Chapter 1 The Devil in Suit

Adriano's POV

The city never really sleeps. It twitches under neon lights like a junkie coming down from its own high—restless, dirty, begging for another hit of sin. And I? I am the supplier. The dealer. The executioner.

By daylight, I build empires out of glass towers and lines of code.

By night, I burn them to the ground.

That’s the duality of being Adriano Moretti.

King of the tech world. Executioner of the streets.

People shake my hand, smile for the cameras, beg me for partnerships in the daylight. They don’t see the blood under my nails or the silence I buy with fear. They don’t see the shadows I command, the deals that turn allies into corpses overnight.

They only see the suit.

And that’s the way I like it.

But my true kingdom?

It isn’t the high-rises or the hidden warehouses. It’s The Service.

People look at me and see polished steel: Adriano Moretti, billionaire tech visionary, the man who gave the world The Service. They shake my hand, flash their fake smiles, and whisper my name in rooms where power bleeds. They think I’m just another king in a suit.

But kings need armies. Devils only need fear.

The Service—A harmless-looking app dressed in sleek white and gold, downloaded by millions. Officially, it’s a confessional hotline where sinners can spill their darkest secrets “anonymously.” It offers those who need it, free therapy.

The branding is soft. Healing. Clean. They believe it. They always believe it. Because humans are desperate to talk, to unburden, to scream into the void and hope the void whispers back absolution.

But we’re the void.

My brothers and I listen. Catalogue, every depravity, every whispered crime. Once a month, we choose. The worst of the worst gets marked. Their sins don’t dissolve—they ignite. And then, quietly, surgically, we extinguish them.

The city doesn’t know why its monsters disappear. They just vanish like ghosts dragged into the underworld.

That’s my justice.

That’s our empire.

Tonight, I’m in my office, the skyline stretched like glittering glass shards beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. My jacket is off, shirt sleeves rolled up, ink winding up my forearms like shadows written into my skin. I swirl whiskey in a glass, listening to the confessions bleed through the speakers.

Every month, one sinner is marked. And when I mark you, you don’t leave this city breathing.

Tonight, my brother Luca brought me another file. He still wore his surgical scrubs under his coat, like he’d stepped straight from the operating room to my office. He saves lives in the daylight, but when the sun drops, he helps me decide which ones to take.

“Another one came in,” he said, sliding the transcript across my desk.

I picked it up, scanning the words. My chest went still. The voice on the recording was low, defiant, daring the world to break her. The kind of voice that clung to your bones even after the sound was gone.

Low, husky, desperate, but sharp-edged with defiance.

“I know you’re listening.”

My body stills. The room stills.

“Whoever you are,” she continues, breathless, “I don’t care if you call this a hotline, or a therapy app, or whatever you think you are. I don’t care what you do to me after this. But I need to say this. Out loud. Before I lose my nerve. I can’t carry this burden anymore”

Her words crack, then steady again, as if she’s stitching herself back together mid-sentence.

“Six years ago, I left someone in the fire took something from me. Someone who was my everything. And I’m going to get them back at them…. or I’m going to burn this city to the ground trying. You hear me? I will. I will make them pay. Even if I have to become the devil’s own shadow.”

The line hums with silence after.

Silence that feels like a heartbeat I thought I’d buried.

Because I know that voice.

It’s impossible, but I know it.

Years of burying the memory don’t erase the way it brands itself into me now. The girl who shouldn’t exist anymore. The one I lost long ago, torn from me in blood and fire.

I grip the edge of my desk until the mahogany creaks. My pulse is a war drum in my throat.

The Service is meant to feed me victims. To keep my brothers and I on top of the food chain. But this isn’t just a voice in the void. This is her.

She should be marked. Catalogued.

Another sinner, another secret destined for silence.

But instead, I mark her for myself.

For the first time in years, I want something I shouldn’t.

Not vengeance. Not obedience.

Her.

Ma Belle

Isabella

My obsession is reborn in the glow of a screen and the echo of a confession meant to be buried.

She doesn’t know she just dialled the devil.

And the devil doesn’t let go.

I knew that voice.

It shouldn’t be possible. She was gone—dead to me, lost to time, I had buried her. But ghosts don’t call hotlines. Ghosts don’t bleed desperation into microphones.

Yet here she was.

“She’s dangerous,” Luca muttered. “Better to cut her out before she becomes a problem.”

I leaned back in my chair, tasting smoke and ash on my tongue. Dangerous? Yes. But not to me. Never to me.

“No,” I said, my voice sharper than the blade hidden in my desk. “This one isn’t for the list.”

Luca frowned. “Then what do we do with her?”

I smiled, slow and lethal.

“I mark her for myself.”

Because the woman who just confessed to The Service had no idea she had dialed the devil’s number.

And I don’t let sinners go.....