The rain hadn’t stopped since the night he walked out on Dario.Southbridge was drowning, and Enzo felt like he was drowning with it.He’d spent most of his life beside Dario Moretti — through street wars, betrayals, and the empire’s bloody birth. But now, as he drove through the city’s skeleton streets, he realized something terrifying: he no longer recognized the man he’d sworn to protect.Dario had become the very storm they once promised to stop.Enzo pulled up by the docks — the one place still untouched by Dario’s new regime. The warehouses stood like silent tombs, the air thick with salt and oil. Inside, a few of the old lieutenants gathered — men who used to command corners, not cities.“Word is he’s losing his grip,” said Nico, a wiry man with eyes like broken glass. “The streets are nervous. The cops are paid off, but they’re jumpy. People don’t fear him the same way anymore.”Enzo leaned against a crate, his coat soaked through. “Don’t mistake silence for weakness. He still

The city had stopped whispering.Now, it watched.From the penthouse window of the Dominion Tower, Dario could see Southbridge stretching below him like a wounded animal — scarred, twitching, alive. The neon lights that once spelled his empire’s glory now flickered in uneven rhythm, like a heartbeat under strain.He stood before the glass, shirt half-buttoned, a tumbler of whiskey trembling slightly in his hand.Behind him, the room glowed with monitors, maps, dossiers, and surveillance feeds.But the only thing that truly held his gaze was his own reflection.For a moment, he almost didn’t recognize the man staring back — eyes hollow, jaw tense, the ghost of something human trapped inside a face the world had learned to fear.Enzo’s face haunted him there, too — not as an enemy, but as the part of himself he had buried.He smashed the glass against the mirror.The sound cracked through the silence like thunder.Shards scattered across the marble floor, reflecting fragments of his own

The cell was small, square, and silent—four slabs of concrete, a rusted cot, and a single slit of a window too narrow to show anything but a stripe of gray sky.It was a strange kind of silence, one that didn’t belong to prisons or punishment but to memory. Dario had known silence before—after gunfire, after betrayal—but this one felt heavier. It pressed against his ribs and wrapped itself around every breath.He sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor. His hands were clasped, not in prayer, but in calculation.For the first time in years, there were no maps, no monitors, no men waiting for his orders. Only him and the echo of what he used to command.At 7 a.m., the steel door clanked open. Two guards stood aside as a woman entered—dark suit, clipped hair, calm eyes behind thin glasses.“Mr. Ventresca,” she said, voice composed. “I’m Special Investigator Vega. I’ll be conducting your interrogation.”Dario smirked faintly. “You make it sound like an app

The city was quieter now, but it wasn’t peace. It was the silence before a storm.Enzo sat in Dario’s old chair, the leather cracked and heavy with history. The office was half-lit, cigarette smoke curling toward the ceiling like ghostly prayers. On the desk lay maps of Southbridge, cash ledgers, and lists of names — people loyal, people dead, people in between.He used to think power came from money. Then from fear. But now, looking at the chaos spilling across every block, he realized it came from something much simpler. Control. The kind of control you couldn’t buy — only earn.Rosa entered quietly, a tablet in her hand. “You need to see this,” she said.He turned. “Another hit?”She nodded grimly. “Warehouse on Fourth. Our shipment was torched. Two of Marco’s men found burned inside.”Enzo’s jaw tightened. “He’ll think I ordered it.”“That’s the point.”He didn’t ask who. He already knew. Lila.She’d been too quiet since the meeting — watching, smiling, planting whispers like land

The rain hadn’t stopped in three days. It coated the city like guilt, washing over cracked asphalt, dripping from the edges of broken billboards, seeping into the bones of Southbridge.Enzo watched it from the high window of what used to be Dario’s office — now his. The curtains were still heavy with cigar smoke and the ghosts of old deals. His reflection looked older than he remembered. There were gray strands in his beard, faint shadows beneath his eyes. The war hadn’t ended with Dario’s arrest; it had only changed its language.Now, it spoke through whispers and phone taps, through the soft hum of cars that lingered too long outside his building.“Boss,” Mateo said, stepping in. His voice was tight, like a violin string ready to snap. “Another truck went missing near the docks. Lila’s people hit it before dawn. Took the shipment and burned the driver alive.”Enzo didn’t move. He stared at the reflection of the city, the neon bleeding into puddles below. “And the cops?”“Looking the