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The Red Flame [Marvel]

RedBoy07
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The average realized release rate over the past 30 days is 7 chs / week.
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Synopsis
Dante Cavarro inherits his father’s empire at seventeen—guns, money, blood, and all. They think he’s too young. Too angry. Too unstable. They’re right. Because beneath the suits and smoke, there’s something else inside him. Something ancient. Something furious. And every time he loses control, the city burns a little more. The mafia feared his father. But the world’s about to learn what it means to fear the son.
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Chapter 1 - The Death Of The Lion

It was quiet in the Cavarro mansion.

Not the kind of quiet that came from peace—this was the heavy, suffocating kind. The kind that clung to the velvet wallpaper and seeped into the marble floors. The kind that made the guards outside shift uncomfortably and pretend they couldn't hear what was happening upstairs.

Dante sat beside the bed, jaw locked, hands still.

His father—Leon Cavarro, the Lion of Brooklyn, the man who once made senators flinch with a phone call—was dying.

Not in some grand, bloody shootout. Not in a storm of revenge or justice.No. Just a hospital bed wheeled into their own damn living room, wires in his arms, a rattle in his lungs, and the fire going out behind his eyes.

"Dante," his father called.

"Father," he responded instantly.

"You listen to me now. Not the capos. Not your uncles. Me." Leon told.

Dante didn't speak. His eyes burned. The walls around him were starting to sweat. The fireplace, unlit, flickered faintly on its own.

His father's hand, cold and trembling, closed around his wrist.

"They'll come for it. The throne. The name. But it's yours. You were born for this."

Another breath. 

"And whatever's inside you… whatever it is… don't let it control you."

Then he was gone.

Just like that.Just… silence.

And in that silence, Dante stood up, shoulders square, fire behind his eyes.

He didn't cry. He didn't speak. He didn't look at anyone.

"Master Dante..." a servant called out. "Should we inform the fami-"

"EY!" Dante snapped. "Get out." he ordered.

The servant nodded before hurrying outside.

The door clicked shut behind the servant, and for a moment, Dante was alone.

Truly alone.

The kind of alone that didn't feel peaceful.It felt loaded.

He looked down at his father—what was left of him. Still. Small. Suddenly just… a man.

Not the legend. Not the empire. Just a body, cooling under a linen sheet.

Dante reached out slowly and pulled the sheet over his face.

The tips of his fingers smoldered where they touched the fabric. Tiny black burns, curling like paper in flame.

He didn't notice.

Downstairs, voices were already gathering like flies.

Uncles. Capos. "Allies." Men who used to kiss his father's hand were now whispering his name like it was a problem.

He could hear them through the floor. The shift in tone. The plans already forming.

He breathed in.The air was thick with smoke.

There was no fire. Not yet.

He turned from the bed and walked down the hallway—long, dark, lined with old portraits of old men pretending they were gods. He passed them without looking. Every lightbulb overhead flickered and dimmed as he passed.

When he reached the top of the grand staircase, he saw them. All of them.

Suited. Smiling. Smelling like deals.

Capo Salieri raised a glass.

"To the Lion," he said. "May he rest in power."

The others repeated it with fake grief and greedy eyes.

Dante didn't come down.

He just stood at the top of the stairs, hands clenched at his sides, a faint heat haze curling off his back like smoke rising from coals.

"Put the glasses down," he said. His voice wasn't loud—but it rang.

Everyone looked up.

"We don't drink until the body's in the ground. You know that."

Salieri smiled like a vulture.

"And you know the rules say the seat is open, Dante. You may be his son, but the Family-"

"Would you like to die, Salieri?" Dante asked.

The room fell still.

No one moved. No one breathed. Even the air seemed to pause, like it didn't want to get between them.

Salieri's smile twitched. Not quite gone—but not steady either.

"Same fiery nature as your father..." Salieri mumbled, forcing a chuckle, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

But the sweat gave him away.

"The family is mine. The seat is mine too. I'll be damned if I let scum like you tear it down."

Salieri opened his mouth to speak- 

And Dante moved.

Down the stairs.

"You want to talk about rules?" he said.

"You want to talk about family?"

He reached the floor and kept walking. His hands didn't glow. But everyone in the room could feel the heat building in their lungs. In their bones.

"You fed off my father's power your whole life. Took his protection. Took his money. Took his respect."

He stopped a few feet from Salieri.

"And the second his breath leaves his chest, you start sniffing for blood like a goddamn leech."

Salieri's throat bobbed.

"You think this fire is rage?" Dante asked. "This is grief."

His hand lifted—just slightly—and every candle in the room flared. The windows fogged from the heat. 

"He was my father. He was the best man I ever knew. And you dare smile like a vulture in his house? Give him some goddamn respect."

Dante leaned in, eyes burning so bright they cast shadows on Salieri's face.

"Say another word about 'open seats,' and I'll burn your name from this family so completely even God won't remember it."

And just like that, the heat vanished.

Not a word more was said.

