“You came back to lead or to die, Matteo?”The question cut the air like a held breath. Matteo heard it as he watched the private jet descend through a curtain of rain, its lights like distant stars falling. He did not answer at once. He never did, not when the cost of speech could be measured in bullets or broken lives.Enzo stood at his shoulder while the hangar doors rumbled open, the cold wind slicing rain across their faces. “That’s Luca,” Enzo said, tone low. “He never learned how to ask lightly.”Matteo let the answer live in his chest. He had come back to take what had been taken from him. He had come to build something that would not be swallowed by fire. Yet every step toward a throne had the same weight: the possibility of falling.When the SUVs rolled up onto the wet tarmac, the men who stepped out smelled like the past that would not die. Luca walked first, rain like a crown on his shoulders. He looked older, yes, but the same in the way only brothers can be: the same gri