The empire of ashes

CHAPTER ONE – THE ORDER

"You don't send a man like me to clean up a mess, Papa. You send me to bury it."

Marcos De Luca stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of the penthouse, a glass of neat scotch untouched in his hand. Below, the city stretched out like a glittering lie-glass towers and blinking lights trying to hide what everyone knew but never said aloud: that the De Luca family owned half of it, and fear owned the other half.

His father didn't flinch. Didn't even blink.

Alessandro De Luca, the old lion of the family empire, sat behind a black marble desk, his fingers steepled, expression unreadable. The man could order a massacre and sip espresso in the same breath. He looked at Marcos like one looks at a sword. Cold. Sharp. Purposeful.

"A journalist has been asking questions about the shipping docks. She's getting too close."

"Then pay her off," Marcos said, shrugging. "Isn't that how we keep things quiet?"

"Tried."

"Blackmail?"

"She doesn't scare easy."I haven't see anyone bold,fearless, bold and has features of a lion",Alessandro De Luca said.

Marcos finally turned around, his jaw ticking. "So what? You want me to kill a woman because she's doing her job?"

"I want you to do yours," Alessandro said simply.

There it was.

No emotion. No morality. Just business.

Marcos downed the scotch in one swallow. It burned-but not nearly enough.

"Name?"

"Vanessa Maren."

The name sounded familiar.

Alessandro continued, "She was writing a fluff piece on a politician, then started poking around the docks. Her sister was involved with someone who used to work for us. Girl got herself killed two years ago-wrong place, wrong time."

"The sister?" Marcos asked.

"Murder. Stabbed. Unsolved."

"And Vanessa  thinks we did it?"

"Doesn't matter what she thinks. If she publishes anything, we have a thousand questions to answer."

Marcos didn't speak for a long time. His father's office, all glass and steel, was silent except for the distant thrum of traffic far below.

He wasn't new to this. Marcos had cleaned up the family's messes since he was seventeen. Laundering money. Threatening informants. Breaking fingers and making bodies disappear. But something about this felt different.

Maybe it was the name.

Maybe it was the growing nausea in his gut.

"I'll handle it," he said at last.

Alessandro smiled-not warmly. "I knew you would."

Marcos started working on her daily activities,how to look for her ,workplace and all 

It took less than three hours to find her.

Vanessa Maren lived in a cramped, crumbling apartment on the city's edge-the kind of place with flickering hallway lights and neighbors who minded their own business to survive. Marcos didn't knock. He waited outside in his black SUV as she exited the building mid-afternoon, clutching a worn leather satchel and wearing grief like a second skin.

She wasn't what he expected.

She wasn't glamorous, powerful, or cocky like the journalists who hounded politicians,like his father described her .  She looked... exhausted. Dark circles under her eyes. Hair pulled into a careless bun. Clothes wrinkled and clean but cheap. She walked with a kind of limp sadness, like every step cost her something.

Marcos smirk in disappointment  so this is the threat? he thought.

She didn't hail a cab. She walked-six blocks, alone, in July heat. Marcos tailed her at a distance, growing more curious than cautious. Eventually, she turned into a cemetery.

He parked, then followed on foot.

From behind a maple tree, he watched as Vanessa  knelt at a grave. Her fingers brushed the name carved into the stone. Mia  Maren.

Her sister.

Vanessa  didn't cry.

She just sat there. Silent. Still. Hands folded like she didn't know what else to do.