CANDY TO SIN

“What’s your name?”

Alan’s POV

Dark clouds hung low over the cemetery, like the sky itself was mourning him. The wind bit through my suit, sharp and unforgiving, but I didn’t move. I stood still as the coffin was lowered into the earth, my eyes locked onto the polished wood engraved with the name,

Vittorio Romano. My father.

I didn’t cry. I hadn’t cried in years. And not now — watching the last piece of my bloodline disappear into the dirt. He was gone. Shot down in broad daylight. Like he was nothing. Like his name meant nothing. By cowards. Cowards who wore polished suits and smiled with clean hands.

Victor stood at my side. Unmoving. Dressed in a dark overcoat, his gloved hands resting calmly on the top of a silver-handled cane. He didn’t speak at first. Just watched the grave being filled, eyes sharp beneath the brim of his hat.

Victor D’Ambrose, my father’s oldest allies. A ghost of the old world. Elegant and respected. “Your father… he trusted the wrong men, Alan,” Victor said, placing a firm hand on my shoulder. “But you—he always said you were different. Smarter.”

I didn’t respond. Because I was never held like a son. Just trained. Loaded. Fired. My father didn’t raise me — he forged me. He didn’t call me “son.” Just “boy.” Just “you.” Like I was something he’d built — not born.

After a moment, he sighed removing his hand. “Don’t worry Alan, If you ever need help with anything…I’ll always be there for you, just like I was there for your father” I said nothing.

“You’re young, Alan. And you just lost the last thing you could call family. I know it’s hard for you, but you have to be strong. This is not the end.”

“I plan to call a meeting soon. The capos. The allies. The inner circle. We’ll vote, discuss what’s best for the Romano legacy. Choose the right man to lead.” I tilted my head toward him, slow. My expression didn’t change.“Didn’t know leadership came with ballots,” I said coldly.

Victor gave a tight smile. “Leadership comes with burden. And burden, my boy, often crushes the unprepared.”I was about to speak when two other men joined us—Marco Vellini and Rafael Vellini. Names my father used to spit like poison. Still clinging to relevance, clinging to suits they hadn’t earned and respect they’d never die for.

Rafael, old and stiff with swollen hands and a swollen ego, gave a solemn nod. “Alan, we knew your father well. We watched you grow up. You’re just a boy. You’re a kid almost. And this empire… It’s a storm. And storms drown even the strongest.”

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. A boy. That’s what they all saw when they looked at me—my father’s shadow, stretched thin, too young to fill it. My chest burned with the weight of it, but I couldn’t let him see that.

“I’m seventeen,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “Old enough to know what leading costs. I’ve carried it before, and I’ll carry it again.” The words sounded bigger than I felt, but I held Rafael’s gaze, daring him to call me a child again.

Marco—his son—stepped forward before I could respond. Tall, cocky, and barely out of college. Probably in his mid Twenties. The kind of kid who bragged about bloodlines he’d never bled for.

He flashed a grin, hands deep in his pockets like this was a casual chat, not a fucking funeral. “Look, no one’s saying you’re not cut out for this, Alan,” Marco said, chewing gum like a punk. “But with your father gone, the world’s watching. We can step in. Just for now. Keep things stable. Like… a safety net.”

Reza shifted behind me, silent but coiled like a blade. One flick and Marco wouldn’t be speaking again. Lucas stood on the other side, head slightly lowered, hands tucked into his coat—but his eyes were locked on Marco. Watching. Measuring. Ready. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t need to. Their presence was enough.

“A council, maybe,” Rafael added. “Just for a few months. Until the dust settles.”

My jaw tightened. “Council.” I rolled the word over my tongue like something sour.

“We all want what’s best,” Victor said carefully. “This family is too valuable to collapse from the weight of one young man’s pride.” I took a slow breath, then stepped forward. Just once. It was enough. Reza and Lucas moved with me, shadows that followed the fire.

“You all talk like you were the ones who built this,” I said quietly, dangerously. “Like the blood in the soil here is yours to manage. But my father didn’t raise me to be managed. He raised me to survive.” I let my eyes land on Marco. He didn’t flinch, but he stopped smiling.

“And you—” I said, voice low. “You’ve never led a crew, never earned a soldier’s salute. But you think because you’ve got a suit and a last name, you can sit at my table?” Marco’s mouth opened, then shut. I didn’t wait.

“Let me be clear,” I said, turning to all of them now. “There is no council. There is no interim rule. This empire doesn’t belong to whoever’s oldest or loudest. It belongs to the one who can carry it without breaking.”

Reza nodded once behind me. Lucas cracked his knuckles—soft, quiet, ominous.

“I’m not broken,” I said. “I’m the blade my father forged. The weapon he made out of flesh and silence. And now that he’s gone, I don’t need help.” I stepped closer to Victor. The wind picked up around us, tugging at my coat. The grave still fresh behind me.

