The Widow’s Blood Debt
The air tasted of salt, expensive espresso, and the lingering scent of wet acrylic.
There, sitting at a long, hand-carved table of reclaimed oak, were the four ghosts who still ruled my world.
Dante and Julian looked like they had finally negotiated a permanent ceasefire with time. Dante’s hair was a stark, regal white, but his shoulders remained as broad as a mountain range, his scarred hands steady as he poured a vintage Nero d'Avola for a man who had once been his greatest rival’s heir. Julian sat beside him, lean and predatory as ever, his eyes still flickering with the green digital rain of a thousand simultaneous equations. He was currently debating the "Mathematics of Aesthetic Value"