“Mom… are you here?” Leo Moretti’s voice was barely a whisper, but it carried across the empty hallway. The grand Moretti estate, usually warm and alive with laughter and staff, was eerily silent. He pushed open the door to his mother’s office.“Mom?”No answer.Leo frowned. The papers on her desk were scattered. A vase lay shattered on the floor. Glass glinted under the moonlight streaming through the window. His mother’s chair was tipped over, and a chair leg had broken.His heart pounded. Something was wrong.He stepped closer. The scent hit him first. A coppery, metallic smell. He froze.Her body.His mother.She was slumped over her desk, a deep wound in her chest. Her favorite silk blouse soaked red.“Mom!” Leo rushed to her, dropping to his knees. His hands trembled as he shook her. Her eyes… lifeless, stared past him.“No… no… this can’t be happening,” he muttered.A sound made him turn. The door creaked.“You shouldn’t have come in, Leo.”It was a low, calm voice. His uncle Luc

The courtroom was already full when Luca Deluca slowly walked toward the witness stand, and the quiet murmurs of reporters and spectators faded the moment people realized who he was.Cameras flashed from the back of the room as journalists leaned forward eagerly, knowing that the testimony of the powerful DeLuca family patriarch would likely decide the fate of the trial.Leo sat at the defense table with his hands resting on the polished wood, the cold metal cuffs around his wrists reminding him that he was no longer the respected heir of a powerful family but merely a defendant accused of murdering his own mother.He watched his uncle approach the stand with calm, measured steps.The man didn’t look nervous.He didn’t hesitate.And most painfully of all, he didn’t even glance at Leo.The bailiff raised a Bible toward him and spoke in a firm voice. “Place your hand on the Bible.”Luca did so without hesitation.“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the trut

The sound of boots on concrete echoed through the cold, dimly lit prison hallways. Leo leaned against the bars of his cell, staring at the mess of prisoners who were scattered throughout the yard. He had been here for a few days now, just enough time to start observing, to start understanding the game he would need to play in order to survive.Everything inside the prison had its own rules, its own hierarchy. And right now, Leo was at the bottom of it.The guards, dressed in dark blue uniforms, patrolled the yards and hallways with an air of disinterest, as if they were used to the noise, the violence, the chaos. They didn’t care about the inmates unless they caused trouble. And that, Leo quickly learned, was the first rule. Trouble meant attention. Attention meant punishment.But Leo wasn’t interested in attracting attention. Not yet. He was watching. He was learning.“Hey, new guy!” someone shouted from across the yard. Leo turned his head slowly.A tall man with tattoos crawling up

Leo was sitting on the lower bunk when Marcus returned from the prison library that afternoon.Marcus tossed a thin book onto the small metal table between them and stretched his back.“You ever notice how prison days feel slow but somehow the weeks disappear?” he asked.Leo looked up from where he had been quietly sharpening a piece of pencil against the edge of the table.“That’s because most people stop thinking about tomorrow,” Leo replied. “When people stop planning, time stops meaning anything.”Marcus sat down and stared at him, “You think too much.”Leo smirked faintly, “That’s how I stayed alive outside.”Marcus leaned back against the wall, “Well, out there you had money, guards, and a big family name. In here you’ve got a mattress and a toilet.”Leo opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment a guard’s voice echoed through the hallway.“Mail call!”Several inmates stepped toward their cell doors. Marcus looked surprised, “You getting letters already?”Leo frowned, “I don