The descent into darkness was never a sudden fall.It was a staircase — one cautious step at a time, each choice a surrender dressed as necessity.
Alberta Contadino understood this better than most.
In the months following the fall of Vigna di Sogni, she had wandered through the remains of her old life like a phantom. Laws had failed her. Morality had failed her. Justice was nothing more than a fable whispered to children.
If she wanted power, she would have to steal it.If she wanted vengeance, she would have to sharpen her soul into a weapon.
She began with whispers — the kind that floated through Genoa's crowded markets and velvet-draped lounges. Names. Deals. Secrets. She learned to listen the way predators stalk their prey: patient, invisible, lethal.
At first, her incursions into the underworld were tentative. Meetings with smirking brokers who thought her naïve. Deals struck with sweating middlemen who underestimated her until it was far too late.
She failed.She lost money.She trusted the wrong people.
But each failure was a lesson, carved into her like lines in stone.
By her second year, she was no longer a mere participant.She was a force.
She leveraged what the old world had taught her — negotiation, strategy, endurance — and rearmed it for a battlefield without rules. She learned the language of threats, the weight of loyalty bought with blood instead of contracts. She smiled at kings and slit the throats of pawns when necessary.
And as her reputation grew, so too did the doors that opened before her.
It was at one of those doors — a blood-drenched club in the underbelly of Genoa — where she first heard the name Fabian Di Neri.
At the time, it was spoken with a kind of reverence, almost fear.He was myth and man, a ghost with flesh.
"Careful," a fixer whispered over a glass of whiskey. "Di Neri doesn't make deals. He makes funerals."
But Alberta, ever the gambler, saw opportunity where others saw death.
She studied him from afar first. She learned his history — or what little of it the streets were willing to part with. A boy orphaned by violence, raised by the shadows of the docks, who clawed his way to the top of a world that chewed and spat out better men every day.
Fabian didn't just survive the underworld.He remade it in his image.
If Alberta was going to rebuild her empire, if she was going to take back everything stolen from her — she needed an ally who understood how to rule without mercy.
And so, she crafted a plan.
**
The first meeting wasn't chance.It was choreography.
An exclusive gala hosted by one of Genoa's old banking families — the kind of event that pretended to be about philanthropy but was truly about power trading hands behind crystal glasses and polite smiles.
Alberta made sure she was on the guest list.And she made sure Fabian noticed her.
She wore black silk, sharp heels, and diamonds that caught the candlelight with every subtle turn of her body. She spoke just loud enough that her laughter danced across the marble floors. She moved through the room like a storm gathering on the horizon.
And when Fabian finally approached, it was not because she seemed available.
It was because she seemed inevitable.
He stood before her, a dark monolith in a sea of artifice, his presence stripping away the room's pretense like a knife through silk.
"You're not one of them," he said, voice low.
"And you're not as invisible as you think," Alberta replied, meeting his gaze with unwavering steel.
A slow smirk curled his lips, but his eyes remained cold — assessing.He tilted his glass slightly, a silent salute.
"Walk with me," he said.
It wasn't a request.
And so, they walked — through corridors of murmuring elites, past paintings that cost more than most men's lives, out into the moonlit gardens where the scent of jasmine barely masked the acrid bite of power hanging in the air.
They spoke little.There was no need for small talk between wolves.
When they reached a secluded fountain, Fabian turned fully to her.
"What do you want, Miss Contadino?"
The truth, as always, was a blade best wielded carefully.
"I want to rebuild," she said simply.
"And?"
"And I want the ones who destroyed my family to drown in the ruins of their own ambition."
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the trickle of water. Then — a slow nod, almost imperceptible.
"You know what this world demands," he said. "There's no line you cross once. Every step forward is another line behind you."
Alberta stepped closer, the night folding around them.
"I crossed my last line the day they murdered my brother."
Their eyes locked — twin storms recognizing their own reflection.
It was not friendship that was forged that night.
It was something colder.Stronger.More honest.
An alliance.
**
The partnership was never formalized by contracts or handshakes.
It was forged in blood and necessity.
Alberta brought strategy, vision, and legitimate fronts — import companies, logistics firms, banks that turned dirty money into clean streams.Fabian brought force, fear, and an army of men who would slit throats with the same ease they carried crates.
Together, they were a storm.And Genoa — no, all of Europe — would feel the tremors of their rise.
Alberta was careful, though.She knew Fabian was not a man to be trusted blindly.
He was a king — but not hers. He ruled through loyalty, yes, but also through a ruthlessness that would not hesitate to sacrifice even allies if the throne demanded it.
Still, she couldn't deny the pull she felt when she was near him.Not desire — not yet.Something deeper. Recognition.
They were mirror images — broken and reforged by fire, ambition layered over grief, pragmatism masking wounds that had never truly healed.
In Fabian, she saw the monster she needed to become.And perhaps, in her, he saw the sliver of humanity he had long since buried.
**
In the months that followed, their partnership flourished.
Together, they dismantled Fournier's operations piece by piece — silent at first, subtle: key shipments delayed, vital contracts dissolved, alliances poisoned from within. Alberta worked the high society angles, whispering in the ears of investors and politicians. Fabian struck from the shadows, his men erasing threats before they ever reached their doorstep.
The media never caught their scent — attributing the shifts in the market to economic downturns, new regulations, natural disasters.
But those in the know understood:A new empire was rising.
One built not on old family names or fragile treaties, but on blood, fear, and the relentless will of two broken souls who refused to stay buried.
**
Still, Alberta held her own ambitions close to her chest.
She didn't want to be Fabian's lieutenant.She didn't want to be anyone's pawn.
She wanted equality.A true partnership.Two sovereigns ruling side by side.
But even deeper, buried beneath ambition and vengeance, there was another desire — a quiet, desperate one she dared not name.
Connection.Not the brittle alliances of business or the transactional affection of underworld liaisons.Something real. Something dangerous.
She saw glimpses of it in the way Fabian sometimes looked at her — not with lust, but with understanding.As if he, too, was exhausted by the loneliness of kingship.
As if, maybe, he was searching for something more than just power.
But Alberta knew better than to hope.Hope was a luxury she could not afford.
So she played the game. Ruthless. Calculating.But always — always — a part of her watched him, wondering.
Could two creatures born from ruin ever build something that wasn't destined to collapse?
Only time would tell.
And in the world they ruled, time was a blade pressed against their throats every second of every day.
**
On the night their first major operation against Fournier succeeded — a silent coup of a vital shipping route in Marseille — Fabian found her standing alone on a balcony overlooking the sea.
The stars were out, scattered like silver dust across the velvet sky.The wind tugged at her hair, at the loose strands of her black dress.
He stepped beside her, close but not touching.
"You were right," he said simply.
She smiled, bitter and bright. "I usually am."
A beat of silence.
"You should enjoy this moment," he added.
She turned to him, eyes like twin blades.
"I'll enjoy it when Fournier is buried so deep he forgets how to breathe."
Fabian studied her for a long time, then offered something rare — a flicker of respect, almost... admiration.
"We'll bury him together."
And for the first time since her family's death, Alberta felt the faintest tremor of something she thought she had lost forever.
Not hope.
Not trust.
But possibility.
She tilted her head slightly, offering him her glass — a silent toast.
"To empire," she said.
Fabian clinked his glass against hers, his voice low and certain.
"To empire."
And beneath the blood-red sky, two sovereigns sealed a future that would either crown them gods —or destroy them utterly.