“You want to test me?” I whispered. “Try. But don’t pretend you’ll walk away.”

Victor’s smile vanished. Marco stepped back without meaning to. Rafael looked away. No one spoke. “The meeting you’re planning?” I said, voice razor-sharp. “Cancel it. Or show up prepared to be buried next to my father.”

Silence. Thick and suffocating. I turned from them. Wearing a black suit, I looked the part — tall, composed, untouchable. But inside, I was a storm. My father was the only person who taught me to control the fire. Now he was gone, and the fire had nothing left to contain it.

After a few paces, Lucas muttered under his breath. “You should’ve let me hit Marco.” I didn’t answer.

Behind us, the men who thought they could shape my kingdom watched the storm walk away from its funeral. And they understood something vital. The fire wasn’t burning out. It had just been crowned.

My shoes crushed gravel as I walked to the SUV. The gates of the cemetery slammed shut behind us, like a warning. I slid into the backseat. Rain streaked down the tinted windows, matching the silence inside. No one spoke. My men knew better.

Victor had called me that morning. One sentence. No explanation. “Alan, Boss is gone. Shot down by the Rossis.” His voice hadn’t cracked, but mine nearly had.

Now, all I wanted was blood.

~

We pulled up to the mansion. Not just a house. My empire now. My burden. The rain hit like punishment, soaking through my suit, but I didn’t flinch. Let it fall. Let it drown the last trace of softness left in me. Inside the grand foyer, my men stood waiting — silent, alert. I looked at each one of them, then spoke, voice low but sharp enough to cut bone.

“Tomorrow, we hit the Rossis. Every soldier we have. Every bullet we own. I want their territory painted red. No survivors — only warnings. I want the city to know what happens when you touch a Romano.”

My voice doesn’t rise—but they hear the war in it anyway. It’s there, coiled beneath every word like a blade begging to be unsheathed. I can’t think about anything else right now. Revenge has swallowed every other thought, leaving only smoke and blood in its wake.

I see nothing but red, feel nothing but the weight of what they did. The fire in me is no longer restrained—it’s roaring, alive, dangerous. All I want—no, all I need—is to show those fucking bastards what happens when you lay a hand on the flame that guards the throne. You don’t walk away. You burn.

“Burn their safehouses. Bury their lieutenants. Erase their bloodline like they never existed. They didn’t just kill my father. They slaughtered a king.” My hands curled into fists. “Now they’ll choke on the ashes of their own kingdom.”

“Yes, sir!” echoed through the marble like a war drum.

But before I could leave, I felt Reza step forward from behind. His voice was quiet — low enough that only I could hear.

“Alan,” he said. “Think. The Rossis aren’t kings. But they have allies. The kind that don’t play by normal rules.”

Lucas spoke too, arms crossed, sharp eyes watching me. “You wipe out a name like that, you don’t just start a war. You invite everyone to take a shot at the new king.”

I turned to them both — Reza in black, always still, always watching. Lucas, cold, I never saw him cold before. But they didn’t scare me. Nothing did anymore.

“I didn’t ask for advice,” I muttered. “I gave an order.”

Lucas didn’t flinch. “You’ll regret not listening.”

“No.” I stepped forward. “They’ll regret touching my blood. My family.”

A pause. Reza’s voice was quieter this time. Almost tired. “You’re not your father, Alan.”

“Exactly,” I said. “He tried peace. Now he’s dead.”

I didn’t wait for another reply. I turned, walked away to the room that still smelled like my father. His office. His scent. His silence. I ran my hand across his desk, fingertips brushing over the surface like I could pull him back.

The last time I stood here, we fought. He wanted peace. He wanted talks, deals, truce — as if the Roosi’s ever honored anything but death. He thought mercy would save us. But mercy made him a target.

Now he was in the ground, and I was here, breathing in the legacy he left behind — not paper, not contracts. Blood. The kind that stains everything. I sat in his chair. Leaned back. The weight of the war already settling on my shoulders. The fire in my chest had no walls left to contain it. Only vengeance. Only ruin. I stared at the wall, cold and still, until the night swallowed me whole.

~

I woke before dawn. Heart pounding. Eyes are burning. Dreams I couldn’t remember left the taste of metal in my mouth — like blood or bullets or the memory of something I’d tried too hard to forget. My heart is heavy and I can fell a headache coming towards me. It’s always there.

I didn’t waste time. I threw off the covers and walked straight to the closet. Pulled on black. Always black. Shirt. Pants. Gloves. Gun — loaded and waiting, like it had missed me in my sleep.

Violence was the only language I was fluent in. And today, I needed to speak it fluently. Outside, the cold hit me like a slap across the face — sharp and bracing.

