The humid air of Palermo clung to Julian like a second skin, thick with the scent of blooming jasmine and ancient exhaust. It was his third night in Sicily, and the "study abroad" dream already felt like a fever.
At 23, Julian was a study in soft edges—petite at 5'2", with a mess of pale curls and a camera bag that felt far too heavy for his slight frame. He had come here to lose himself in the Baroque architecture of the Il Capo district, but the winding, sun-bleached alleys that looked so charming in travel guides now felt like a predatory maze.
He had taken a wrong turn past the Teatro Massimo. The lively tourist crowds had thinned into an eerie, oppressive silence. Shadows stretched long across the cobblestones, and for the first time, Julian felt the weight of being a stranger in a land governed by unwritten rules.
High above the street, in the shadowed balcony of a centuries-old palazzo, Dante Vitale stood like a monument to cold violence.
At 28, Dante was the youngest Capo the Vitale family had ever known, and by far the most ruthless. He stood 6'4", a towering figure of broad shoulders and sharp, tailored Italian silk that barely concealed the dark history etched into his skin. His eyes were the color of flint, devoid of warmth, fixed on the small, golden-haired figure stumbling into the restricted zone of the docks.
"He shouldn't be here," a voice rumbled from the darkness behind him. Dante's second-in-command stepped forward, hand already resting on his holster.
Dante didn't blink. He watched as the American boy—Julian—stopped to photograph a nondescript iron door. A door that led to the city's largest illegal shipment of northern arms.
"The boy is a tourist, Dante," the man continued. "A mistake. We silence him and move on."
Dante's hand, scarred from a childhood he'd spent surviving the very men he now led, tightened on the stone railing. There was something about the boy's fragility—the way his hands trembled as he adjusted his lens—that sparked a flicker of something long dead in Dante's chest. It wasn't mercy. It was an insatiable, dark curiosity.
"No," Dante's voice was a low, dangerous rasp that commanded the very air. "Bring him to me. I want to see what innocence looks like before I break it."
Julian didn't hear the footsteps until it was too late.
The click of his camera shutter was swallowed by the sudden, heavy presence of three men. Before he could scream, a rough hand clamped over his mouth, and he was lifted off his feet as if he weighed nothing.
His world went black as a velvet hood was pulled over his head, the scent of expensive tobacco and old stone the last thing he knew before the nightmare began.