Fire to fire || 18+

I was born into royalty: the Princess of the Sartoni empire, the biggest, most brutal cartel the world had ever kissed. They say I was born with a silver spoon; I remember a silver knife. From the moment I could walk, I was groomed, forged, and sharpened to be the future Capo. For ten years, my life was a symphony of violence, a perfect, blood-soaked crescendo. I surpassed every expectation, every trainer. I was fast, ruthless, and terrifyingly efficient. I was the heir. Then, my brother was born. The music stopped. The knives were confiscated. Overnight, I was demoted from killer to commodity. “You are a woman, Naesa,” my father, the Don, decreed, his voice devoid of the pride he once reserved for me. “Your role is to be a quiet support, a beautiful ornament for your husband.” Ornament. After I poured my soul into becoming a killing machine, I was reduced to meekness, to silence. Every future responsibility, every ounce of power I had earned, was handed to him, the 'sole heir,' the golden boy. The hatred for my brother was immediate. I was ambiguously perfect for the Capo role, a ruthless mind in a beautiful shell. But perfection means nothing when you are ruled by a gender hierarchy that suffocates your ambition. As if I didn't despise the world enough, then Lombardi did the rest of the job. I watched, burning, as Rafaele Lombardi, the insufferable jerk, rose from the ashes. He was nothing but the sanguaccio, the bastard son of a Capo and a w***e. He was dust, forgotten collateral, a stain on the Lombardi legacy. Yet, he didn't just survive; he erupted. At seven years old, he eliminated the legitimate heirs. All of them. The ghost of Lombardi became a sensation, a whisper of pure, cold brutality that haunted every dark alley in Italy. He, a bastard, stole the spotlight, seizing the sole heirship that was rightfully mine by birth and effort. I hated him. More than the brother whose guts I wanted to spill myself. That f*****g Lombardi bastard became the razor-sharp thorn in my eyes, proof that gender mattered less than sheer, uncompromising will—will I was now forbidden to exercise. My own world that I was born to rule became a hopeful dream. It was cruel. So, when I became a teenager, I realized the only way to save my dignity was escape. I demanded they let me go, let me start a quiet life, miles away from the stench of old blood and forced obedience. To my shock, they agreed. They were relieved, perhaps, that their precious boy would face no competitor. In a single night, Naesa Sartoni vanished. I left nothing but a cold, empty void behind me. I rebuilt myself brick by boring brick. I became a small-town girl, poor on paper, yet inexplicably capable of affording the simple luxuries of freedom. For fourteen years, I lived a life without sharp edges, no cutting, no killing, just the peaceful, predictable struggle of a small-town woman making it in the big city. It was the beautiful antithesis of everything I was born to be. My life was, finally, almost perfect. Until the phone rang. “Come back, Naesa. There’s an emergency in the family. The Russians are at the door.” And just like that, I was dragged back into the velvet cage, back into the world that rubbed salt in my deepest, oldest wound. I was no longer just returning to Italy. I was returning to face the brother who stole my crown and the Lombardi bastard who proved a girl like me could never truly escape the gender that defined her. ~•~