The war had ended, but the silence that followed was worse than the gunfire.Southbridge reeked of smoke and iron. Windows were shattered, cars burned to their frames, and the river ran dark with what the streets refused to bury. The news called it a cease-fire. The cops called it chaos.Dario called it unfinished business.He stood at the edge of the bridge that bore his empire’s name, watching the city breathe in the distance. The skyline shimmered through the haze like a promise he could never keep.Vince joined him, nursing a bandaged shoulder. “No word from Alvaro’s crew in forty-eight hours,” he said. “It’s quiet.”“Too quiet,” Dario muttered. “The dead don’t stay silent that long.”Vince glanced sideways. “You think he’s gone?”Dario exhaled smoke through his nose. “No. Men like Alvaro don’t vanish. They wait. They rebuild. They whisper.” He turned toward the city. “And then they bite.”In the week that followed, Dario rebuilt.He moved his headquarters from La Rosa’s ruins to

The rain had stopped by morning, but the streets still looked drowned.Southbridge smelled of smoke and gunpowder, the air thick with the stench of what the night had taken.Dario stood at the window of the old station office, staring at the rising smoke from the yards below. The city felt different now — quieter, like it was holding its breath. Somewhere beneath that silence, Vince’s blood was drying on the concrete.The body was gone. The men had buried him by the East Wall — no ceremony, no words, just dirt and memory. But Dario didn’t go. He couldn’t. Kings didn’t attend funerals; they made sure no one else held one.He turned as Nico entered the room. The young man looked pale, his hoodie stained with dried blood.“Boss,” Nico said carefully, “the boys are asking what happens now.”Dario lit a cigarette, his movements mechanical. “Now?” He exhaled a slow cloud. “Now we rebuild.”Nico shifted uncomfortably. “We lost twenty men. The docks are gone. The Serpents—”Dario cut him off.

The night after Enzo’s disappearance, Southbridge looked quiet only from a distance. Up close, it vibrated with the same tension before a thunderstorm. No one said Dario killed his lieutenant, but everyone felt it. The city breathed through its teeth—slow, careful, waiting.From his penthouse window, Dario watched the glow of the docks spread like molten metal across the river. Containers moved in mechanical rhythm, cranes creaking against the wind. Everything down there—every gun, every shipment, every man—answered to him now.He should have felt invincible. Instead, the silence pressed on his chest like a hand.He kept seeing Enzo’s chair at the table—empty, accusing. Vince’s ghost had been loud; Enzo’s was worse. It said nothing. It just waited.Dario tried to drown it in routine.At sunrise, he met with suppliers from the north side. By noon, he reviewed the books. By dusk, he toured the warehouses. Every hour accounted for, every weakness patched.But paranoia breeds from order a

The city slept uneasily after the Warehouse 13 inferno. Sirens had long faded, but the smoke still lingered over Southbridge, blacking out stars that rarely dared to shine there anyway. The streets whispered rumors like old ghosts — some said Dario Moretti was finished, others swore he was preparing a reckoning.Inside the penthouse, the curtains were drawn tight, the lights low. A chessboard sat on the glass table before Dario. Half the pieces were missing. The black king stood alone, surrounded by empty spaces.Dario hadn’t slept in days. He stared at that king as if the marble figure held answers. His mind replayed the same questions: Who betrayed me first? Was it Luca? Marco? The city itself?His reflection in the window looked more stranger than familiar now — the eyes too sharp, the face drawn and sleepless. He’d started keeping a gun beside his breakfast plate. A second by the shower. A third hidden behind a bookcase. Every creak in the floorboards made him reach for one.The e

The city hadn’t slept in three nights.Southbridge lay beneath a haze of gunpowder and diesel, its alleys lined with burned cars and bodies no one dared claim. The neon lights still flickered, casting the same hungry glow, but the streets had changed — the whispers were gone. Fear had finally found a name, and that name was Dario Moretti.He stood in the middle of his old block, coat collar turned up against the wind, as the sun broke through the smoke. Around him, his men were sweeping through the remnants of Marco’s rebellion — a scattered network of crews, crushed one by one. The war had cost him soldiers, money, and trust. But it had also burned away the weak.Enzo approached, blood on his sleeve, his expression unreadable.“Marco’s dead. We found his body by the docks. He tried to run.”Dario didn’t flinch. “Make sure it’s public. The city needs to see what running from me looks like.”Enzo hesitated. “You sure? That’ll start panic in his neighborhoods.”“Good,” Dario said, voice