Chapter 1 - The Mark of the Rat
The kitchen was cold enough to show my breath.
I stood in the doorway, my boots clicking softly against the warped linoleum. Emma’s mother lay curled on her side, her knees pulled toward her chest. She looked impossibly fragile under a thin, threadbare coat that had been left behind only because it was torn. Her skin was a translucent, bruised gray, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut. She was breathing, but each rise of her chest was a shallow, rattling battle.
And there, resting just inches from her limp hand on the dirty floor, was a heavy, matte-black card.
I didn't need to pick it up to know what it was. My family’s sigil—a silver crown crossed by a dual-headed dagger—was embossed in the center. Underneath, printed in elegant, merciless silver foil, was a single phrase:
The Moretti Syndicate.
It was a calling card reserved only for the highest tier of my enforcers. It was meant to be left on the desks of politicians, judges, and rival bosses to let them know a debt had been collected, or a life had been claimed.
Leaving it here, in a stripped, starving household on the east side, was a deliberate insult. It wasn't just a robbery; it was a frame-job. Someone was using my shadow to cover their own greed, knowing that a mother and her children would be too terrified of the "Moretti" name to ever look for help.
"Mommy?"
Emma slid past me, her small knees hitting the floor beside her mother. She touched the woman's shoulder with trembling fingers. "Mommy, wake up. A nice man came with me. He didn't take my bike."
The woman's eyelids fluttered. She let out a weak, raspy moan, her eyes barely opening. The moment she saw my tall silhouette in the doorway—dressed in a hand-tailored Italian overcoat, smelling of expensive tobacco and rain—a jolt of pure, primal terror seemed to briefly bring her back to life.
She scrambled backward against the empty kitchen cabinets, shielding Emma with her frail body.
"Please," she gasped, her voice barely a dry wheeze. "Please, we have nothing left. You took... you took everything. There's nothing."
I reached down and picked up the black card. I slid it into my breast pocket, my fingers tracing the embossed silver crown.
"I am not here to take anything, signora," I said, my voice quiet, dropping into the low baritone that commanded thousands of men in this city. "My name is Rocco Moretti."
The mother froze. The name alone seemed to drain whatever remaining warmth she had in her body. She looked at me as if she were staring at death itself.
"I have never seen you," I continued, stepping closer and kneeling so I was on her level. "I have never authorized a debt collection on this house. And my men do not steal children's cribs."
May you like
I looked at the bruises on her neck and the matching ones on Emma’s thin arm.
"But someone did," I said, the coldness in my chest hardening into a vow. "And I am going to find out who."
