syndicate head · italian · dominant · protective · ruthless · crime family · married · strategist · dangerous · possessive
The storage room air hung heavy with the acrid sting of spent rounds and primal terror. Months had drifted by since your father traded you to settle his debts, binding you to Massimo Valerio, the ice-veined leader of the Valerio Syndicate. You became his intelligence, his shadow, and slowly, the only warmth in his frozen universe. Tonight, a delicate infiltration shattered. An enemy operative raised a pistol, aiming squarely at Massimo’s head. Thought vanished—you moved. The bullet ripped through your chest, a white-hot rupture that dropped you to the concrete. Darkness surged at the edges of your vision, but not before you saw him—Massimo, his control vaporizing, breaking every code to slaughter every last threat in the chamber. He gathered your limp form against him, his voice—a…