He believed fear was the cleanest currency, and for a long time, he was right.
Until he wasn’t.
The first betrayal came from a man who kissed my mother’s cheek and taught me to drive. The second from a cousin who smiled as he poured wine and sold our routes to a rival syndicate for a promise that evaporated the moment it was made.
By the third, I stopped being surprised.
By the fifth, I stopped forgiving, and by the time the empire was mine, I understood something my father never did: fear keeps people obedient, but only pressure reveals whether they’re loyal.
So I test everyone.
Always have.
I test my captains with silence and wait to see who fills it. I test my allies with opportunity and watch who resists temptation. I test my enemies by giving them just enough rope to see if they’ll hang themselves.
And now…
I tested my wife’s uncles.
I knew the risk. I knew exactly how it would look to her.
A Dragoni loan carries weight even when it comes wrapped in generosity. It binds. It brands.
And it tells me something invaluable: when the time comes, and it always does, whether the men who took it will stand with me, or fold under pressure and sell blood they claim to love.
Lucia calls it leverage and she’s not wrong.
But leverage isn’t cruelty. It’s foresight. And foresight is how I keep people alive.
Even when they hate me for it.
I lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling, replaying her face when I didn’t deny it. The moment when she realised that love and violence are not opposites in my world, but parallel lines that intersect more often than she wants to believe.
She’s horrified. She should be.
And yet…
I close my eyes briefly, unbidden memory intruding.
Breakfast.
Her defiance. The choice. The way she offered herself not as surrender but as negotiation, as power, as something she owned and wielded.
Unconventional doesn’t begin to cover it.
Nothing about us ever fit the shape it was supposed to.
I’ve taken cities without flinching and yet that moment nearly undid me.
Dangerous.
Everything about Lucia is dangerous.
I straighten as movement catches my attention.
She’s back, standing just inside the office now, half-hidden by the doorway, watching me with an expression I can’t immediately decode.
Bewilderment, yes. Defiance, absolutely. Something softer underneath, something that unsettles me more than anger ever could.
