All Chapters of Concrete Thrones: The Making of a Mafia Boss”: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
25 chapters
“The Ghost of Kings”
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 Fall of Vince
The city was restless again.Rain fell in thin, crooked lines, sliding down cracked windshields and broken glass. The storm didn’t wash away the blood — it only spread it thinner.Southbridge slept uneasily, but Dario didn’t sleep at all.He sat in his office, the lights dimmed, staring at an empty chair across from him. Vince’s chair.It had been three days since his right hand walked out the door. Three days of no contact, no word, no trail.Dario’s men searched the docks, the safe houses, even the dive bars that only ghosts remembered. Nothing.Some said Vince had gone underground.Others said he’d joined Alvaro’s remnants.Dario said nothing at all.But silence, in his world, was louder than betrayal.By the fourth night, the rain had turned to mist.Nico entered the room, his hoodie dripping. “Boss,” he said, out of breath, “we found him.”Dario didn’t move. “Where?”“Old station yard — north edge. He’s holed up with two of Alvaro’s lieutenants.”Dario rose slowly, the chair legs
“Ashes and Crowns”
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.
Concrete Crowns”
The city didn’t celebrate Vince’s fall. It mourned in silence. Southbridge’s air grew thick with something you couldn’t name — fear, grief, or maybe just the aftertaste of violence that lingered long after the gunfire faded.For Dario, it was the first night in months where no one came knocking on his door. No calls. No gunshots. Just silence. He should have slept. He didn’t.He sat alone in his office above the butcher shop — the same place Vince once stood, giving orders and breaking men’s spirits. The bloodstain on the concrete floor had long been scrubbed away, but in Dario’s mind, it was still there. He could still see Vince’s last glare, the betrayal painted across it, the way he fell — slow, heavy, final.Outside, the city lights flickered against the rain. Southbridge was his now. Every street corner, every warehouse, every frightened whisper of his name confirmed it. Dario Costa runs the game.But power was never quiet. Power had a voice — and it screamed.The paranoia came s
The Birth of a King”
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
“Shadows Over Southbridge”
Southbridge was no longer a neighborhood; it was a legend told in whispers. On paper, it had one of the lowest crime rates in the city. In truth, the violence had only changed uniform. Fear wore a badge now, or a suit, or a priest’s collar. And at the center of it all sat Dario Costa — the man who had built peace from paranoia.The city’s power brokers began to notice.I. The InvitationThe letter arrived in a black envelope, no return address, just a gold seal marked with the emblem of the Union Board, a front for the city’s elite financiers. Inside, a short message:“Dinner. Piermont Hotel. 8 PM. — C.”Only one person signed with a single letter — Councilman Charles Vance, the man who brokered half the city’s deals from behind velvet curtains.Dario read it twice, then lit the letter on fire in his ashtray. He knew an invitation like that wasn’t a courtesy; it was a command. And refusing a command meant war in a language that didn’t use guns.By eight that evening, he walked through
The Betrayer’s Crown
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
When Thrones Crack
The city never truly slept, but that night it held its breath. Southbridge had always been restless — a monster of neon and smoke — but now it trembled, waiting for something to happen. Somewhere beneath its glowing skyline, power was shifting hands again.The streets that once echoed with Dario Moretti’s name now pulsed with new voices — whispers of rebellion, of Marco Ventresca’s rise, of a storm coming for the throne that had ruled too long.Inside his penthouse, Dario stood before a wall of monitors. Cameras showed every street corner, every checkpoint, every alley that mattered. The empire he built flickered before him in grayscale pixels — a kingdom made of concrete and shadows.Enzo entered quietly. He looked tired, older than his years.“It’s confirmed,” he said. “Marco’s men hit Dock Nine an hour ago. We lost the shipment, the trucks, and three men.”Dario didn’t turn around. “Three?”Enzo nodded. “Maybe more. They had inside help. They knew every guard rotation.”Dario’s jaw
“Smoke Over Southbridge”
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
The Wolves at the Gate”
The city was calm again, but calm in Southbridge was just another kind of violence.Silence after war is never peace — it’s waiting. And Dario could feel it, the way one feels a storm behind the walls.From his office high above the rebuilt district, he watched the streets below pulse with the rhythm of a city that feared him. Every corner, every deal, every shadow was his. Yet something felt… off.Lately, people had begun to move differently. Conversations stopped when he entered a room. His orders took longer to carry out. Loyalty, he realized, had an expiration date — and power was its ticking clock.“Enzo,” he said quietly one night, “what are they whispering?”His second-in-command paused. “That you’ve gone too far. That you’re making Southbridge into something… unnatural.”“Unnatural?” Dario repeated, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “Order is unnatural to men who only know chaos.”Enzo nodded, but his eyes betrayed thought. Doubt. Dario saw it, even if Enzo didn’t say a wo