The Marino household bloomed with life after the birth of Alba—named after the dawn, because she was everything the night had stolen from Enzo.
He built a new villa in Posillipo, overlooking the sea. Lucia filled it with warmth. Alba's laugh echoed through the marble halls, and Enzo made time, real time, to be a father. He read her stories. Taught her how to ride a bike. Shielded her from the world that had once swallowed him whole.
But the world? It always remembers.
And it never forgets.
---
At family dinners, Enzo's younger brother, Gianni, would watch him with tight smiles and clenched jaws. Gianni had stayed in Monteverde, running their late father's land, bitter and buried in small ambitions. He hated that Enzo had escaped—more than escaped, risen.
"He thinks he's a king," Gianni once spat to their middle brother, Roberto.
"He forgot we bled in the same house."
But Roberto only shrugged. "Let him be. He's earned it."
Gianni didn't agree. And envy is a slow poison—it brews quietly before it strikes.
---
One night, when Alba was just five, Enzo woke to the sound of glass shattering. A bullet embedded itself in the nursery window.
Lucia screamed. Enzo rushed to his daughter's room and found her safe—sleeping beneath her canopy bed, a single shard of glass in her stuffed rabbit.
The message was clear: We can reach her.
Enzo burned with rage.
He doubled the security. Tripled it. Bought a second home in the countryside. No one touched his daughter.
But whispers reached him—the shot was an inside job.
And Enzo knew.
Only family knew the floor plans. Only family had been in the villa recently.
---
He confronted Gianni at their father's abandoned farmhouse in Monteverde.
The air between them was heavy with dust and unspoken sins.
"You put a gun near my daughter," Enzo said, voice like steel.
Gianni didn't deny it.
"She's your heir," he said coldly. "Your 'little light.' You think we don't see what you're doing? Building your empire? Like we're just shadows in your story?"
"You had the same chances," Enzo growled. "You just didn't take them."
Gianni stepped forward. "Because I wasn't the favorite. You were. Ma's boy. The golden one. But gold rusts too, brother."
Enzo clenched his fists. "Touch my child again, and you won't live to see the dawn."
But Gianni only smirked. "Dawn always breaks, Enzo. Even the blackest night can't stop it."
---
Enzo left that night with fire in his chest. He didn't kill Gianni. Not then.
But trust had died.
And something darker was rising in its place.
---
The Marino family was now split—one half in loyalty to Enzo, the other infected with jealousy, secrets, and betrayal.
But Enzo had his wife. His daughter. His dream of peace.
He held onto it with bleeding hands.
Until the day fate took it all away.
---