1980 - Oberhausen, Germany
Smoke, cigars, serious faces. Men sat in brown leather chairs too luxurious to creak.
The air tasted of ash and old money. The lights were set low enough to make every expression look carved.
Don Lorenzo Francinetti III sat as if the room had been built around him. Eleventh generation steel baron.
A dynasty that began with Laurent Francinetti, a poor country boy who stumbled on iron and never stopped digging.
He held his cigar between two fingers, took a slow pull, and let the smoke crawl from his mouth like a patient animal.
Then he looked across the circle of suited men.
"Why would the Americans chase us here?"
No one answered. Some lowered their eyes. Some stared at the table as if the grain held prophecy.
A few wore that sincere pondering face men used when they did not want to be caught afraid.
Serafina sat a half step behind her father's shoulder, notebook on her knee, pen moving fast.
Twenty-four. Tall, slim, athletic, and trying hard not to look too eager.
Wheat blond hair pinned neat. Blue eyes. Thin lips made red by habit and stubbornness.
This was her first time here.
Her gaze kept drifting to the antique steel plant designs mounted on the wall. Schematics inked by hands that had died centuries ago.
On her left, a painting of men hammering steel with simple muscles and simple lives.
This place mattered to the Francinetti Familia. Historic. The first steel mill they ever owned, built in the late eighteenth century, and still operating.
Just not on the surface. They were a hundred meters underground, in a hall of pillars and long tables, a secretive belly of stone where the air was filtered by machines and the sound was swallowed.
Her pen scratched the page again. She wanted to prove she belonged. The room shook.
Not a dramatic quake. A small tremor, like a heavy door slammed far away.
Every man in the hall went still at once. Chairs did not scrape. Breathing did not change.
Only eyes moved, quick and hard.
Don Lorenzo's bored gaze sharpened. The calm fell away and something fierce took its place, dragon quick.
His hands went to the twin magnums at his sides.
Serafina's own hands were already inside her jacket, closing around the grips of two pistols.
She felt the metal. Her heart did not race. It narrowed. Then she moved.
She drew both weapons and aimed at two bosses seated under her father's old network, men who had smiled too often tonight.
Don Lorenzo kicked the sofa he sat on, sending it sideways for cover, and the first shots cracked through the hall.
Bullets rained down. The sound bounced off stone and turned into a roar.
Loyal followers dove behind pillars, behind tables, behind anything that might stop lead.
The air filled with the bitter bite of gunpowder and smoke. The opposition did not panic.
They reached into their coats and pulled on gas masks, the kind meant for factories and war.
White smoke bloomed from the ventilation system, eating the floor first.
It rolled around boots and rose, turning faces into shadows.
Serafina hated them for being prepared. She fired through the haze, steady, controlled.
A familiar voice cut through the smoke, too close, too intimate.
"Lorenzo. The age of mafia is coming to an end. The Francinetti Familia is deep in the dark. We just wanted to be good men."
Serafina scoffed. Her father scoffed too. Then both of them fired. The man's mask jerked.
A shot took him between the eyes. Another sank into his heart. He went down without any last speech.
"Sweetheart. I..." Don Lorenzo said, and for the first time his voice held something like apology.
"Papa. Do not speak," Serafina said.
She kicked an Armalite toward him across the stone. Not tender. Practical.
They could not afford softness right now, not in a room full of betrayal.
Her father caught it without looking and slung it on his back.
Don Lorenzo grabbed a dead man by the collar and spun him, using the weight like a shield.
He hurled the corpse into the door.
The door blew. The explosion punched the air and flung smoke outward in a harsh wave.
Shards of stone and metal skittered across the floor. Heat slapped Serafina's cheek.
Her father's face went stern, the kind of stern that left no room for mercy.
"Dogs. All of you. Biting the hand that fed you. Spudorato."
Bullets traded fast, sharp cracks in the smoke, but the fight went nowhere.
Both sides held cover. Both sides waited for the other to blink.
Then Serafina's cousin burst out like a madman and drew every muzzle in the room.
"For the Francinetti Familia!" he yelled.
Tracer sparks chased him. He ran through them anyway, loud, a moving target meant to pull the heat off everyone else.
The rest of the Francinetti family hit the opening at once. They surged from behind pillars and tables, firing on the move, closing distance while the traitors adjusted their aim.
Two more loyalists fell in that rush, bodies jerking and folding, but the charge broke the line.
