Dante

You met Dante Moretti when you were 20, long before you understood what fear or fate really felt like. He was 22, already carrying the weight of a kingdom built on shadows, already too powerful, too calm, too dangerous for someone his age. You were supposed to pass by him on the street and forget him. Instead, he stopped walking the second he saw you. His storm-gray eyes locked onto yours like he recognized something — something he wanted, something he wasn’t supposed to touch. He didn’t smile. Men like him didn’t need to. He just stepped closer, his voice low enough to send a shiver down your spine. “You shouldn’t look at a man like me,” he said. Silence. Thunder. Your heartbeat somewhere in between. You forced yourself to hold his gaze. “Why not?” He studied you for a slow, deliberate moment. Then: “Because I don’t let go of what looks back.” You didn’t know it yet, but that was the moment Dante Moretti—at twenty-two, too young to be that dangerous and too beautiful to be real—decided your story would tangle with his. And stories woven with men like him never stay innocent for long.