Shadow bound: The beast within

Chapter 2: The Mark of the Curse

The silence after the massacre pressed on Luca’s chest like a weight too heavy to bear. The banquet hall, once a place of power and celebration, was nothing but a graveyard of shattered glass and broken bodies. Blood pooled across marble veins, reflecting the flicker of dying candles. The violins lay abandoned, strings snapped, their music forever silenced.

And in the center of it all, Luca knelt beside his father’s body.

Don Vittorio’s lifeless eyes stared upward, still fierce even in death. His hand, once steady on the trigger of a pistol, now lay limp in a pool of crimson. Luca touched it with trembling fingers, as if trying to pass his warmth into a body already gone cold.

“Father…” His voice cracked, more a plea than a word. He wanted to shake him, to beg him to rise, to tell him this was another lesson in strength. But the truth had already soaked into his bones. Vittorio Romano, the unshakable Don, was dead.

And Luca had done nothing to stop it.

He lifted his gaze, staring at the corpses of the assassins scattered across the hall. Some bore bullet wounds, but others… others had been torn apart by shadows. Shadows that had obeyed his command. Shadows that had answered to him as if he were their master.

The memory of it struck him like a blade. The surge of power, the whispers, the thrill of destruction. For a moment, he had not been Luca Romano, son of a Don. He had been something else entirely. Something monstrous.

His hands shook as he pressed them against his face, but even behind closed eyes, he saw red. His reflection in the broken glass replayed in his mind eyes glowing with cursed fire.

The curse.

His father had warned him, always in fragments, always with stern words but never full truth. Whispers of a dark legacy, of an ancient sin buried in their bloodline. Luca had thought it superstition, stories to scare him into obedience. But tonight, the curse had awakened. And it had chosen him.

The heavy doors groaned again. Luca spun, his body tensing.

A figure stepped into the hall. Cloaked in black, silent as the grave, his presence was heavier than the smoke still curling through the air. His face was shadowed beneath a hood, but his eyes gleamed faintly with the same crimson glow Luca had seen in himself.

For a heartbeat, Luca thought he was looking into a mirror of what he could become.

The stranger’s voice broke the silence, low and steady. “It has awakened.”

Luca rose to his feet, every muscle taut. “Who are you?”

The man took a slow step closer, his boots echoing against marble. “Not your enemy. Not tonight. I came to witness the birth.”

“The birth of what?” Luca demanded, though his voice wavered.

The stranger tilted his head, studying him like prey and kin all at once. “The heir of shadow. The blood of the curse. You, Luca Romano.”

Luca’s chest burned. His instinct screamed to attack, but another part of him, a darker part, recognized the man. Not by name, but by presence. He carried the same hunger, the same weight.

“You knew this would happen,” Luca whispered, fists tightening. “You knew what I am.”

The stranger gave the faintest smile, though it held no warmth. “I knew what you could be.”

Before Luca could speak again, the echo of sirens broke through the night. Red and blue lights flared against the shattered windows. The authorities had arrived. Too late, as always.

The stranger’s gaze shifted toward the doors. “Your war begins now. The families will come for you. They saw what you are. They will call you a monster. A demon. And they will hunt you.”

“Then tell me what to do,” Luca snapped, desperation cutting through his grief. “Tell me how to control this. Tell me how to stop it before it consumes me.”

The stranger’s smile deepened, almost cruel. “Control? No. You do not stop it. You become it.”

Luca’s pulse quickened, his chest tightening like chains wrapped around his ribs. His father’s blood was still warm on his hands, yet already fate demanded he embrace the very curse that had ruined everything.

The stranger stepped back into the shadows, his figure beginning to dissolve into the darkness itself. “Seek me when you are ready. Until then… survive.”

And then he was gone. The hall swallowed him as if he had never been there.

The doors burst open moments later. Armed men in uniforms stormed in, their guns sweeping the wreckage. Some were police, others were private guards from allied families, all converging to see the aftermath of the bloodbath. Their eyes widened as they took in the corpses, the shattered grandeur, and Luca standing over his father’s body, his hands stained red.

“There!” one shouted. “It’s him!”

Luca froze. He could see it in their eyes, the suspicion, the fear. They had not seen Emilio Marcelli flee. They had not seen the assassins fire the first shots. All they saw was the ruin left behind and the unnatural glow that still lingered faintly in his eyes.

Monster.

The word seemed to hang unspoken in the air.

Luca’s heart thundered. He wanted to explain, to scream the truth, but the weight of their stares crushed him. If he stayed, he would be taken. If he fought, he would prove their fears true.

The curse whispered again, its voice like silk in his mind.

“Run.”

And so he did.

Luca bolted through the chaos, shoving past splintered tables and fallen chairs, the sirens wailing louder behind him. Bullets sparked against stone as shouts rang out, but the shadows rose around him once more, guiding his escape. He leapt through a broken window, glass biting his skin, and vanished into the night of Rome.

The city stretched before him, endless, dark, alive. Somewhere within it, Emilio Marcelli was celebrating his father’s death. Somewhere, the stranger in black was waiting.

And within Luca himself, the curse pulsed like a second heartbeat.

He could not escape it. He could only decide what to become.

From the rooftops above, Emilio Marcelli lowered his binoculars, smirking as he watched Luca flee. “Run, little Romano,” he murmured. “Every step you take, you run closer to me.”