The Italian Mafia CEO

Luca felt it before he understood it: the precise, hungry tightening behind his ribs that had become his private illness.

Vittoria Sforza.

He didn’t let his face react. He’d spent years training his expression to be an agreement and a threat in the same breath. Still, his pulse betrayed him, a quick, traitorous rhythm under his cufflinks. He caught his own reflection in a glass panel - handsomely neutral, eyes too bright - and forced them to dim.

Around him, the gala surged: laughter like clinking crystal, the soft thrum of a string quartet, the scrape of chair legs as servers glided past with trays that smelled of saffron and aged balsamic. A waiter brushed Luca’s shoulder with the back of his knuckles, apologizing too quickly. Luca didn’t respond with words; he simply angled his body away, letting the man understand he’d been seen.

He scanned the room again, slower this time, like an executive reviewing a contract. Vittoria stood with her back to a wall of mirrors, angled toward a cluster of Sforza men. She wore the family name without flinching, and Luca hated her for it - hated how easily she made him want to abandon his plan.

A rival’s daughter, his mind supplied, cold and familiar.

He’d promised himself he wouldn’t treat her like a weakness.

Luca lifted a glass from a passing tray - champagne, bitter-sweet on the tongue - and moved toward his own obligations. He greeted two representatives from a shipping consortium with the right amount of warmth, shook hands with the kind of grip that didn’t leave bruises but still implied consequences. He listened, nodded, offered a future date for the next meeting. He did it all while keeping Vittoria in his periphery like a weapon laid on the table.

Every time he shifted, he felt eyes on him - men with polished shoes and clean cuff edges, men who thought they were harmless because they’d never had to bleed for their position. When Luca caught their gaze, he gave nothing away. When they looked away first, he felt a brief satisfaction.

Then one of them - Sergio Valenti, the rival who’d tried to undercut Luca’s interests last year - appeared beside Luca with the ease of a man stepping into a familiar room.

“Moretti,” Sergio said, voice smooth as oil. “You made it.”

Luca turned just enough to acknowledge him. “I always make it.”

Sergio’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You look… focused.”

Luca’s gaze flicked, unhurried, toward the candlelit corner where Vittoria stood. Her head tilted, as if she’d heard something interesting. Luca watched the movement, the small shift of her throat as she swallowed a sip of wine.

“Focused,” Luca repeated, and set his glass down on a nearby side table with deliberate care. “Business.”

Sergio followed Luca’s line of sight, and Luca saw the calculation click into place. Sergio’s attention sharpened, not on Vittoria’s beauty, but on Luca’s interest.

“She’s here,” Sergio murmured, like it was a problem he’d been waiting to solve.

Luca didn’t answer directly. He couldn’t - because the truth was a knife lodged behind his ribs, turning each time he looked at her. He wanted her close, wanted to know what her smile hid when the candles dimmed. He wanted to speak to her without the weight of his name between them.

Instead, Luca offered a small, controlled nod. “Sforza keeps her daughter visible.”

Sergio’s grin widened by a fraction. “Or she keeps her daughter safe. Don’t worry, Moretti. Milan has rules.”

The threat was wrapped in charm. Luca felt it in the space between them, in the way Sergio’s hand hovered near Luca’s arm without touching. A warning disguised as etiquette.

Luca leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. “Then you understand why I’ll follow them.”

Sergio’s eyes narrowed. “Do you?”

The music shifted - bowstrings rising, the tempo climbing, the room filling with the kind of energy that made men careless. Around them, servers moved like shadows. A laugh burst nearby, too loud, and then cut off when someone noticed Luca’s attention had drifted again.

It drifted back to Vittoria, because it always did.

She’d stepped away from her group, moving toward the ballroom’s long terrace doors. The candlelight painted her profile gold. Luca watched her hands as she accepted a glass from a server, then set it down without drinking. Her posture stayed poised, but her eyes moved too quickly, scanning corners and exits.

She wasn’t enjoying this.

She was navigating it.

That knowledge struck Luca with a kind of anger that didn’t belong to him. He’d spent months - years, if he was honest - telling himself she was the kind of woman who could afford to play at innocence. But the way she looked around like she expected trouble made Luca want to remove the danger himself.

He took one step toward her before he could stop. Then another. His body moved while his mind tried to keep the deal intact.

Sergio noticed immediately. “Careful,” he said, almost kindly. “You’re drawing attention.”

Luca didn’t look back. He kept walking, slow enough to look like casual intention, quick enough to reach Vittoria before someone else decided to claim her conversation. “Attention is part of the gala.”

