The silence in the villa was no longer comforting.
It scratched at Amara's skin, thick and cold, like a warning she couldn't name.
She stood in her war room, arms crossed as she stared at the wall of monitors. The digital map of Naples blinked with activity — guards patrolling the docks, trucks moving toward the outer districts, and encrypted lines connecting her warehouses like veins in a living body.
Everything was moving.
Everything looked… normal.
And yet, something felt off.
She hadn't seen Luca in three days. Not since that night in the chapel. Not since the kiss that tasted like fire and farewell. He'd vanished without a word — not unusual for him, but now, his absence echoed louder than any footsteps.
"Donna," Enzo's voice cut through the static. "Convoy returning from Salerno was intercepted."
Amara turned, her stomach coiling.
"Casualties?"
"One. Driver injured, not critical. The cargo's gone."
"What was in the shipment?"
"Documents. Maps. Codes we were updating from your father's vault."
Amara's eyes sharpened. "This wasn't random."
Enzo nodded grimly. "It was surgical. No damage to the cars. They disabled the trackers, took what they needed, vanished."
"No blood," she muttered. "No mess."
He hesitated. "Almost like… they knew."
Amara's jaw clenched. "Inside intel."
She turned back to the monitors, her reflection flickering in the glass. The villa looked the same, moved the same but it wasn't. Something was watching them. Studying them.
Waiting.
Later That Evening — Amara's Private Office
The storm outside rolled in low and fast, thunder cracking like the sky itself was cracking open. Amara sat in her father's leather chair, flipping through a folder of intercepted communications. Encrypted. Obscure. Some signed with a symbol — a snake curled into a circle, devouring its own tail.
She recognized it.
From her childhood.
From her father's war journals.
Veleno.
A name whispered like a ghost in the old books. Not a mafia. Not a family. Something older. Something colder.
They didn't take territory.
They took people.
Turned insiders. Broke dynasties from within.
Her hand tightened on the folder as Enzo re-entered.
"I've doubled the guards on every gate."
"Good," she said absently.
"But it won't be enough if this is who we think it is."
She looked up. "You've heard the name too."
"Everyone who served under Don Moretti did. We called it myth. A story to keep us paranoid."
Amara stood slowly. "It's not a story."
He nodded. "Then we're already compromised."
Hours Later — Courtyard Perimeter
The guards stood in a diamond formation, boots planted firm in the gravel as lightning sliced through the sky.
Amara walked between them, inspecting each post. When she reached the outer gate, a soldier approached quickly.
"Donna. We found this."
He held up a flash drive. No label. No fingerprint.
She took it without a word and returned inside.
---
Surveillance Room — 2:04 A.M.
The flash drive revealed three things.
One: a list of coded names.
Two: blueprints of Villa Moretti's underground tunnels — maps only a handful of people should've had access to.
Three: a 30-second clip of her.
Alone in her study. Reading. Her expression soft, unguarded.
The footage was recent.
And her surveillance system had no record of that angle.
Someone had placed a second camera in her office.
Someone was watching her.
From inside.
She inhaled, slow and steady.
This wasn't about control anymore.
This was war.
The Next Day — Garden Path
She met Enzo and Rocco beneath the olive trees. The scent of citrus couldn't mask the tension thickening between them.
"There's a mole," she said bluntly.
Rocco crossed his arms. "You're sure?"
"They filmed me. Inside my private quarters. There are only four people who have access to that floor."
Enzo glanced at Rocco. "You think it's one of us?"
"I think I won't rule anyone out," Amara replied.
Rocco's eyes darkened. "I bled for this family."
"So did Gianni," she snapped.
Silence.
Rocco shook his head and walked away without another word.
Enzo exhaled slowly. "If it's him—"
"I'll handle it," Amara said coldly.
Evening — In Her Father's Vault
She hadn't been down here since the funeral.
The vault was lined with shelves of leather-bound journals, most encoded in a cipher only her father and one other man could break.
She flipped through a volume marked Winter, 1987, scanning for anything tied to the ouroboros symbol.
Then she found it.
A page ripped halfway down.
"The Veleno move like smoke. They don't kill their enemies. They erase them from within. One by one. Loyalty. Identity. Memory."
Below it, a name:
Lorenzo Greco.
Her eyes widened.
Her father's old guard. Quiet. Unassuming. Deadly when needed. She hadn't seen him since the will reading. She hadn't thought to ask where he'd gone.
Now, her heart sank.
If Veleno had reached him...
They weren't just inside.
They were beneath her.
Final Scene — Intercepted Message
That night, Sofia, her tech lead, burst into the room with a printout.
"Donna. We traced a bounced message sent two days ago not from our lines, but piggybacked on your private network."
"From who?"
"Unknown. But we decrypted part of it. You should see this."
She handed over the message.
Amara read it in silence.
> "Stage two complete. The Rose is blooming. She doesn't know she's already been cut."
Her blood ran cold.