(Luca)
Respect is a fragile thing.
People think it’s built on fear, on guns, on blood. They’re wrong. Fear fades. Blood dries. Guns jam.
Respect is built on certainty.
Certainty that if you cross a line, there will be consequences—and not the kind you can talk your way out of the next morning.
The man kneeling on the marble floor of the wine cellar learned that too late.
His name was Marco Bellini. A distant cousin of a minor famiglia, invited to my engagement party because politics demanded it. The same man who had laughed too loudly, drunk too much, and decided it was amusing to spread rumors about Aria Romano in my house.
In my presence.
That was his first mistake.
The second was believing the party protected him.
“Don Moretti,” Marco slurred earlier that night, glass raised,
