Three best friends, Luna, Rielle and Darcy, grew up together as daughters of the Big Five, the most powerful mafia families in Kenya. They are educated, successful and dangerous in equal measure. They fight for women and children that the law fails, using legal channels when possible and their own methods when not. This is the world the three love stories live inside.Couple One: Luna and AlaricLuna Nia Muriithi is twenty-seven years old. Psychology professor, licensed therapist, mafia princess. On the outside she is composed, sharp and untouchable. On the inside she has been quietly falling apart for five years, ever since her ex Calvin spent two years dismantling her confidence piece by piece. She has not told anyone the full extent of it. She wears layers, avoids mirrors and has developed an eating disorder she manages in private while professionally helping others through their own trauma.Alaric Amani De Luca is thirty-six. He was her university lecturer. For three years he watched her from across a lecture hall and said nothing because she was his student and the age gap felt like a wall he had no right to climb. He had a plan. Wait for her graduation and then ask her to dinner properly. Then his parents were attacked in Italy and he disappeared without a word, spent four years in blood and rage and grief, and missed everything including her graduation.When he comes back he comes back as her bodyguard, arranged through his brother Atticus and quietly supported by Luna's fathers who have noticed their daughter is not well and want someone patient and trusted close to her.Luna receives him with cold walls and aggressive driving. Alaric receives her with quiet patience and careful attention. He notices what she cannot say out loud. He does not push. He simply stays, watches, brings her fruit in the mornings and sits outside bathroom doors and finds small ways to make it harder for her to disappear into herself.The journey is slow. He is trying to earn back her trust after four years of silence while also protecting her from a gang leader's potential retaliation. She is trying not to fall for a man who already left once. Underneath all of it she is trying to learn how to see herself the way he sees her. The age gap is nine years. The distance between them is not about years.Couple Two: Rielle and AtticusRielle Neema Wangui is twenty-seven years old. Defense attorney, advocate for survivors, the firecracker of the trio. She spent a year being sexually and emotionally abused by her boyfriend Caspian, a gang leader who used videos and threats to keep her silent. Luna ends that chapter decisively during their vacation by putting the fear of God in him and Rielle begins the slow work of healing.One and a half years into that healing she is doing well by most measures. Back in court, back in herself, back to being the woman who walks into a room and commands it. What she has not recovered is the ability to let a man close. She does not let anyone touch her. She has not tried.Atticus De Luca is thirty-six, Alaric's brother and the CEO of Sentinella Security. He meets Rielle briefly during a certain press conference and is immediately and completely undone by her. He is a man who is used to making decisions quickly and executing them cleanly. What he is not used to is being frightened of a woman. He follows her from a careful distance for months, knows her schedule, her cases, her favourite lunch spot, and cannot bring himself to walk up to her.When they finally collide by accident in the city it becomes something else. He does not pretend he does not know who she is. He is honest with her from the first conversation. He wants to take her to lunch. Just lunch. She says fine, just lunch. Just lunch becomes a pattern of small careful dates, each one building a centimetre more of trust, each one teaching her that she can choose who touches her and when and that choosing him does not make her foolish. It makes her brave.The love story is quiet and deliberate. He moves at her pace entirely. The moment she reaches for him first is the turning point.Couple Three: Darcy and JulianDarcy Malkia Waweru is thirty years old. Trauma surgeon, strip club owner, the most terrifying person in any room who is also somehow the most loving. She has always dated younger men. She broke her last boyfriend's legs after he cheated on her, which she considers a proportionate response, and moved on without losing sleep.She leaves her dads' hospital MiLo to take a position at Blessings Private Hospital, where she plans to grow her surgical career. What she does not plan for is Dr Julian Baraka , forty years old, the hospital's founder, who sees her on her first week and makes his interest immediately and completely clear. He does not play games. He does not hint. He tells her directly that he finds her remarkable and would like to take her to dinner.Darcy's problem is twofold. She has never been attracted to older
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