Night dripped like blood along the marble floor of the Venetian penthouse. Rain lashed the floor- to-ceiling windows, but inside, the storm was nothing compared to the tension between them. Aurelia Moretti, heir to an ancient line of mystic seers, knelt before the imposing figure of Lucien "The Sovereign" DeCarlo Mafia kingpin and billionaire magnate. His obsidian eyes, cold as onyx, flicked over her as if appraising a rare gem.
"You owe me your life," he rasped, voice like silk and steel. "And now... you will owe me your freedom." Her chest tightened. A lifetime of training should have steeled her nerves, but Lucien's presence unraveled her like a master puppeteer. "I understand," she whispered, though her heart thundered rebellion.
He lifted her chin with a single finger, scars on his knuckles whispering of battles won and lost. "Good. Because you belong to me now." Lightning flashed, illuminating the ancient sigil tattooed across his throat a mark of the mafia's most forbidden magic. Aurelia gasped: she recognized its pattern from her grandmother's grimoires. Lucien was more than a criminal lord he wielded dark power older than the Venetian canals. And she, the last of the Moretti seers, was destined to break it... or be broken herself.