The revelation didn't start with a bang, nor with the dramatic flair of a gunshot in the night. It started with the dry, sterile smell of old paper and the flickering blue light of a decrypted drive. For three days, Giulia and Matteo had occupied the scorched hollow of the lighthouse ruins, a tomb of stone that had become their war room. The "peace" they had cultivated at Caffè Aurora had been a thin veneer, a coat of paint over a structure that was rotting from within.
While the world believed the war was a local blood feud between the De Lucas and the Romanos, the truth found in the archives of the town’s birth records was far more labyrinthine. The Romanos hadn't just been a rival family; they were a branch of a much older, more dangerous tree: The Syndicate of the Seven Seas. This was
