Chapter 1:
The city never slept, but neither did Lucian Virelli—not because of work, but because sleep had long since abandoned him. For twenty years, he’d ruled the Virelli Syndicate with a cold hand and a colder heart. To his enemies, he was a ghost in a tailored suit. To his allies, a monster in plain sight.
They weren’t wrong.
Lucian Virelli wasn’t just the most feared mafia boss in the East End—he was something older, darker, and far more dangerous.
A vampire by blood.
A werewolf by curse.
A hybrid bound by no laws but his own.
The curse was a legacy he hadn’t asked for. Born into a family of vampires, Lucian was turned at birth—an ancient rite of lineage. But at seventeen, during a violent turf war with a rival pack of werewolves, he was bitten by a dying Alpha. He should’ve died. No being had ever survived both infections.
But Lucian did.
The change nearly killed him. For weeks, he convulsed in a cellar soaked in blood and moonlight, bones breaking, healing, breaking again. His heart stopped three times. And when it beat again, he wasn’t the same.
Now, under daylight, his skin burned faintly, but never blistered. Under the full moon, he transformed—but retained his mind. His eyes were silver, glowing faintly in darkness. His voice carried weight, even among immortals. And his thirst—for blood, for dominance—was unquenchable.
Most didn’t know what he was. Rumors flew through the city’s underworld: that he drank the blood of his enemies, that he could sniff out betrayal before it happened, that bullets bounced off him like raindrops. Some believed. Most feared.
And they should.
