Ashes and Warnings

Amara didn't believe in omens until the third raven landed on the garden fountain.

It perched beside the stone lion, staring at her with beady eyes as if it knew something she didn't. Wind stirred her long black coat. She took a slow sip of espresso and watched the bird, her thoughts tangled with strategy and suspicion.

Enzo stepped onto the terrace behind her. "We lost contact with Adriano."

Her cup paused mid-air. "When?"

"Last night. He was tailing a Bratva associate. Didn't report in."

Adriano had served her father for twelve years. Loyal. Brutal. Smart.

"He wouldn't disappear," Amara said. "Not unless someone made him."

Enzo nodded grimly.

"Do we have eyes on Luca?" she asked.

"He's gone underground since the arms bust. No public meetings. No appearances. We've tracked movement to a private estate outside Rome, but nothing conclusive."

Amara stood, eyes still fixed on the raven. "Set a meeting with the informants in Posillipo. I want names. And I want whoever touched Adriano found by midnight."

The underground speakeasy in Posillipo was drenched in shadows and whiskey fumes. Jazz music filtered through the walls like smoke. Amara arrived flanked by two guards, her presence commanding silence.

Inside, three informants sat waiting—low-level traffickers who owed the Morettis more than just money. One of them, a lanky man with trembling hands, spoke first.

"We—we heard things, Donna Amara. About the Veleno Syndicate."

She raised a brow. "Speak."

"They're back. Not just operating, but embedding. Recruiting from old families. Buying judges, councilmen, and small-time bosses. Quiet but fast."

She leaned forward. "And Adriano?"

The man hesitated. Then he whispered, "He was taken. Not by Romano. By someone darker."

Amara's voice dropped an octave. "Who?"

"They call her *Serena.* Serena Veleno."

The name fell like ice.

She had heard it once before, from her father, in a whisper of warning.

"Find out where she is," Amara said. "And pray I get to her before Luca does."

That night, the raven returned.

This time, it wasn't alone.

Two more landed on the villa gate. Silent. Watching.

Amara stood on her rooftop again, wind biting against her skin. Her mind raced. Luca was quiet. Too quiet. The Veleno Syndicate was crawling back through old cracks in the foundation. And a name from the shadows had returned.

Serena Veleno.

The woman who once slit a man's throat with a wedding ring.

At dawn, she met Chiara in the strategy room.

"Intercepted a message," Chiara said, tossing a file on the table. "Encrypted. Came from inside the villa. Someone's leaking."

Amara's stomach turned. "Someone inside?"

Chiara nodded. "Not staff. Higher. Possibly someone from the council."

Enzo entered, face grim. "They found Adriano."

Amara looked up. "Alive?"

Enzo hesitated. "No. Strangled. Dumped at the ruins near Ercolano. With a note pinned to his chest."

He handed it to her.

One line, scrawled in red ink:

**'The dead don't whisper. They scream.'**

Amara folded the note carefully. Then she looked at Chiara and Enzo.

"We go silent. No more internal messages. No digital logs. There are no council discussions without background checks. Until we flush the mole, we treat every ally like a suspect."

Enzo nodded. "What about the Syndicate?"

"We don't hunt shadows," she said coldly. "We burn the ground they crawl on."

That evening, Amara changed her routine. No meetings. No staff rotation. No guards within ten meters of her quarters. Chiara installed a scrambler in her room that disrupted digital surveillance.

And Amara wrote.

Not threats. Not commands.

Letters.

One to her father.

One to herself.

And one, sealed with wax, addressed to Luca Romano.

She stared at it for a long time before tucking it into her desk.

War was coming.

But first, she would make the world believe it had already begun.