the mafia boss romance
311 Words
CHAPTER 1 — THE MAN WHO OWNS THE NIGHT
I didn’t know fear could be so quiet.
When I walked into my room that night, the city’s noise fell away like it knew better than to follow me inside. The curtains were half-drawn, moonlight spilling across the floor in pale streaks. And there—leaning against the window like he belonged to the darkness itself—stood Lorenzo Moretti.
The billionaire mafia boss who owned the city.
He didn’t rush me. He didn’t speak. He simply watched me with eyes that had seen too much blood and too little mercy. Power clung to him effortlessly, like the air obeyed his presence. Every instinct screamed that I should run.
Instead, I closed the door.
“You’re calm,” he said finally, voice low, measured. Dangerous.
“I’m terrified,” I replied honestly.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Good. It means you understand who I am.”
Yet there was something else beneath his composure—tension. Control stretched thin. As if standing this close to me required restraint he wasn’t used to exercising.
I was twenty-one. Too young. Too soft. Too alive for a man like him.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
His gaze dropped to my lips, then returned to my eyes. “Because you looked at me once like I wasn’t a monster.”
The confession unsettled me more than any threat could have.
He stepped closer, slow, deliberate. When he stopped, there was space between us—but it felt charged, electric. I could smell him: expensive cologne, smoke, something dark and masculine that made my pulse stumble.
“I don’t touch what I can’t protect,” he said quietly. “And I never protect what I don’t intend to keep.”
Fear curled in my chest.
So did something dangerously close to hope.
- Writer