Within breaths the twelve traitorous men were down, wiped out in a mess of blood and spent magazines.
Don Lorenzo did not celebrate. He moved like a man counting seconds.
He reached for the ventilation controls and killed the airflow. The fan hum died.
The smoke stopped drifting and began to hang, thick as wool.
He nodded to his men. They moved with coordination, tight and trained. Two took point. Two covered angles.
Others dragged wounded back, checking pulses with hands that did not shake.
Serafina caught sight of her grandfather's old right hand man sprawled by a pillar, head twisted at a wrong angle.
A bullet hole sat clean at his temple. His eyes were wide open, as if he had died surprised that his betrayal would fail.
Don Lorenzo strode to the body, pried the traitor's mouth open, and spat phlegm inside it.
"Drink my spit in hell."
They reached the emergency staircase that led upward. Men went first, loyal to the end, checking each landing, each turn.
They returned with their heads nodding. Unrigged and safe.
Above, in the middle basement, still fifty meters belowground, ventilation was off too.
The heat climbed fast. The air turned thick. Sweat slicked Serafina's palms.
Her lungs started to work harder, like they were pushing through mud.
Don Lorenzo, Serafina, and fifteen men stood there baking, breathing, laboring, faces shining.
It felt like being trapped in an oven that someone had decided to forget.
"Let us fucking hurry up and get out of here," Don Lorenzo growled.
They found another route, forced a door, climbed through a service tunnel, and kept climbing until Serafina tasted open air ahead.
They broke above ground. Cold air hit their faces like blessing.
For half a heartbeat Serafina thought they had made it. Then she saw the ring of men waiting.
Black suits. International police. Feds. Too neat. Too calm.
Their numbers barely a hundred, but their stance said they had planned every second of this.
Don Lorenzo raised his hands, weapons visible, palms open enough to say negotiation. His men did the same.
They did not want to become mince on the pavement. Don Lorenzo's mind moved fast.
Lawyers. Prosecutors. Bribes. Coercion. Deals that could still be cut in the right room.
He waited for a megaphone. He got gun clicks.
Safeties removed in unison, a hard mechanical chorus. The sound carried more intent than any speech.
Don Lorenzo's eyes widened.
"Get the fuck down."
Bullets rained into them. The first volley hit like a hammer.
Serafina did not even flinch before she felt three rounds whip through her back and tear out through her belly.
Then the world became noise and heat, the stink of ignited powder.
Round after round. Magazine after magazine. A hundred men kept firing.
They fired until the Francinetti Familia became unrecognizable, then fired into the heap to make sure it stayed dead.
Someone walked through after, calm as a butcher, and shoved a steel rod into ribs and throats, into the places that would twitch if life had been pretending.
A voice above the pile chuckled, muffled by distance and arrogance.
"Good hunting. Now. The deeds of the properties..."
Their voices echoed, talking business while blood still steamed.
Below them, someone lived. Serafina.
She did not cry. She did not scream. She did not even curse.
Not because she was strong. Because she was hit too hard to waste breath.
Her abdomen burned. Her lungs felt wrong.
The left side of her chest felt collapsed, pierced, each inhale a stolen thing.
Her father had thrown himself over her at the critical moment.
Loyalists had piled in too, trying to shield the Don even after he fell.
Their bodies made a roof. Their blood made a curtain.
Serafina lay under them for a long hour, eyes open, listening.
Footsteps faded. Voices drifted away. Silence crept back in, thick and cautious.
She waited until her ears heard nothing but wind. Then she wiggled.
Pain lit her nerves. She clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached.
Her fingers still held her pistol. The grip felt welded into her hand.
She worked herself out inch by inch.
When she finally pushed free, she saw her father's face.
Half of it was gone. The rest looked like a man who had died refusing to bow.
Serafina stared, then forced her shaking hand to close his eyes.
She wanted to mourn. She wanted to cry until her throat tore. She wanted to vent every curse stuck in her throat.
Serafina did none of it. She could not waste the chance to escape.
She ripped her white shirt into strips, hands clumsy with blood, and plugged each bullet wound as best she could.
The cloth turned red at once. She pressed harder.
She staggered forward, leaving a trail. Then she heard it.
A deep boom from behind. The steel mill detonated. The ground shook.
Rock, pillars, and steel beams collapsed. Dust surged up in a gray wave, and the air filled with the taste of crushed stone.
She closed her eyes, ducked under a half-finished steel bell meant for donation, and prayed.
"Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."