The morning broke in eerie silence after weeks of chaos. Palermo's skyline, bruised and gray from days of conflict, seemed to hold its breath as though the city itself was waiting for something to end or begin. The DeLuca estate stood like a fortress of survival, its walls marked by the scars of battle, its halls echoing with the ghosts of all that had been lost. Inside, Luca and Aria faced the dawn not as fugitives, not as enemies of fate, but as two people standing at the edge of their past, ready to end it once and for all.
Luca hadn't slept in two nights. The circles beneath his eyes were as dark as the memories that haunted him, his father's blood on marble floors, Matteo's betrayal, the countless faces of men he'd buried to keep a name alive that no longer meant peace. When Aria found him in the study, his hands were braced against the desk, eyes fixed on a photograph, an old black-and-white picture of his family before the rot began.