Dante turned, walking back toward the long table at the front of the room. He pulled out the chair his father used to sit in. The leather was old. The frame was charred at the edges now.

He sat down.

"Now," he said quietly, "pour a drink."

Everyone froze.

Dante didn't look up.

"For my father."

Glasses clinked. Hands shook. Liquor was poured.

And this time, no one dared raise their glass before he did.

--------------------

Across the river, high above Manhattan in a penthouse with windows tall enough to look down on God, a man watched the news on mute.

The chyron crawled across the bottom of the screen:"LEON CAVARRO, ALLEGED MOB BOSS, DIES OF NATURAL CAUSES"(Alleged. Cute.)

The man in the chair didn't blink.

He was large - not fat, not thick. Big. His skin looked carved from smooth stone, and his white suit didn't wrinkle when he moved. Mostly because he didn't move unless he had to.

In his hand, a crystal tumbler of something old enough to vote.

Behind him, three screens displayed security feeds from every borough - cars, ports, shipments, phone calls. All running smoothly.

Until now.

"The Lion is dead." 

The Kingpin's penthouse was dark except for the glow of a desk lamp.

Wilson Fisk didn't sit. He stood with one hand braced on the edge of the desk, reading the note twice, then once more. The handwriting was familiar.

He didn't need a signature. He knew exactly which rat in the Cavarro family sent it.

Just five word.

"Cavarro is gone. The boy rules."

Fisk folded the note. Set it on fire in a silver ashtray. Watched it curl into ash.

No theatrics. No monologue. Just a long breath through his nose.

"So the Lion's cub takes the throne," he murmured.

He turned to the wall - lined with files, photos, profiles. He found the one marked D. Cavarro, pulled it down with two thick fingers.

A photo clipped to the front - Dante. Scowling. 

Fisk stared at it a long time. Then opened the folder.

"Let's see what kind of animal you really are."

"What happened honey?" his wife asked him.

He sighed, "Nothing Vanessa. Just some good old news." He said, reassuring her.

"A threat?" she asked softly, coming to stand beside him.

Fisk shook his head, swirling the drink once.

"Not yet," he said. "But he will be."

Vanessa picked up the photograph from the folder.

"You think he's like his father?"

Fisk took a long sip.

"I think he's worse," he murmured.

-----------------------

Three days after the funeral, Dante sat in his father's office—now his office—staring at ledgers.

The Cavarro family were shipping. Real estate. Construction. Legitimate businesses that breathed money into offshore accounts while washing blood from their hands.

But the numbers were wrong.

Dante's jaw tightened. The numbers didn't add up - phantom shipments, inflated contracts, vanishing port fees.

Someone had been skimming. For months.

A knock at the door interrupted his calculations.

"Come in."

Marciano Perfetti stepped through - six feet of weathered loyalty in a charcoal suit. He'd been Leon's shadow for twenty-seven years. Gray at the temples now, but his hands were still steady and his eyes still sharp enough to get shit done.

"Dante," he said, closing the door behind him. No formalities. Never had been with Marciano. "You look like your old man when he found out the Torrino family was moving heroin through our docks."

"Worse," Dante said, not looking up from the ledger. "Someone's been playing accountant with our money."

Marciano moved closer, glancing at the numbers. His face didn't change, but Dante caught the slight tightening around his eyes.

"How much?"

"Two point seven million. Over eight months." Dante leaned back in the leather chair. "Someone very good at math and very bad at loyalty."

"Salieri?"

"Too obvious. And too stupid." Dante closed the ledger and reached for another. "This is precise. Careful. Spread across multiple operations so no single loss looks suspicious."

Marciano poured himself a scotch from the bar cart—privilege earned through decades of bleeding for the family.

"Your father always said the real enemy isn't the one pointing a gun at your face. It's the one balancing your books."

"Smart man."

"He also said something else." Marciano took a sip, studying Dante over the rim. "He said you had a mind for numbers that scared him sometimes."

Dante opened the next ledger. Port Authority receipts. His finger moved down the columns like he was reading sheet music.

"Here," he said, tapping a line. "Pier 47. We're paying docking fees for ships that don't exist. Phantom cargo that somehow generates real revenue." He flipped pages. "And here. Construction materials for the Atlantic Avenue project—cement orders that don't match the foundation specs."

"Inside job?"

"Has to be. Someone with access to both the shipping manifests and the construction accounts." Dante's voice was calm, but the air in the room was getting warmer. "Someone close enough to know our systems but not close enough to care about the consequences."

Marciano set down his glass.

"Give me a name, and I'll handle it."

"No." Dante stood, walking to the window that overlooked the harbor. Ships moved like toys in the distance. Each one a source of revenue. Each one a potential leak. "We handle this smart. If we move too fast, we lose the money and the rat."

"So what's the play?"

Dante turned back to his father's desk—his desk now—and pulled out a fresh ledger. His handwriting was precise, methodical.

"We're going to give our thief exactly what they want. More opportunities. Bigger numbers. Make them think they're untouchable."

He wrote quickly, setting up dummy transactions across three different operations.

