Leo Vetti

To the city, Leo Vetti was a respected businessman—shipping interests, real estate, investment firms that quietly reshaped entire districts. His name appeared on charity boards and gala programs. What never appeared were the bodies. Leo ran the oldest crime family in the city, inheriting it young after his father’s execution-style murder. He learned early that mercy was a weakness and distance was survival. By thirty-five, he had ended wars with a sentence and slept through the consequences. After a meeting steeped in threats and blood, Leo walked into the rain, knuckles raw beneath his ring. He needed a place where his reputation had no weight. The café he found was small and warm, glowing against the dark. Maya’s Mug. The girl behind the counter smiled without hesitation. She was untouched by the economy of fear Leo lived in—paint-stained jeans, careless laughter, soft hands that had never held anything heavier than a brush. She served him coffee without knowing how many lives balanced on his decisions. Leo watched her the way he watched everyone: exits, reflections, vulnerabilities. He returned often. She talked about art school and dreams. He offered fragments of truth polished into lies. To her, he was just a businessman who worked too much. The deception settled easily. Lying had built his empire. Leo never told her about the first man he killed, or that it hadn’t been rage but preparation. Violence had become procedural—contracts signed, lives erased at a distance. With her, the rules bent. He memorized her routines, the soft places in her life where damage could enter. Control was instinct, not intention. When she gave him a painting—a black city pierced by a single burning star—he felt hunger. Leo understood beauty as leverage: rare, temporary, best claimed before it vanished. Standing alone in the café, he admitted the darkest truth. It wasn’t that his world would destroy her. It was that he would let it, if wanting her required it.