Lucas was already by the car, hood up, head down, hands in his pockets like he wasn’t standing in a warzone every day of his life. Always calm. We didn’t speak. We didn’t have to—not today. The silence between us was louder than words.

He wasn’t born into this world like I was. He was dragged into it — a clever, starving kid with too much fire in his eyes and nothing to lose. He used to work with a rival syndicate, doing odd jobs in exchange for food and a roof. My father saw him once, just once, and said, “Bring him home.” He saw the steel beneath the rust. And once you were brought into the Romano’s house, you didn’t leave — not unless in a body bag.

Lucas grew up in our estate like a shadow beside me. He learned fast. Fought harder. And by the time we were fifteen, he’d already bled for me more than most men ever would.

Behind me, Reza waited. Quiet, sharp—like a blade wrapped in silk. He’s my second. I met him in Milan, a weapons deal that went to hell. Everyone else bolted. He didn’t. He just stared me down, and I knew he was fire. I’d heard the stories about his strength, and when I saw it, I believed them. He’s never once made me regret picking him.

Where Lucas works through wires and whispers, Reza breaks bones and minds. He’s the man I send when the question needs an answer now. Lucas rarely leaves the estate — prefers the security, the control, the quiet violence of running operations from the inside. But when he does come out… someone usually ends up bleeding. Reza is always with me. All the time. We all live together and bleed together. These two? They’re more than men under my command. They’re my eyes. My hands. My blood without the burden of name.

And today, they saw it. That glint in my eye. That stillness in my breath. Because today, I wasn’t just a man. Today, I was death.

~

We reached the Rossi estate just after nightfall. Their mansion sat behind iron gates, guarded by men who thought they knew danger. They didn’t.

“No survivors,” I said, and my men opened fire. One by one, their guards dropped. Blood sprayed across the pavement, screams muffled by silencer shots. Bodies crumpled like paper. I stormed the front doors, kicking them open with fury and precision. The marble floor was already stained red. We moved through the house like ghosts with guns—swift, clean, deadly.

We didn’t stop to ask names. Didn’t pause to spare anyone. If they wore the Rossi crest, if they breathed under this roof—they died. Every room was cleared. Every hallway, every servant’s corridor, every corner that could hide a pulse. We killed everyone in that house we could see. Executed them with precision. No hesitation. No mercy.

I kicked open the double doors to the Rossi estate’s living room, the mahogany panels slamming back with a satisfying crack. The chandelier overhead swayed with the force, catching fractured light like a cathedral of broken glass. The room smelled expensive — incense and blood. Saints on the walls watched silently. They didn’t belong here.

Vincenzo Rossi stood at the center. Behind him, his wife clutched a rosary, her eyes already red. She was mourning. She knew.

Lucas flanked me, silent and ready. My shadow with a loaded chamber. Vincenzo looked older — hair graying, back a little stooped — but he still stood like he thought fear could keep him upright.

“Should’ve accepted my father’s peace offer when you had the chance,” I said. My voice was steady, cold. The kind of calm that always came before the trigger.

Vincenzo spat, “Your father wanted peace long enough to stab us while we slept.”

I stepped forward. His hand twitched — fast — reaching under his jacket. Whatever he is trying to get a hold of, won’t help him. Not when I have decided his death.

My bullet tore through his hand before he could even close it around the grip of his pistol. He screamed, dropping the gun — fingers shredded, blood pouring down his sleeve like ink from a broken pen.

Lucas didn’t move. He didn’t need to. I already had it under control. Vincenzo staggered back, crashing into the side table. The rosary clattered to the floor from his wife’s hands. Her scream was sharp, but distant.

“That was your warning shot,” I said. “And your last mistake.” He opened his mouth — probably to lie, or beg. “Alan… I didn’t have a ch—”

I fired once, then twice — center mass. No pause. No mercy. Vincenzo dropped to his knees, then collapsed. His wife fell with him, holding his body, her sobs echoing off the marble and the saints.

Blood spread across the floor, soaking into the velvet and dust. The chandelier above stopped swaying. I stared down at him — the man who thought he could kill a king and keep his crown.

The Rossi family had ended in a room pretending to be holy, beneath lights that glinted off blood like rubies scattered across ice. I slid my gun back into its holster and straightened my coat. No one spoke. There was nothing left to say.

“Clean it,” I ordered my man, “Cover the bodies. Search the house. Anyone left, bring them to me. Gather everything. Phones. Documents. Weapons. Anything that breathes.”

My men scattered like shadows. Some found folder’s and Paper’s on Roosi’s office table… Others found money — Gold. A lot of it. They brought it all to me. Reza beside me took a picture of the bodies. We always did that. Just as evidence, when we end something big.

I stood alone in front of the bodies, unmoving. But his words lingered in the air like smoke. And then — “Boss!” a voice called out from upstairs, heavy boots thundering against the floor. “There’s a kid. Hiding under the bed.”