"Pier 51 gets a new shipping contract. Phantom cargo worth five million, spread over two weeks. Construction on the Brooklyn project gets an emergency materials order—inflated by fifty percent."

Marciano watched him work, a slight smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

"And when they take the bait?"

"We don't just catch them. We trace every dollar, every connection, every person who helped them." Dante's pen paused. "Then we send a message that makes Salieri's little rebellion look like a fucking tea party."

The office fell quiet except for the scratch of pen on paper. When Dante finished, he handed the ledger to Marciano.

"Set these up by tomorrow. Make sure whoever's watching sees all the right numbers."

Marciano flipped through the pages, nodding slowly.

"Your father would be proud. This is exactly the kind of move he'd make."

"No," Dante said, returning to his chair. "My father would have had you break legs until someone talked. This is me."

The older man paused at the door.

"There's a difference?"

Dante looked up, and for just a moment, the temperature in the room spiked.

"My father built this empire with fear and respect. I'm going to build it with precision and consequences." He leaned forward. "Fear fades, Marciano. But consequences? Those last forever."

Marciano smiled—the first real smile Dante had seen from him since the funeral.

"Leon always said you'd be different. Better."

"We'll see."

After Marciano left, Dante sat alone with his numbers and his plans. Outside, Brooklyn hummed with commerce and crime, money and murder, all flowing through pipelines his family had built over decades.

But now it was his turn to improve the design.

He picked up his phone and dialed a number from memory.

"Torrino Shipping? This is Dante Cavarro. I'd like to discuss a partnership..."

By midnight, he'd made seventeen calls, restructured three operations, and identified two more potential revenue streams. But more importantly, he'd done something his father never could have—modernized the family's approach without losing its teeth.

The next morning brought the first real test.

The capos filed into the conference room like pallbearers—Salieri, DiMarco, Torrino, and six others who'd grown fat off Leon's protection. They took their seats around the mahogany table, each man positioning himself like this was still a negotiation.

It wasn't.

Dante entered last, Marciano at his shoulder. He didn't sit in his father's chair at the head of the table. Instead, he remained standing, hands clasped behind his back.

"Gentlemen," he began, "we have a problem."

Salieri leaned back, that vulture smile creeping across his face.

"We have several problems, actually. Starting with—"

"Someone has been stealing from this family." Dante's voice cut through the room like a blade. "Two point seven million dollars over eight months."

The temperature dropped. Every man at the table suddenly found their hands very interesting.

"Now," Dante continued, pacing slowly behind their chairs, "in the old days, my father would have lined you all up and broken fingers until someone confessed. But I'm not my father."

He stopped behind Capo DiMarco's chair.

"I'm going to give the thief a choice. Confess now, return the money, and you lose only your fingers. Stay quiet..." The air shimmered with heat. "And you lose everything."

Silence stretched like a wire about to snap.

"You got proof of this theft?" Torrino asked, his voice steady but his collar damp with sweat.

Dante placed a folder in front of each man. Port manifests. Construction invoices. Bank transfers. The paper trail laid out like a prosecutor's dream.

"Phantom ships. Ghost materials. Money that walked out of our accounts and into someone's pocket." He returned to his position at the head of the table. "The beauty of it was the distribution—spread across operations so no single loss triggered an audit."

DiMarco flipped through his folder, face pale.

"This could be accounting errors—"

"Could be," Dante agreed. "But it's not." He pulled out his phone and played an audio recording.

"—just make sure the pier fees match the manifest dates, and the construction overage needs to look like materials inflation—"

The voice was familiar. Every man at the table knew it.

Capo Vincent Torrino closed his eyes.

"Vince," Salieri breathed. "Jesus Christ, Vince."

Torrino opened his eyes, and for a moment, Dante saw his father in the older man's resignation.

"I just needed the money- I had debts."

"So you betrayed the family..." Dante sighed. "Take him away. And kill him."

The guards nodded.

"No, no, no! Wait! Please!" He begged before they took him away.

"Always said Vince was sloppy. Pity. Could've used the warning." Salieri mumbled.

"Anyone else have financial problems they'd like to discuss?" Dante asked.

Heads shook around the table.

"Good. Because family means we help each other. But it also means we trust each other." He straightened his cuffs. "Betray that trust, and you'll find out that mercy is a one-time offer."

Salieri cleared his throat.

"What about Torrino's operations? His crew?"

"DiMarco gets the legitimate businesses. Salvatore gets the crew. The rest gets absorbed into the family's direct operations." Dante finally took his father's chair. "And going forward, all financial decisions above fifty thousand dollars go through me personally."

"That's a lot of micromanagement for a don," DiMarco observed.

"It's called leadership," Dante corrected. "My father built this family on loyalty and fear. I'm going to build it on loyalty and intelligence. Anyone who can't adapt to that is welcome to find other employment."

The meeting ended with handshakes that felt more like treaties than greetings.

When the room cleared, Marciano poured two glasses of wine.

"Torrino's crew won't like reporting to Salvatore," he said.

"Oh, well, we'll kill them."