Semua Bab Ruthless Empire: Bound To The Mafia Don: Bab 1 - Bab 5

Chapter 1 ~ Manhattan, New York ~**Alessia**Love is a weapon in this family.I learned that young. Not from words, but from watching my papà use it. Watching him smile at my mama like she was his entire world, then smile at his soldiers the same way before sending them to die. Love is just another tool. A way to control, a way to destroy.The locket at my throat felt heavier than it should. I touched it without thinking, running my thumb over the pendant my mother had given me years before she died. Back when she still had time to give me things that mattered.The kitchen smelled like rosemary and garlic, warm and rich, completely at odds with the cold weight in my chest. The news played low on the television. Another murder in Manhattan. Bodies found in the warehouse district.Three dead. No leads. No names yet.“Figlia mia, you’ll damage your mind with all this death,” Nonna said, appearing beside me with the grace of someone who’d been moving through kitchens for sixty years. Sh

Chapter 3**Alessia**“Put the gun down, Petro.”“He killed Vito.” Petro’s voice cracked, raw and unsteady, rage bleeding through every word. His grip tightened, the barrel pressing harder against my temple. “My cousin died like a dog and you expect me to sit here and eat?”Enzo’s gaze darkened. His hand moved toward his gun when he saw Petro wasn’t ready to drop the gun, ready to end this himself. “Don’t.” Papà snapped at him.“Put. It. Down.” Leonardo’s voice resounded again, quiet and absolute.Petro hesitated.That hesitation cost him everything.The gunshot deafened the room.One moment there was cold metal pressed to my skull. The next…nothing. Just the echo of it and the smell of gunpowder.Petro’s body hit the floor.Warm liquid dotted my face and dress.I couldn’t breathe.Guards shifted uncertainly, hands still on weapons. The air was thick enough to choke on. One wrong move and this careful negotiation would explode into full war right here at this table.Salvatore was wat

Chapter 2**Leonardo**Peace was never a word my father respected. Rafael Mancini believed in taking until there was nothing left, in breaking things simply because he could, in pushing until the other side begged for mercy.For years, that approach worked. Until it didn’t.Five years of bloodshed blurred into one long, pointless cycle. Territory lost, reclaimed, and lost again. Men dying for reasons that stopped making sense long before the war should have ended. And through all of it, nothing truly changed.That was the problem.Wars didn’t last that long without purpose. Not unless someone was keeping them alive, feeding them, using the chaos to hide something deeper.My papà either never saw it, or he saw it too late. The bullet that killed him might have been the only answer he ever got.War is only useful when it gives you something. This one had stopped giving a long time ago.So I shifted it.Not by ending it…but by changing how it was played.Giovanni understood that. That wa