A Crown Made of Choice

The silence after a war is never empty.

It hums—low and aching—with everything that survived.

Vera woke before the sun, as she had every morning since the night Antonio fell. The Bellanti estate lay still around her, no alarms, no distant gunfire, no frantic footsteps echoing through marble halls. Peace, when it finally arrived, felt unfamiliar. Heavy. Almost suspicious.

She rose quietly, pulling on a robe, and stepped onto the balcony.

The world stretched out ...