“It’s also part of war,” Sergio replied.

Luca reached the terrace doors, where Vittoria stood with a small group of women and a single Sforza guard posted too close to her shoulder. The guard’s gaze was fixed on Luca with the sharpness of a blade being checked for nicks.

Vittoria turned at the last moment, as if she’d felt him approaching without seeing. Her eyes landed on Luca, and for a breath, the air between them changed texture. Candlelight glowed on her lashes. Her expression didn’t soften, but something steadied behind her gaze - recognition, maybe. Or defiance.

“Moretti,” she said, her voice carrying the quiet authority of a woman who didn’t ask permission to exist.

Luca stopped at an appropriate distance. Close enough to claim the moment, far enough to pretend he respected boundaries. “Vittoria.”

Her name sounded wrong in his mouth, too intimate for a man who should keep himself at arm’s length. He hated that it came out like a confession.

“You’re here for business,” she said, not a question.

“Tonight,” Luca replied, “I’m always here for business.”

Her smile was thin and controlled. “And you always look like a man who wants something he can’t have.”

The words shouldn’t have landed the way they did. They were too honest. Too accurate. Luca felt the urge to correct her and the urge to lean into the truth at the same time.

“I’m a man who wants to know who’s watching,” he said.

Vittoria’s eyes flicked, just once, to the Sforza guard beside her. Then back to Luca. “You’re not the only one.”

Luca’s attention sharpened. “Who?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She tilted her head as if considering whether he deserved the information. The candlelight trembled in the glass of the nearby door, and for a moment Luca could hear his own breath over the string quartet.

Then Vittoria spoke, low enough that the men around them might miss it. “There are people here who don’t care what alliances you want. They care what you take.”

Luca felt the warning like a hand on his throat. He’d come to keep his alliance intact. He’d come to observe from a distance, to keep his obsession contained.

But Vittoria stood close enough now that he could smell her perfume - something floral and warm, but threaded with a sharper note like smoke after a fire. It made his restraint feel childish.

“You shouldn’t be left to deal with them alone,” Luca said.

Her gaze held his. “You don’t get to decide what I can handle.”

The guard beside her shifted, subtly blocking Luca’s angle. It was nothing dramatic, but Luca recognized the gesture for what it was: a line drawn in expensive fabric.

Luca kept his voice steady. “I’m offering protection.”

Vittoria’s chin lifted, just slightly. “Protection is what men say when they want control.”

The sentence hit him harder than any insult. Because it was true. Luca had built his life on control - control of territory, control of supply lines, control of the men who thought they could bargain with him. And control was exactly what he wanted when it came to Vittoria, even when he told himself he was doing it for her safety.

His fingers tightened around his glass, knuckles whitening beneath the cuff.

Sergio’s voice carried from behind him, too close now, like a curtain being pulled. “Careful, Moretti. Sforza doesn’t like favors from rivals.”

Luca turned his head a fraction. Sergio stood with two men flanking him, their smiles slow and their eyes hungry. They weren’t pretending anymore. They were measuring how quickly Luca would choose violence over diplomacy.

Vittoria didn’t look at Sergio. She kept her eyes on Luca. “You came here for business,” she reminded him, a quiet insistence. “Don’t ruin it.”

Luca swallowed the impulse to tell her she didn’t understand what she was asking. He didn’t want business to survive if it meant losing her to men like Sergio. He didn’t want to admit how badly he’d been waiting to see her in a room full of strangers.

He forced himself into a calmer rhythm. “Tell me what you’re afraid of,” he said.

Vittoria’s expression flickered - something raw moved under her composure. “I’m not afraid,” she said, too quickly.

Luca leaned in just enough for his voice to reach her alone. “You’re afraid of being used.”

Her breath caught. The scent of her perfume mixed with the cold air leaking from the terrace doors, and Luca felt the moment sharpen into something dangerous.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, and the question wasn’t playful. It was a test.

Luca could have lied. He could have said alliance, negotiation, respect for family. He could have offered a safe answer that kept the room friendly.

Instead, the truth rose in him like a tide. “I want to stop you from being a bargaining chip.”

Vittoria stared at him, and Luca saw the vulnerability in her eyes - fear wrapped in pride, anger wrapped in loyalty. For a breath, she looked younger, not in years but in the way she held herself like a wall might crack if anyone pressed too hard.

“I thought you were worse than the men who pretend,” she said, voice rougher now.

“Maybe I am,” Luca replied.

The candlesticks hissed as the flames shifted. Somewhere across the ballroom, a laugh turned into an argument, and then into silence. People noticed. People always noticed when a Moretti stopped moving like a businessman and started moving like a man with a target.

