Blood and Badge
“You are a reader of people, Lia. What did you read at that table tonight?”
The question was a gambit. He was asking for her analysis using her as the strategic asset he’d claimed she was.
She took a breath, choosing truth as her weapon. “I read about a king who fears his heir. I read an heir who is being choked by tradition and tested by a reckless prince. I read a room full of men waiting to see which way the wind blows, led by a man who smiles while he sharpens the knife.”
A long, heavy silence followed. Dante stared at her, and for a fleeting second, the calculated mask vanished. She saw not a mafia underboss, but a man carrying the crushing weight of a legacy that was both his birthrigh
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