My heart twisted. A kid? Behind me, Lucas muttered, almost to himself, “Shit. I think… I think Vincenzo once mentioned something in that old council meeting—something about a child, kept off the books. Never confirmed it, though.”

I turned sharply. “And you’re telling me now?” I want to hit him right now. How can he not tell me this before?

“Didn’t think it mattered,” he said. “No one ever saw the kid. Could’ve been a rumor.”

“For God’s sake, Lucas, maybe mention the part about a kid before we turn the place into ash.”

I stood there, frozen for a moment. A child, in this place? In this massacre? My voice snapped sharper than I meant it to, slicing through the tension in the room. “Bring it down.”

Minutes passed, heavy and silent. Then I saw them. One of my men came down the staircase slowly, gently, his gloved hand wrapped around something small — impossibly small. A girl. She couldn’t have been older than six. Maybe five. Her feet were bare, her knees scraped, her long dark hair tangled and clinging to her damp face. She held a stuffed bunny in her arms — its ears torn, one button eye missing, the fabric dirtied and stained.

Her cheeks were wet with tears, but she wasn’t crying anymore. Not out loud. Her eyes were wide and hollow, glassy with shock, red-rimmed from hours of silent weeping. Her whole body shook, but she didn’t make a sound. She looked around the hall like she was sleepwalking through a nightmare. And then she saw them.

The bodies. Her eyes locked onto the corpses behind me — her parents. Vincenzo and his wife, crumpled on the marble floor. Her tiny frame went stiff. Her fingers tightened around the bunny’s body…and then let go. It dropped to the ground without a sound.

She took one step forward — small, uncertain — and then her knees gave out beneath her. She didn’t faint. She didn’t scream. She just… folded. Like her body could no longer carry what her heart had just seen. She sank to the floor beside her mother, slowly, almost carefully, like the moment itself had swallowed her whole. “Mommy…Daddy…wake up.” she said to them in the lowest voice.

Her shoulders shook, but the sounds of her grief were buried deep in her throat, suffocated by shock. Her cries were the kind that barely made it past her lips — like her soul had cracked, but her body couldn’t even react.

The gun felt warm in my hand. Too warm. Like it had blood memory. She was there. I raised the gun. The weight of it was familiar. Comfortable. I had done it before. Two shots for the mother. One for the father. My finger shifted to the trigger. Just one more. I don’t want to cause a lot of pain to a child. One shot should be enough for this thing.

But then she moved. Just barely—an involuntary twitch. Her hands curled into fists, the way a child tries to hold in sobs when they know no one will come for them. And in that single, stupid motion—I saw myself.

For a moment, it wasn’t her anymore. It was me. Curled on the floor of a different place. Hands shaking. Ears ringing from screams. Praying to a God who didn’t listen.

She looked up at me then. Not pleading. Not crying. Just… waiting. For for something…maybe…death. And something in me cracked. This wasn’t justice. This was vengeance. This was murder. And she was just a girl.

And then. For a moment I saw myself, in a different place. Covering my eyes as my mother was shot. I was so scared. Just like how she is right now.

I lowered the gun slowly, like I didn’t trust my own hands. Like if I moved too fast, I might change my mind. Her lips parted in a soundless breath. She didn’t run. She just stared. I took a slow step forward. Then another. My movements were careful, steady, like I was walking toward a wire-thin glass figure. Her head turned at the sound of my footsteps. Her eyes lifted to meet mine.

She was trembling, small fingers still resting on her mother’s lifeless hand. Her breathing was shallow. But she didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. She looked at me, this man standing in a suit, covered in blood, like she couldn’t tell whether I was her last nightmare… or her only chance.

And something inside me cracked. Hard. I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand it. But I felt it. Like a shift in the air, or a crack in a wall I thought was indestructible. She looked small. Breakable. Forgotten. Like someone who never got a choice.

I crouched down slowly, letting my eyes level with hers. My voice dropped into something low, calm — something I hadn’t used in years. My hand twitched around my gun.

“What’s your name, kid?” The words felt rough in my mouth, too grown for me, but I said them anyway. She just sat there on the floor, knees pulled up, face streaked with tears. I didn’t know what the hell to do with a kid staring at me like that. I wanted her to look away—to stop looking at me like I’d torn her whole world apart.

I cleared my throat, shifted my weight. “Hey… don’t cry.” My voice cracked, softer than I meant. It sounded stupid, even to me. I crouched down, trying to look less… tall, less dangerous. My hands hung useless at my sides. I could kill a man without thinking twice, but a kid? A kid staring at me like that—I had no idea what to do.

She blinked. Her lips trembled as if the answer had to crawl out of her chest just to reach me. “I-I’m… Aveline.” She said it so softly, like it was the only thing she had left.

And just like that — A shot rang out.