Chapter 6 The Executioner's Map

Velrano was a city carved by fire and forgotten by God. And buried beneath its streets was a history no one spoke of-a war fought in silence, in shadows, by ghosts who never left. Marco had spent the last four hours staring at a blank wall. Not just any wall. The Map Room. It was one of Salvatore's final additions to the estate, sealed off from the captains, even Arturo. A vault without treasure-only memories, layered and lethal. The walls were covered in black-and-red ink, layers of eras and eras of bloodshed. Each pin marked a kill. Each line, a movement. Each name, a ghost.

Marco stood in the center. He wasn't looking at the past. He was looking for a pattern. Rafa entered behind him, quiet. "The symbols match. Whoever's carving 'D' into our walls? They're copying the exact format used in the 1996 Valieri purge." Marco nodded. "Not copying." Rafa frowned. "What, then?" "Rebuilding it." Marco's eyes scanned the grid. Certain corners were lit in soft red, connected by jagged string-exactly like the Blood & Silence blueprints Salvatore used during the Great Sweep. But someone had added to it. New lines. New marks. Updated. And one thing became crystal clear: He wasn't the one hunting. He was the one being herded. At 2:17 a.m., Marco sat in his father's old war chair, the map burned into his brain. The pieces were moving fast now. Too fast. In five days, he'd lost three lieutenants, a dozen men, and all sense of ground beneath his feet. And every move he made? Predicted. Countered. Mocked. Whoever was behind this wasn't just familiar with Valieri tactics-they had designed them. He needed eyes outside the circle. Someone forgotten. Someone loyal to no one but truth. The next night, in a forgotten part of Velrano known as Razor Row, Marco stepped through a rusted iron gate and into a bombed-out chapel lit only by flickering candles. At the back sat a blind man with snow-white hair and charcoal on his fingertips-Ezio "Ash" Morante. Ex-cartographer for the Valieri blood purges. Officially dead. Unofficially missing. Marco didn't speak until he was close enough to touch him. "I need a mapmaker." Ash grinned without turning. "I've made maps for kings and corpses. Which one are you?" "Both." Ash chuckled. "I heard you buried your father under bullets." "I buried his enemies. The rest buried themselves." Ash turned his head slightly. "I can smell death on your jacket. That means you brought a story." Marco laid the old photos on the table-Danilo, the execution maps, the doctrine files. Ash's fingers ran across them like Braille. His smile vanished. "Danilo's mark," he said softly. "But newer. Sloppier. Still... devout." Marco nodded. "He's either alive-or he left a blueprint someone's following like scripture." Ash pulled out a blank piece of paper and began sketching, fast and brutal, like he wasn't drawing lines but carving scars. He spoke as he moved. "They're mirroring the old pattern but reversed. In '96, the culling started from the outside and funneled in. This one's starting from the heart-you." Marco stiffened. "He's isolating me." "Not just you," Ash said. "He's cutting away your memory. Every man loyal to the past is being erased. He's not at war with your rule. He's at war with your origin." Marco stared at the evolving map. Names scratched. Areas marked for death. And in the center of the target ring: The Valieri Estate. 4:06 a.m. Back at the estate, Marco moved like thunder through the halls. Rafa met him at the landing. "What the hell happened?" "We've been circling ghosts while the enemy walks through the front door." Marco burst into the war room, where Arturo sat sipping tea, unbothered. Marco slammed the map on the table. "You recognize this pattern?" Arturo glanced at it. His jaw twitched. "That's the Sweep doctrine." "Wrong," Marco snapped. "It's a reverse-engineered execution map. And it ends here." He jabbed a finger at the estate. Arturo's face paled for the first time in years. "Someone's targeting us?" he asked, finally shaken. Marco stepped closer. "Someone is rebuilding what Danilo started. Only this time, the purge doesn't stop when the threats are gone. It stops when there's nothing left of the old world." Arturo clenched his fists. "Then we rebuild faster." Marco shook his head. "We don't rebuild. We ambush the architect." That night, Marco did something his father never dared. He called a meeting on neutral ground. The Black Violin, an abandoned opera house deep in No Man's Zone. A place where no bullets flew-not because of respect, but because of superstition. Legends said Danilo had killed twelve men there in one night, and their ghosts still screamed in the rafters. Marco didn't believe in ghosts. But he believed in messages. And tonight, he would send one. The captains arrived first. Raul. Bianchi. Enzo. Then the independents-rogue enforcers, black-market lieutenants, and exiled soldiers. All of them once loyal to Salvatore. Now, uncertain where their loyalty lay. Marco stood beneath the shattered chandelier, spotlight on him like he was the final act. He raised a pistol and placed it on the piano beside him. "Someone is wearing Danilo's face. Someone is bleeding this city one heartbeat at a time." He let the silence build. Let the fear ripple. "I'm not asking you to kneel. I'm not asking you to fight for me. I'm offering you a single thing." He picked up the pistol. "Survival." Whispers. Mutters. One captain nodded. Another stepped back. Marco placed the pistol down again. And that's when a voice rang out from the rafters. Cold. Sharp. Familiar. "And what makes you think survival belongs to you?" Heads whipped around. Marco stared upward. Shadows moved above the velvet curtain. A figure. Just for a second. Then gone. But the message echoed: This war had a conductor. And Marco had just stepped into his symphony.