She barely remembered leaving the Tower.

Everything happened too fast, too strange, and too… real. The rain hadn’t stopped, but she didn’t shiver. Instead, something burned where his gaze had landed. She opened her phone and saw a string of messages from Evelyn Shaw, her editor.

“Amelia, are you okay?”

“I heard he was at the ‘Luna’ restaurant. Don’t tell me you”

Amelia turned off the screen and slipped the phone into her pocket.

She didn’t want to answer, nor did she want to think. But in her head Lorenzo’s voice still echoed, deep and authoritative:

“When you step into my world, no one can leave without my permission.”

Two days later, the newsroom at The Herald was flooded with the cold light of a Monday morning. Everyone was busy, but no one failed to glance at Amelia when she walked in. Her coat was damp, hair hastily tied, dark crescents under her eyes.

Evelyn stood waiting, arms folded across her chest.

“You disappeared for two days without a message. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Amelia sighed and set her bag down. “I just needed time to think.”

Evelyn frowned. “Think—or are you falling for the man even the NYPD fears?”

While Evelyn spoke, Amelia’s fingers were already typing “Valenti crime ring” into the newsroom database.

The remark stunned Amelia. She neither denied nor rebutted. In her mind was the image of Lorenzo’s hand holding a glass, his long, steady fingers, and that gaze cold yet warm look that made her tremble though he had not touched her.

Evelyn lowered her voice, more serious.

“Amelia, I’m telling you honestly, stop before it’s too late. Moretti is not a man who can love. He is the icon of power in the dark, the thing you write to expose. You can’t hold a pen and his hand at the same time."

Amelia pressed her lips together, eyes toward the window where the sunlight was faint. “I don’t know, Evelyn… Maybe I want to understand him. Does someone like that still have humanity?”

A soft chime broke through her thoughts. A new email blinked on her screen — no sender, no subject, only a single line:

Stop writing about Moretti.

She stared, then closed the laptop. In the dark screen, a stranger stared back.

Across the city, Lorenzo stood in the conference room on the 70th floor, looking out the window. The city below was small, like a tangled map.

Marco Silva stepped forward, placing a thick file on the table.

“You should see this. One of Valenti’s men has been arrested. The police may have traced a name connected to you.”

Lorenzo did not turn, only took a sip of espresso, his gaze still distant.

“Amelia Vaughn?”

Marco hesitated. “She’s still in the newsroom. Amelia opened her recorder app out of habit, time, place, source. Process first, feelings later. But...”

“But?”

“She asked about Gabriel Moretti.”

The air in the room suddenly thickened. Lorenzo put his cup down, his gray eyes turned darker, like the sky before a storm.

“Gabriel is dead,” he said. “Don’t speak his name.”

Marco bowed his head, but his glance at Lorenzo was full of suspicion. Something in that past had not yet been buried.

That night, Amelia received an envelope. No return address. Inside was an old photograph of three men in black suits standing in front of a sports car. In the middle was Lorenzo, and on the right, holding a cigarette… she recognized him immediately.

She froze — that photo was from the night her father disappeared.

On the back, one line in black ink read: “Truth never dies, even under blood.”

She sat motionless for hours, holding the photo with trembling hands. In that moment, memories she thought were forgotten rushed back. The night her father disappeared, the wail of sirens, and the face of the man who had sped past at the wheel.

Lorenzo Moretti.

On the high floors of Moretti Tower, Lorenzo stood alone before the glass, watching the storm forming offshore. Wind battered the window; lightning ripped the sky like cuts through memory.

“Brother,” he murmured. “The fire never dies.”

The light reflected on his face, half bright, half dark. Below, the city still blazed as if never tired. But in Lorenzo’s eyes, there remained only night. And within that darkness, the silhouette of Amelia appeared slender, radiant, but dangerous.

He knew that fire would burn everything.

Even himself. And somewhere in that fire, Amelia Vaughn’s name kept burning.