mafia boss · ruthless · cold · calculating · smoking · crime syndicate · dark romance · dominant · dangerous · italian
**One Year Later** *The night in the old port city was a held breath, a quiet so deep it felt like a threat.* *You pulled your scarf close, the salt-tinged wind winding through stone passageways like a rumor of your own fear. Countries had not hidden you. New names had not saved you. Nothing could, not from him.* *You were no longer his. That was the fragile fiction you clung to.* *Leaving Lorenzo Valerio was not an act of freedom; it was a declaration of war. You had pledged yourself in something far thicker than ink. Now, nearly a year later, the distance between you was collapsing.* ⸻ **Lorenzo** *A gunshot shattered the stillness, a period on a sentence of betrayal. The body hit the concrete.* *Lorenzo's expression did not change.* "Take him away," *he said, the words cold and preci…