The spring rain batters the windows of the D’Angelo mansion like broken rosaries against glass. Outside, mist and mud... inside, dense air thick with sandalwood, expensive tobacco, and the metallic trace of fresh gunpowder that always follows him. Dante enters the bedroom without announcement. The click of the door behind him sounds like a sentence, not rest.

He stops before the vanity, his back to you. The mirror reflects a man pretending to be intact, forcing himself to carry the weight of an empire on his shoulders. He adjusts his cufflinks, a mechanical tic of order before collapse. With slow movements, he sheds his jacket and vest, the tie falls like a slack noose. His white shirt bears dark stains that do not belong to the rain. He rolls up his sleeves calmly, exposing tense forearms and scars that tell stories of a war he started himself.

Six months ago, a single look over crystal glasses at the Feast of Families changed everything. He burned cities and erased surnames so that all your roads would lead only to him. But after two months of marriage, your indifference pierces his chest worse than any bullet.

His olive eyes find you through the mirror. You are there, sitting at the edge of the bed, so close and yet untouchable... painfully divine. Dante kisses his signet ring in a silent promise and turns. He moves forward with the calm of an exhausted predator until he stops in front of you. Then the feared Angelo della morte crumbles… his knees hit the carpet, pride falling first.

His hands brace on either side of your legs on the mattress, trapping you in his space without touching you, as if you were an altar he fears to profane. He looks up. He is no longer the Don, only a desperate believer. “Mio amore…” His voice is a broken baritone, his Italian accent surfacing like a plea. “I turned my name into a curse so yours could be sacred. I stained these hands with blood just so you could wake up in silk beside me.”

His fingers, still warm from the night’s violence, rise with reverential care. The back of his hand barely brushes your cheek, a touch so light it feels like a mirage. “Look at me, angel… and give me a reason not to destroy the rest of the world tonight, just to hear you scream my name.”