.

Her entire body tightened like a bow ready to snap. Enzo’s shaking hand pointed toward the far corner of the nursery, where the soft night lamp flickered weakly, casting strange shadows across the torn curtains.

“There…” Enzo whispered, voice cracked and thin.

Lucia stepped forward slowly, her boots sinking into broken toys and shards of glass. Smoke still drifted from the hallway, carrying the scent of fire and charred wood. Rain tapped against the half shattered window, steady and cold, like a heartbeat reminding her she was still alive.

Then she saw it.

Her son.

Small. Silent.

Curled beneath the crib.

Sleeping.

But not where she left him.

Lucia’s vision blurred, not from tears but from a rage so sharp it felt like her blood had turned into knives. She lunged forward and scooped him up, trembling arms closing around the warm little body as if she could fuse him back into her chest.

Then she saw the cloth.

A piece of red fabric was tied to the child’s tiny wrist.

Red.

The color of warning.

The color of blood.

The color of death promised.

A folded note was slid just beneath his open hand, as if placed there gently… almost lovingly. That was worse. Someone had been close enough to touch him, place something on him, breathe near him while Lucia fought for her life in the next room.

Her mouth went dry.

“Enzo…” she whispered, voice hollow, “someone was here. Someone bent over him. Someone touched him.”

Enzo’s face drained of color. His eyes darted around the room, scanning shadows, walls, ceiling, every inch of space. His panic was raw now, stripped of his usual confidence.

“Read it,” he said.

Lucia peeled the note open with shaking fingers. Her eyes moved quickly over the ink, and her jaw clenched tighter with every word.

The message was short.

He sleeps like a prince.

Protect him better.

Next time I carry him out.

Her grip tightened so violently the paper crumpled into her palm.

A roar built in her chest, fierce enough to shake the ruined walls. She wanted to tear apart the city stone by stone. She wanted to rip open every hiding place. She wanted to find the man who had dared come near her son and carve his name into the pavement with his own bones.

The red cloth fluttered in her hand.

A symbol.

A provocation.

A promise.

Enzo swallowed hard. “Lucia… this is someone bold. Someone confident. Someone who wanted us to know he could have taken the boy.”

Lucia didn’t answer. Her eyes burned with the kind of fury that made even loyal men step back.

She wasn’t shaking anymore.

She was too angry for fear.

She lay the boy gently on her shoulder, feeling his soft breaths against her neck, and stared at the red cloth again. Whoever left it wanted her attention. They wanted to strip away her certainty. They wanted to show her how close death could creep.

But they did not know Lucia Romano.

They did not know what she would do in retaliation.

Or maybe… maybe they knew exactly what she was capable of, and that was the message.

A challenge.

A threat.

A game beginning.

“Enzo,” she said through clenched teeth. “Find out who breached my home. I want names. I want their families. I want their graves ready before sunrise.”

Enzo nodded, his voice low. “We will not sleep.”

Lucia tightened her hold on her son, and for a moment, she felt the familiar instinct: protect, shield, guard with her life.

But something shifted inside her.

Something subtle.

Something dangerous.

She stared at the red cloth again and realized something she didn’t want to admit.

Fear felt like weakness.

And tonight she felt weak.

Weakness poisoned her.

She couldn’t afford it.

Not now.

Not ever.

As the flames outside continued to die out, and the rain washed blood from the broken steps, Lucia felt a new resolve forming. A colder one. A harder one. The kind that replaced maternal instinct with something far more calculated.

Because if the enemy was going to reach this close to her child… then maybe her heart needed to be out of reach. Maybe the boy needed to stand on his own feet one day, without clinging to her.

Her son tightened his tiny fingers around her dress, and the moment of softness almost broke her.

Almost.

A heavy knock shook the doorframe.

One of her guards stepped in, bloodied but standing. “Signora… someone is here.”

Lucia turned sharply. “Who?”

“A man… he calls himself Vanguard.”

Enzo stiffened.

Lucia’s brows drew together, suspicion slicing through her like a blade.

“Bring him,” she said.

The room felt colder suddenly, as if the very walls sensed a storm approaching.

A moment later, the man stepped through the doorway.

Tall.

Broad shoulders.

A face carved in hard lines.

Eyes dark, unreadable, sharp enough to strip a soul bare.

His presence filled the room instantly.

He looked at Lucia first—slow, unbothered, fearless.

Then at the boy on her shoulder.

Then at the red cloth in her hand.

Something unreadable flickered in his gaze.

“Signora,” he said, voice low, rough, powerful. “I heard your home was touched. I came.”

Lucia’s breath caught.

Not from fear.

From something she didn’t want to feel.

Interest.

Dangerous interest.

His eyes locked with hers.

Calm in chaos.

Fire meeting fire.

Vanguard.

A name whispered in Palermo like a curse.

A man as ruthless as Guerrero once was.

A man who didn’t bow to anyone.

Lucia felt her heartbeat shift, slow and strange.

A dangerous pull.

Something she had not expected.

Something she did not want.

But something she could not deny.

She straightened her spine, holding her son tightly.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

Vanguard stepped closer, eyes never leaving hers.

“Because someone dared to threaten what belongs to you,” he said, voice deep, steady. “And I do not tolerate cowards who strike from shadows.”

Lucia felt something inside her tilt.

A dangerous beginning.

A new path forming.

One that would slowly pull her away from her son…

and toward a man who walked like violence wrapped in flesh.

Enzo watched them both, his face tense.

The boy slept on.

Unaware that tonight marked the first shift in his mother’s heart.

A shift that would haunt his childhood.

A shift that would shape the legend he would become.

Lucia glanced at her son one last time… and felt her grip loosen, just a little.

Too little.

Too dangerous.

And the storm outside whispered a warning:

A mother’s heart was beginning to wander.

And the boy…

the bastard son of Guerrero Valenti…

would soon learn that love was the most dangerous weapon of all.