King of smoke

Nicholas:

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They say Palermo never sleeps. I say it just learns to dream with one eye open.

I was sitting on a sun-drenched terrace near Taormina when the message came through, faint scent of citrus in the air, espresso cooling at my side, a woman in my bed whose name I wouldn’t remember.

Then: a single buzz on the phone, a name on the screen.

Marco.

I glanced at the screen, thumb hovering over the lock. I already knew what it would be. Marco didn’t write unless Iris had started something. Or ended it.

I opened the message.

“Iris pulled them in. Fiore informants. One talking. One’s not.”

I smiled. Slow. Pleased.

“Of course she did,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

Behind me, the woman traced her nails down my spine. “Don’t go,” she whispered. “It’s barely morning.”

I didn’t look at her.

“It’s always morning somewhere,” I murmured, then sat up and pulled on my shirt without urgency. “Besides… duty calls.”

I slipped on my shirt: linen, ivory, loose at the cuffs, and stepped outside, letting the wind comb through my hair.

“Duty?” she echoed, a laugh in her voice.

I gave her a half glance and a full smile. “It’s a family thing.”

She pouted. It was probably cute. I didn’t check. I was already buttoning my cuffs.

Outside, the Sicilian coast stretched out, golden and ruthless. Beautiful and jagged, like Iris when she’s calm. That was the dangerous version of her. And if she was handling interrogations personally, we’d already passed the point of diplomacy.

 My phone buzzed again.

More details. Names, Loose ties to the Enna docks, Lower-tier men.

I lit a cigarette and brought it to my lips.

Then I called Marco.

He picked up on the second ring.

“Boss.”

I leaned against the stone railing of the terrace, overlooking the slow pulse of Taormina. Below, the city breathed in warm shadows and golden streetlights. I took a slow drag from my cigarette.

“Did she do it herself?”

“Yes, sir. Took them down to the basement. Didn’t let anyone else touch it.”

I smiled, smoke curling from my lips. “Of course she did.”

“One of them broke. Gave up a few names. Street rats, mostly. But it’s something.”

“She let one walk?”

Marco hesitated. That was answer enough.

“She said he had a message to deliver.”

I exhaled a soft laugh: low, amused, edged in affection. “Let me guess—he’s limping.”

“…Yes, sir.”

“And Marco?”

“Yes?”

“Tell Iris something for me.” I let the pause stretch, just long enough to tighten the line. “Tell her she’s beautiful when she’s furious, but it’s when she’s calm that I remember why I’m afraid of her.”

Click.

The call ended, and I stayed where I was. Soon, I’d be back in Palermo.

And if the Fiores thought Iris was the worst thing waiting for them, they clearly hadn’t missed me enough.

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 The wheels touched down in Palermo just after dawn, kissing the tarmac like they knew they were home.

I stepped off the jet without hurry, inhaling the air like a man savoring his first drink after too long gone. Salt, smoke, cigarettes. Palermo still reeked of all its sins.

A driver waited beside a sleek black car, engine running, posture perfect. He gave a small bow.

“Welcome home, Signore Bianchi.”

I smiled the way people trust warm, practiced, with just enough fatigue to make it human. “Grazie. Tell me the espresso in this city hasn’t gone to hell while I was gone.”

He chuckled: nervous, flattered. “It hasn’t, sir.”

“Good. One crisis averted.”

The city blurred past the tinted windows as we pulled onto the road. Palermo stirred under the early sun, bleary-eyed and beautiful in her own feral way. She was a jealous lover, this city. She remembered who fed her, who fought for her, and who wore her name with pride.

And the people—ah, the people—they adored me.

The man who shook hands at baptisms and kissed cheeks at funerals. The patrons who paid for their festivals, protected their businesses, kept the wolves from the doors. Nicholas Bianchi. Palermo’s golden son.

They didn’t see the teeth behind the smile. They weren’t supposed to.

The phone buzzed in my hand. A photo. Bloodied shoes in a hallway I knew too well. Marco’s message beneath it:

‘He ran. Just like she wanted.’

I grinned.

Iris.

She didn’t need violence to leave a scar. Her calm was a scalpel. And when she was like this: still, quiet, terrifying…God help anyone who thought her predictable.

I leaned back, resting my head against the seat as the manor came into view, its iron gates yawning open like a beast called to heel. The guards stepped aside. One of them gave a stiff nod. No smiles.

 Smiles were for the city.

Respect lived behind the gates.

As we rolled through the courtyard, I reached for my sunglasses and slipped them on. My reflection in the tinted glass smiled back at me: well-dressed, clean-shaven, harmless. The lie everyone wanted to believe.

And when the time came, I’d make sure they still loved me, right until I put the knife in.

Because when Palermo needed a prince, I gave them one.

But I’ve always been the king.

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The front door was already open when I stepped from the car, as if the house itself had been holding its breath.

Inside, the air was cooler, stone and shadow, the faint smell of aged wood and Iris’s perfume. I passed the foyer, nodding at the guards, moving through silence that had teeth.

She didn’t come to greet me.

Of course not.

I found her in the study, back to me, sleeves still rolled, arms crossed as she stared out the window toward the back courtyard. There was blood on her cuff, just a fleck. Nothing about her posture said "welcome home."

“Iris,” I said, smiling like I always did when I knew I shouldn’t. “You’ve redecorated. The tension’s a nice touch.”

