El Amor Duele

In the slums of Naples, Santino Leandro learned one rule: power is survival. When his father is murdered in broad daylight, Santino is left with nothing but a name. Determined not to die forgotten, he builds himself from the ground up first as a street dealer, then as a quiet force within Europe’s criminal underworld. Years later, he’s called to France by his childhood friend Salvatore with an offer he can’t refuse: a chance to work under the infamous and elusive crime boss, El Amore. But nothing in this world comes without a price. As Santino rises, he finds himself surrounded by secrets. The woman he trusts may be a spy. His brother may be a traitor. And the empire he’s building may never have truly belonged to him. Power isolates. Loyalty breaks. And love, in this world, is a weapon. In the end, only one name will be remembered.

A change of epochs is coming, the nineteenth century from the Deposition of Kaphaeris is coming to an end, the twentieth century is already on the threshold. Starkrar, like the entire Meskian Empire, is preparing for the celebration of the bright holiday of Yule, to say goodbye to the old age and welcome the new one. But not only fog and frost walk along the snow-covered streets of the night capital. Something inhuman is hiding in the dirty alleys of the slums, waiting for its victims. Bloody massacres horrify the subjects of the empire, inflaming interspecies hatred, high-ranking officials die mysterious deaths in their own mansions, secret service agents disappear without a trace, and out of nowhere terrorists commit one horrific terrorist attack after another. Someone decided to shake the throne under the sacred person of the Emperor. Someone longs for the fall of Messiah. By the will of the monarch, Brian el'Moria - half-breed tencris, master of dark deeds and the first detective of the empire - takes up the investigation. From now on, he must either uncover the plot of a nameless enemy, or die.

When a message warns, “Pay—or watch your wife fall,” Tobias Sheldon races to the hospital roof and finds his wife Elena swaying on the ledge—drugged, eyes hollow, the storm tearing at her gown. Sirens explode in his head as he reaches for her—too late. She falls… and before the crowd can scream, a van screeches in. Masked men lift her bloodied body and vanish into the night. By dawn, Tobias is in handcuffs, accused and broken, while his son’s oxygen countdown ticks toward silence and death. Mercy has a price—and time is almost gone. But ruin wasn’t Tobias’s truth; it was his disguise. Beneath forged ledgers and sealed vaults lies a dynasty he never claimed, and a key only he can wield. In time, he rises to reclaim what was rightfully his. Now, the same people who fed on his debts, including wicked hegemons and owners of a system that he and his Poderon family were a victim of (senators, smugglers, and their accountants, cabalistic vices) will learn what rises from ash. The man they mocked as a debtor becomes El Cuervo—The Crow—hunting the gold trail, the van, and the lie that destroyed his family. When the Crow spreads his wings, laughter turns to silence—and every debt is paid in blood and ashes.