Each word landed precisely where Luca wanted it to land. He watched the doubt in Ginevra's eyes dissolve and get replaced by something harder. Colder."He has always been like this." Ginevra set the paper back down on the table, her hand no longer trembling. "Every time I do something he does not like, he throws some dramatic fit to guilt me into apologizing. The silent treatment. The wounded looks. And now this. A divorce agreement." She let out a short, humorless breath through her nose. "He does not have the spine to actually go through with it.""Exactly." Luca nodded with soft encouragement, his eyes wide and earnest. "Dante cannot possibly divorce you. He needs you too much. This is just another one of his jealous tantrums dressed up in legal language."Ginevra's expression hardened into something cold and absolute. She straightened her back and folded her arms across her chest."Fine. If he wants to play this game, I will play it better." Her voice dropped to a flat, icy regist

Dante reached across the table and pulled the agreement toward himself. He read it in complete silence for nearly two minutes. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the distant hum of the air conditioning unit above them.Then Dante placed one finger on page four, paragraph six."This clause references jointly managed assets acquired during the marriage period." Dante's voice was calm and steady, completely unshaken. "But it does not distinguish between personal acquisitions and assets that were co-administered through Ginevra's company during the time I held advisory access to the corporate accounts. If this goes to a formal court review, that overlap could expose her entire company to future claims over shared asset management."Marco's smug expression cracked like thin ice under a boot heel. He snatched the paper back and stared at the paragraph, his eyes darting across the lines."That is a standard boilerplate provision." Marco's voice lost some of its arrogance. "It does not carry th

Ginevra's heels struck the marble steps like rapid gunfire as she pushed through the heavy glass doors of City Hall. Dante was already halfway down the wide staircase, his hands loose at his sides, his posture completely relaxed. He looked like a man leaving a grocery store, not a courthouse where his marriage had just been dissolved."Dante!" Ginevra's voice cut through the warm afternoon air. She stopped three steps above him, her chest rising and falling with controlled fury. "You are not walking away from me like this. Turn around and tell me what game you are playing."Dante stopped. He turned his head slowly, looking up at her from the lower step. His face carried no anger, no sadness, no desperation. Just calm."There is no game anymore, Ginevra.""Do not give me that!" Ginevra descended two more steps, closing the distance between them, her finger pointed directly at his chest. "Six months ago you spent every waking hour trying to make this marriage work. You cooked for me. Yo

"On that yacht," Dante continued, his eyes drilling into Luca's with terrifying precision, "you watched me bleed from a head wound while you pretended to have a sprained ankle. You sat there whimpering like a dying kitten while my blood dripped onto the steering wheel. And the entire time, your eyes were perfectly clear. Your hands were perfectly steady. You were not scared, Luca. You were enjoying it."Luca's expression shifted. The smug confidence cracked just enough for something else to leak through. Something small and cold and panicked, like a rat hearing a trap snap shut in the next room.Dante noticed. He noticed everything now."There it is." Dante tilted his head slightly, studying Luca's face the way a predator studies movement in tall grass. "That is the real you. Not the crying, trembling little victim who hides behind a woman's skirt. The real Luca. The one who has been pulling strings this entire time.""You are delusional." Luca took half a step backward, his voice los

Several days had passed since the divorce. Dante had left the motel and moved into a modest apartment near the older part of the city, a quiet neighborhood where nobody recognized his face or cared about his history. The building was plain, the walls were thin, and the hallway always smelled faintly of cooking oil from the ground floor restaurant. It was perfect.He spent his mornings testing the strange changes running through his body. His reflexes had sharpened to an almost frightening degree. His strength had multiplied far beyond anything a normal man could achieve through years of training. But the limits of what Mars had given him remained unclear, like holding a weapon he had never been taught to fully use.One afternoon, Dante stepped out of a small restaurant near the corner of his block, carrying a paper bag of takeout. He made it exactly four steps down the sidewalk before the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.Someone was following him.He stopped in the middle of th