She didn’t respond. Just that sharp, cold silence that always told me she was more pissed than polite.

I stepped closer. Slowly. Carefully. Like walking through a minefield I’d helped bury.

“You’re late,” she said without turning.

I exhaled. “Got held up.”

“Don’t bother.” Her voice was flat, sharp as a knife. “I spent weeks cleaning your mess while you were off playing the gentleman with politicians. You left the family in chaos.”

I felt the sting, but not surprise. She never minced words.

“That had to be done,” I said. “The family needed those connections.”

 She whipped around, eyes blazing that fierce, pale green I’d known since the day I saved her from the firestorm that was her life. “Connections?” Her voice dripped with ice. “You call playing nice with politicians while I was left holding the damn line connections? You left Palermo to drown in chaos while you played the perfect gentleman.”

I met her glare without flinching. “I did what had to be done. Politics keep us alive longer than guns alone ever will.”

She snorted, folding her arms like she was daring me to argue. “Alive? You think smooth smiles and handshakes replace loyalty? The streets don’t care about your fancy diplomacy, they care about power and respect.”

I stepped closer, my voice dropping low, calm but sharp. “You held the streets. I handled the shadows. Together, we keep the family standing.”

She tilted her head, a slow, mocking smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Standing? Is that what you call it when Fiore rats are bleeding on our steps and our allies are questioning whether you still breathe?”

“I trust you to remind them,” I said. “With clarity.”

Her smile vanished. “Don’t twist this into flattery. I’m not one of your soft-suit contacts you can charm into forgetting the smell of blood.”

“I’m here now.”

She laughed—dry, hollow, like the echo of something that used to be human. “A ghost with good timing.”

Then nothing. Just a breath.

“If you disappear again…”

“I won’t.”

She snapped her gaze to mine, mouth twisting. “Of course you will. It’s your signature move.”

I didn’t argue. The truth didn’t need a second voice.

But this time, if the ground gave out beneath us, I wouldn’t be the one watching from a distance. I’d go down with the wreckage.

I hadn’t been gone that long. Not long enough to forget how to fight, or how to lead. If anything, I was stronger, sharper, more dangerous. Still, leaving her to handle this mess alone left a bitter taste I couldn’t shake.

Iris was fierce, no doubt. She could hold the family’s pulse steady,  better than most. But she shouldn’t have had to. Not like that. Not without me.

I didn’t doubt myself, not for a second. I knew what I was capable of. But guilt? Yeah, that was different. That was the part of me that hated knowing she faced hell while I was somewhere else. That I trusted her to bear that alone.

Iris didn’t need me to survive.

But I wasn’t about to let her do it alone again.

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Iris:

The door clicked shut behind him, the echo lingering longer than I expected. Silence wrapped around the room like a shroud, heavy and suffocating. I leaned back in my chair, eyes fixed on the dark stain marring my cuff, a stubborn reminder of the fight I’d just finished.

Nicholas. Always arriving too late, always carrying the weight of decisions made without me. His presence filled the room for a moment, then vanished like a ghost leaving behind cold air.

I clenched my fists on the desk, feeling the hard grain of the wood beneath my fingers. He talks about loyalty and fighting together, but words alone don’t stitch the wounds left by his absence. Not when I spent nights unraveling his mess, blood and broken trust staining every step.

There was no room for weakness here, not in Palermo, not in this family. I was forged by fire, but fire could burn out. And sometimes, I wondered if the part of me that believed in him was just smoke.

Outside, the city carried on, indifferent and hungry. Somewhere, the Fiore family smiled, knowing the leverage they still held, the secret tied to my blood, the past that never truly let me go.

My father, Matteo Rossi, was a man who played the game of power with a polished smile and a ruthless hand. To the world, he was untouchable, a pillar of respect. But I saw the cracks beneath the marble, the fragile threads holding us together.

The Fiore family found those cracks and widened them with a secret so dangerous it could shatter everything. They didn’t just want to take my family down, they wanted to own us.

And so they took me.

I was just a girl when they handed me over, a bargaining chip in their endless war for control. They wrapped their claws around my family’s legacy and squeezed until they bled, using me as proof that loyalty had a price.

Then Nicholas Bianchi stormed into my life.

He saw past the chains—the scars etched deep, the silence I wore like armor, the walls I built stone by stone. Where others saw a broken girl, Nicholas saw a warrior forged by fire and betrayal. He pulled me from the Fiore shadow, dragging me into the Binachi fold, not as a rescued pawn, but as an equal, a weapon shaped by pain and sharpened by resolve.

But rescue was no salvation.

I carried the weight of betrayal and loss like a second skin, scars hidden beneath every calculated move and every quiet moment of vulnerability. Nicholas didn’t just see the woman I was; he saw the woman I could become. Together, we rebuilt what had been shattered…my trust, the family’s power, and something fragile but fierce: hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, we could rewrite the destinies carved out for us by blood and violence.

I wasn’t just his underboss. I was his equal in every brutal calculation, every gamble in the dark. And together, we were a force no enemy could ignore.

Every move Nicholas made, whether on the streets or weaving through the shadowed corridors of political power, felt like a step closer to the edge of that darkness. And I wondered, not for the first time, if the past was ready to catch up with us both.

If it did, would we burn together? Or would one of us be left standing in the ashes?

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