Blood & Vows

Inheritance Of Blood

The mansion sat eerily quiet in the aftermath of war. The blood had dried on the marble steps, the echo of gunfire now a memory absorbed into the stone walls. Ivy De Rossi—once just a pawn, a captive, a girl with trembling hands—stood at the top of the grand staircase, looking down at the legacy she and Luca had fought tooth and nail to claim.

The De Rossi empire was theirs now. But owning a throne wasn’t the same as holding it.

“We need to deal with Palermo,” Luca said, his voice low, dark eyes scanning the stack of reports laid across the conference table. The inner circle—what remained of it—sat silently around him. Enzo, his most trusted consigliere, looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Neither had Ivy.

“Palermo will fall in line,” Ivy said, her voice cutting through the silence like a blade. She wore black now, tailored and cold, no longer hiding behind lace or fragility. “They’re opportunists, not warriors. They make noise, not moves.”

Luca looked at her then—not as his wife, not as the woman he’d nearly lost a dozen times—but as the one person whose blood was now soaked into the foundations of their reign as deeply as his own.

“They’re calling you La Regina Senz’anima,” Enzo said with a crooked smile. The Queen Without a Soul.

Ivy didn’t blink. “Let them.”

But behind closed doors, she felt the tremble she wouldn’t show to any man. Power was a heavier crown than she’d imagined. It didn’t sparkle—it cut.

The funeral for the Scuro family’s last patriarch was held in secret, an unspoken rule among the Five Families. No one mourned him, but everyone showed up. Ivy and Luca didn’t attend, but their absence was louder than any presence. It was a statement. The De Rossis were no longer part of the hierarchy. They were above it.

“Power makes you a target,” Luca murmured one night, when they lay together in the silence of their bedroom, their bodies still bruised from the war. “And fear… makes them desperate.”

Ivy curled against him, eyes open in the dark. “Let them come desperate. Desperation breeds mistakes.”

But even she knew things wouldn’t remain quiet for long.

The first sign of rebellion came not from Palermo, but from within.

It was a shipment—a simple weapons route through the port of Gioia Tauro, redirected and intercepted. Millions lost. No trial. No warning.

“They’re testing us,” Enzo spat, slamming a fist on the table. “Trying to see if the King and Queen bleed.”

Luca stood still, calm, but his knuckles whitened around the edge of the table. Ivy watched the map, her eyes following the lines that traced territories, ports, and allies.

“We hit back,” she said.

“No,” Luca replied, and that surprised her.

He stepped forward, placing a photo down—one Ivy hadn’t seen. A young man, barely twenty, bloodied but smiling. “This is Salvatore Antonetti. The nephew of our old friend in Naples. He was spotted near the port an hour before the shipment went missing.”

“They want us to retaliate,” Luca said. “They want war again. But this time, we make them beg for it.”

The plan was precise.

Ivy met with Gianna Romano—the widow of a slain underboss who had once sworn loyalty to Luca’s father. In a café far from prying eyes, Ivy extended a hand, not of peace, but of mutual benefit.

“You lost your husband. I lost my innocence. Let’s not lose any more than that,” Ivy said softly.

Gianna’s lips twitched. “What do you want, Regina?”

“I want the names of every man who stood by while Naples plotted against us. And I want them handed over, clean. In return, your territory will be protected. Your sons will be untouched.”

Gianna’s silence was all Ivy needed.

Hours later, she handed Luca the names.

It was surgical.

In three days, the De Rossi network purged every rat, every defector, every turncoat within the Naples sector. Ivy stood beside Luca as each territory was reclaimed—not by brute force, but with whispers, leverage, and the fear of ghosts. They didn’t rule by gunpoint anymore. They ruled by inevitability.

And the world began to tremble.

Later that week, Ivy stood alone in the family chapel, staring at the stained glass above the altar. The light painted her in fractured colors—red, gold, violet. Blood, royalty, bruises. She could still feel the cold steel of the gun she’d held to her captor’s temple months ago. Still remember the moment she realized she would never be the girl she was.

Luca entered quietly, letting the silence stretch.

“You haven’t asked me if I regret it,” she said.

“Do you?”

She turned to him. “No. But I wonder what she would think of me now—the girl I used to be.”

Luca stepped closer, taking her hand. “She’d be proud.”

“No,” Ivy whispered. “She’d be terrified.”

As dusk fell, news arrived that shook even the stone-cold stillness of the De Rossi estate:

An anonymous message, encrypted and sent through an old channel.

"The past is not buried. Blood calls to blood. She’s not the only heir."

Ivy stared at the screen. Her hand went cold.

Luca read it twice before looking up. “You have family?”

Ivy shook her head slowly. “No one alive…”

But in her gut, she knew: this wasn’t a bluff. This wasn’t about business.

This was about her.

And the war they thought was over had only just changed its name.