The night Elena Vargas met Luca Moretti, the rain was falling hard enough to blur the city lights into silver streaks. Coincidence brought them under the same awning outside a closed café—two strangers hiding from a storm, neither knowing the other carried a legacy soaked in blood.
Elena adjusted her leather jacket, her dark eyes sharp but tired. She'd flown in under a false name, just another woman in a foreign city trying to disappear for one night. No bodyguards. No cartel business. Just her and the quiet ache of wanting something normal.
Luca noticed her first because she didn't look afraid.
Most people sensed power on him before he spoke—the tailored coat, the calm stillness of a man who'd survived too much. He was the youngest mafia boss the Moretti family had ever produced, a man who commanded loyalty with silence rather than shouting. Yet there, stranded by rain, he was simply a man intrigued by a woman who met his gaze without flinching.