Sergio’s smile vanished. “So that’s what this is,” he murmured, and his tone made it clear he’d been waiting to confirm something. “You think you can claim her.”

“I don’t claim,” Luca said, cold. “I protect.”

Sergio glanced at the Sforza guard, and Luca caught the subtle signal in Sergio’s eyes. A message passed without words: retaliation risk. Not tonight, not here - unless it became necessary.

Vittoria’s fingers tightened around her glass. The knuckles went pale. Luca hated the way his attention made her tense, hated the way the room turned her into a target the instant he looked at her too long.

“Luca,” she said - using his name like she could reach into him and pull something honest out. “If you interfere with my family’s business, it won’t end with a favor.”

His stomach tightened. The intimacy of her saying his name like that was a kind of heat he couldn’t afford. Luca forced his gaze to stay on her eyes, not her mouth.

“What would end it?” he asked.

Vittoria’s lips parted, and for a moment Luca thought she might tell him the fear beneath her pride. But instead, her gaze slid past him toward the terrace doors - and Luca felt it, too late.

The Sforza enforcers weren’t just watching. They’d been waiting for the moment Luca’s fixation became public.

Two men stepped closer from the edge of the terrace, their suits too dark, their movements too coordinated. One of them moved like he’d already decided what he would do if Luca refused to step back. Their presence tightened the air until Luca could hear the faint crackle of candle flames.

Sergio lifted his chin, satisfaction returning. “Now we’re being realistic.”

Luca didn’t flinch. He set his glass down on the terrace table with a soft, final sound. The room’s music continued, but it felt distant, like someone else’s life.

He looked at Vittoria again, and this time he let her see it - his intention, his hunger, the way he wanted to reach for her without asking for permission from the men who thought they owned the rules.

“I’ll speak to your father about the alliance,” Luca said, voice low and firm. “Tonight, privately.”

Vittoria’s eyes widened a fraction. “You won’t.”

“I will,” Luca corrected. “Because if I don’t, someone else will try to take you in my place.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. The vulnerability in her eyes deepened, and Luca realized she wasn’t only afraid of being used - she was afraid of being seen wanting someone like him. Afraid of what it would cost her family if she couldn’t play the role they’d written.

Luca stepped closer, careful, giving her space to refuse. His hand hovered near her elbow, not touching yet, asking without asking out loud. The guard beside her stiffened, ready to intervene.

Vittoria’s gaze dropped to his hand, then rose to his face. Her voice was nearly a whisper. “Don’t make me regret meeting your eyes.”

The enforcers moved again - one step closer, their silence louder than their threat. Luca felt the heat of the candlelight on his skin, the cool terrace air slipping over his knuckles as he finally - slowly - touched Vittoria’s elbow.

Not possessive. Not claiming.

A promise of protection.

Her breath shuddered, and the moment stretched thin enough to tear. Across the room, Luca felt more than saw the watchers turn their attention into certainty.

He leaned toward her, close enough that only she could hear. “I’m not here to take,” he said. “I’m here to keep you from being taken.”

Vittoria’s eyes held his, fierce and trembling at once. “Then don’t let them see how badly you want me.”

Luca’s jaw tightened. He’d come to the gala to stay composed and professional. He’d come to keep his alliance intact while studying her from a distance.

But the enforcers had already witnessed the truth in his touch.

Sergio’s men shifted, satisfied. The Sforza guard’s posture sharpened into action.

And Vittoria - Vittoria looked at Luca like she was choosing between drowning and jumping, between trust and survival, between the man who shouldn’t matter and the rival’s daughter who couldn’t afford to be wanted.

Luca lifted his hand from her elbow and let his fingers fall back to his side, controlled, disciplined.

Controlled men didn’t do what he wanted to do next.

But as the enforcers closed the distance and one of them murmured an order in Italian, Luca made a decision that cost him his composure anyway.

He turned his body slightly, positioning himself between Vittoria and the nearest threat - not touching her again, but claiming the space with his presence. Then he met her gaze, and the words he spoke were meant only for her, meant to burn through the rules.

“Come with me,” he said. “Just for a moment. We’ll talk where they can’t overhear.”

Vittoria’s lips parted. Her eyes flashed with alarm - and something else. Desire, yes, but tangled with calculation. With fear.

Behind them, the rival family’s enforcers moved like a net tightening.

Luca held his ground, dangerous and visible, and waited for Vittoria to decide whether she trusted his protection - or whether she’d just chosen a new kind of war.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters in the full book.