The city was mending, but the past had a way of bleeding through fresh plaster and polished marble. Three weeks after the last gunshot echoed through the streets, Damian Moretti walked through the dim corridors of the old Moretti Archives—an underground vault beneath the estate where decades of the family’s rise and fall were preserved in dust, ledgers, and whispers. Only a handful of people had ever entered these halls. “Why are we down here?” Adriana asked, her voice hushed as their footsteps echoed against stone walls. “Because before we can build forward,” Damian said, unlocking a steel door with a heavy key, “we have to know exactly what we’ve inherited.” The door creaked open, revealing rows upon rows of shelves stacked with files, tapes, faded photographs, and coded ledgers. The air smelled of old paper and something heavier—history soaked in blood. In the aftermath of Isabella’s fall, Damian had ordered his men to bring any remaining records from abandoned safehouses, ware
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