2025-10-21 00:14:45The city woke to smoke. Somewhere in the industrial quarter, a warehouse burned—one of Ferreti’s distribution hubs. Flames gnawed through steel, and black clouds coiled like serpents into the dawn sky.
Dario stood beside Mancini, watching firefighters battle the inferno from behind a police cordon. The air smelled of diesel, wet ash, and betrayal.
“Inside job,” Mancini muttered. “Had to be.”
Dario’s jaw tightened. Only family knew the schedule for those shipments. That meant someone close had flipped—or worse, someone wanted Ferreti weakened.
Back at the compound, tension rippled through the ranks. The Don’s temper was legendary, but this time, his silence was louder than fury. He sat at the head of the long oak table, smoke from his cigar twisting around his face.
“You all know what was lost,” Ferreti said at last. “But I care less about the fire and more about the hand that lit it. Until we find it, every man here bleeds.”
No one dared speak. The room reeked of fear. Dario studied their faces—the twitch of guilt in Nino’s eye, the nervous tapping of a runner’s foot, the way Mancini avoided everyone’s gaze.
Ferreti looked at Dario. “You’ve got instincts, kid. Use them. Find me the traitor.”
That night, Dario drove alone through the Southside, replaying every conversation from the last week. Loyalty, he’d learned, wasn’t about promises—it was about profit. And someone had decided the profit was better elsewhere.
He parked in front of Il Porto, a dingy café where small-time dealers whispered louder than they thought. Inside, the smell of burnt espresso mixed with gossip.
Old Rico, the owner, spotted him and froze mid-clean. “You shouldn’t be here, Dario. Word’s out—the Don’s losing grip.”
Dario leaned on the counter. “Word’s wrong. But whoever’s spreading it—he won’t have a tongue soon.”
Rico hesitated, then nodded toward the back. “Nino’s been meeting with the Rosetti crew. Three nights straight. Always alone.”
Dario’s pulse slowed, not quickened. That told him everything.
He waited outside Nino’s apartment until midnight. The streets were slick with rain, streetlights blurring like smudged gold. When Nino finally arrived, humming and drunk on confidence, Dario stepped from the shadows.
“Busy night?” he asked.
Nino froze. “You scared the life outta me.”
“You’ve been busy. Meetings. Deals. Rosetti?”
Nino tried to laugh. “Business, Dario. You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Dario said, voice flat. “I do. The kind that ends in fire.”
Nino’s smile faltered. “It wasn’t me. You gotta believe me.”
But his eyes betrayed him. Fear first, then calculation. The look of a man already reaching for his gun in his mind.
Dario stepped closer, their faces inches apart. “You sold out the Don. You burned what wasn’t yours. And you thought no one would notice.”
Nino swallowed. “Ferreti’s finished. Rosetti’s taking over the docks. I just picked the winning side—like you should.”
That was it—the sentence that sealed his fate.
Dario didn’t draw. He didn’t shout. He simply leaned in and whispered, “You should’ve picked silence.”
When he walked away, the rain started again. Behind him, Nino’s body slumped against the wall, lifeless eyes staring at the gray sky.
At dawn, Dario reported back to Ferreti’s mansion. The Don sat by the window, watching the sun fight through the fog.
“It was Nino,” Dario said simply.
Ferreti exhaled smoke. “I knew.”
Dario frowned. “Then why—”
“Because I needed to see if you would do what had to be done.” Ferreti turned, eyes glinting with pride. “Loyalty is good. Initiative is better. You didn’t wait for permission. You acted. That’s leadership.”
He gestured toward the decanter on the side table. “Pour yourself a drink. You’ve earned it.”
As Dario poured, Ferreti continued, voice softer now. “The family needs men like you. Smart, cold, disciplined. Mancini’s getting old. He thinks with muscle, not mind. I need someone who can build, not just destroy.”
The words sank deep. For the first time, Dario wasn’t just an errand boy or a collector—he was being measured for the throne.
Ferreti clinked his glass against Dario’s. “To ashes,” he said.
Dario lifted his glass. “And to what rises after.”
They drank.
Weeks passed, and with Nino gone, Dario’s influence grew. He handled collections, negotiated truces, and started reorganizing Ferreti’s operations. The street runners now answered to him. Even the accountants sought his approval before moving funds.
But with power came attention. Whispered questions in dark corners. Old lieutenants testing boundaries.
One evening, Mancini pulled him aside. “Watch your back. You’re climbing too fast. Men like Ferreti don’t mentor—they mold.”
Dario smiled faintly. “And when the mold breaks?”
“Then it’s your funeral.”
But Dario didn’t fear funerals anymore. He’d already buried the boy who once cared.
That night, he stood on the rooftop of the warehouse, the city spread beneath him like a living map of greed. Smoke from distant chimneys curled upward, painting ghosts across the skyline.
He thought of the fire—the ashes that started this ascent. Every empire, he realized, begins with a burn.
And in the reflection of a nearby window, Dario saw what he was becoming: not a soldier, not a follower, but a man willing to scorch the world to build his throne.
The rain began again, steady and cold.
He welcomed it.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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
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
“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.
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
“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
“Southbridge Burns”
The war didn’t start with gunfire. It started with fear.By the end of that week, every corner of Southbridge was whispering the same name: Alvaro. The Serpents had moved in like ghosts, cutting deals, buying loyalty, twisting old friends into spies. Streets that once saluted Dario now echoed with doubt.And when fear takes root, bullets soon follow.The first night of war began at 2:17 a.m.A car bomb ripped through La Rosa’s backlot, shattering the quiet like glass. The explosion lit the skyline in orange. Flames licked the sky, and the sound of screams followed.Dario was thrown from his chair, ears ringing. The room filled with smoke and dust. Vince stormed in, pistol drawn.“They hit the club!” he shouted.Through the haze, Dario’s face was calm, almost too calm. “Get the wounded out. And tell everyone—Southbridge is closed. From tonight, it’s our city or no city.”By sunrise, the streets were barricaded.Every corner store, every alley, every rooftop became a fortress. Dario’s m
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