The city looked different from the penthouse.
Colder. Smaller.
Like it already belonged to her.
Aria stood by the glass wall, eyes trained on the horizon. Smoke still curled in the distance from the Widow's Court—the failed ambush that had left three of her men dead and Sofia alive.
Luciano stood behind her, silent. He hadn't spoken much since the warehouse. Not because he didn't have thoughts—but because he didn't want to say what they both knew:
This was a war.
And Aria had just become its face.
⸻
"She called me queen," Aria said finally. Her reflection in the glass was hard and sharp.
Luciano nodded once. "She's not wrong."
"She thinks I'm like her."
"You're not."
"She wants me to be."
Luciano walked to her side. "You're not her, Aria. She kills for power. You kill for truth."
Her jaw tightened. "What's the difference, when the blood still stains the floor?"
Luciano didn't answer. He didn't need to. They both knew the line was getting harder to see.
⸻
The next morning, Aria called every surviving capo from both Valenti and D'Angelo territories to the estate.
Some arrived with suspicion.
Some with fear.
One arrived with a sniper watching from the trees.
Aria stood at the head of the marble hall in black, her hair braided like a crown, firelight casting shadows behind her.
"This is no longer a question of loyalty," she said, voice ringing. "It's survival. Sofia Romano is alive. And she's building a shadow empire."
Some muttered.
Some didn't believe.
So she tossed a photograph onto the table—Sofia smiling beside a known arms trafficker from Moscow.
"She's aligning with enemies outside this country. If she succeeds, none of us will have a kingdom to rule. You think I'm ruthless? She doesn't negotiate. She annihilates."
Silence.
Then one capo stood. Carlo Alvez. Old guard. Bloodied knuckles. Loyal only to power.
"What makes you think you can stop her?" he asked. "You're just a Valenti girl wearing a dead man's crown."
Aria walked to him slowly. Calmly.
Then in one motion, she pulled the dagger from her thigh holster—and stabbed it into the table an inch from his hand.
The blade quivered.
She didn't blink.
"Because unlike the men before me," she said, "I'm not here to survive. I'm here to win."
⸻
By the end of the hour, they pledged themselves to her.
Not because they loved her.
But because they feared what she might do if they didn't.
And that, Luciano knew, was the beginning of true power.
⸻
That night, Aria met Nico in the underground war room.
He looked up from the map table, where red pins now outnumbered black.
"Sofia's making moves on the docks," he said. "We lost the west shipments. And a few of our old allies are switching sides."
Aria stared at the map.
Then pulled the pins from Queens, Bronx, and Lower Harlem.
"We let them go."
Nico looked stunned. "You want to surrender territory?"
"I want her to think I'm cracking," Aria said. "She thrives on ego. Let her win scraps."
"And then?"
Aria smiled.
"Then we burn the house down."
⸻
Later, alone in her chambers, Aria opened the small wooden box Luca had once hidden beneath her bed.
Inside were letters—his handwriting, sharp and precise.
One was labeled in red ink.
"If I die before I tell you the truth."
Her fingers trembled as she unfolded it.
"Aria—
If you're reading this, then I failed. I always told you I kept the family clean. I lied. I made deals with devils to keep us alive. Sofia was one of them. I thought I could use her, but she used me instead. She promised power, and I took it, thinking I could control it. She leaked our meeting to Father. I never saw it coming."
"Don't follow me into hell, Ari. But if you must… take the throne. Take it all. And burn them from the inside."
"—Luca."
Tears blurred the ink.
Not from weakness.
From rage.
From betrayal.
From knowing that even her brother had been forced to dance with snakes.
⸻
At dawn, she stood on the balcony overlooking the garden.
Luciano joined her, coffee in hand.
"She'll come at you with everything now," he said. "You humiliated her."
"She came at me with fire," Aria replied. "I'm just returning the favor."
Luciano placed the cup down beside her.
"She won't stop until you're dead."
Aria turned to him, her voice like flint.
"Then she'll die disappointed."
⸻
That afternoon, word came that Sofia's next move would be on the Grand Continental—a neutral casino used for mafia meetings under strict codes of peace.
Breaking the truce there would be a declaration of total war.
Sofia planned to blow it up.
With several of Aria's allies inside.
Aria read the report.
Then stood, smoothing her coat.
"Tell everyone we're evacuating our people from the Grand Continental."
Luciano frowned. "You're letting her win again?"
"No," Aria said. "I'm pulling the trapdoor."
⸻
In the surveillance room, Aria stared at the live feed of the casino's private vault—recently reinforced, recently stocked.
She smiled to herself.
Sofia thought she was luring Aria into a bomb.
But the vault held more than money.
It held the last untraceable copy of Sofia's offshore accounts.
And Aria had just leaked the location.
Sofia was going to walk right into her own pyre.