Chapter 204

We had bled together, planned together, failed together, and risen again, each time stronger than before, each time learning from our mistakes and scars. There were nights we barely slept, sitting across from each other with blood on our hands and maps spread across tables, weighing consequences that would shape lives. We had become the kind of friends who could communicate without words, understanding each other through mere glances or the slightest change in tone. In a world where trust was currency and betrayal came cheap, that silent understanding was rare and priceless, something I guarded almost as fiercely as my power.

The memory hit me then, unbidden but never forgotten. I was nineteen, barely a man, when my father—the don of our empire—sent me on my first solo mission. A rival family had been encroaching on our territory, and I was tasked with delivering a message. But I was young, arrogant, and I walked straight into an ambush. Three of them. Knives. They gutted me l