“Bruises, Blood, and Broken Badges: How One Mafia Boss Tore Washington’s Golden Boy Prosecutor to Shreds for His Black Waitress – and Made the Whole City Choose Sides”
The bruises on her wrist were fresh, purple-black fingerprints branding her skin like a grotesque claim. In Luca Belandi’s world, those marks weren’t just evidence—they were a challenge. Not his territory, not his business, and definitely not the woman who’d been haunting his thoughts for three weeks. Yet the moment her sleeve slipped, revealing the ugly truth, Luca knew: whatever bastard had hurt her just became his problem to erase.
Belandi’s was closing for the night, the last dregs of DC’s power elite filtering out past velvet ropes and armed doormen who looked corporate but carried credentials written in blood. Midnight jazz poured through hidden speakers, competing with the rhythm of Luca’s pulse as he watched her move between tables. Three weeks. That’s how long she’d worked here. That’s how long he’d been studying her—her posture when she thought no one was watching, the way she flinched at raised voices but never at his. Like she already knew the difference between men who threatened and men who delivered.
She shouldn’t have mattered. She was staff. He had rules about that—lines that kept his world orderly and his conscience manageable. But Ara Vos had a way of making him reconsider every rule he’d ever written. When she started, she’d been vibrant, sharp-tongued enough to trade barbs with Matteo, bold enough to laugh at Luca’s lieutenant’s terrible wine jokes. There’d been heat in her eyes then—the kind that made him wonder what she’d look like in his penthouse instead of his restaurant, wearing something besides that crisp uniform.
That heat had been smothered recently, snuffed out by something that made her shoulders curve inward and her sleeves stretch past her knuckles. Despite the kitchen warmth, Luca tracked her approach now, noting details his men missed while they argued about tomorrow’s shipment. The way she gripped the wine bottle too tightly, how her breathing went shallow as she got close, the deliberate angle of her wrists, hidden and protected.
“Your wine, Mr. Bandi.” Her voice had gone soft, stripped of the music it carried three weeks ago. He wanted that music back. Wanted to know what stole it. She reached across to pour, physics betrayed her careful armor, and her right sleeve surrendered two inches of pale skin. Luca went still. Bruises circled her wrist like a grotesque bracelet—four distinct marks where fingers had dug deep, possessive and cruel. A thumb’s shadow completed someone else’s handprint on her body.
Something primitive and territorial clawed up his throat. Ara’s eyes met his, saw exactly where he was looking, and her face drained white. She yanked the sleeve down fast enough to slosh wine across the table. “I’m sorry. I’ll get a cloth.”
“Don’t.” One word, quiet as a blade. “Sit down.”
She hesitated. “Mr. Balandi, I should really—”
“I wasn’t asking, Dolce.” The endearment slipped out before he could stop it. Low, possessive, entirely inappropriate for an employer. Her sharp intake of breath said she caught it too—caught the shift in his tone from professional to something far more dangerous. She sat. Not because she wanted to, but because that tone didn’t leave room for refusal.
Around them, the restaurant’s white noise continued. His men’s laughter, glasses clinking, Senator Rhodes signing his check at table four. Normal sounds in an abnormal moment. Luca leaned forward, invading her space deliberately, close enough to see her pupils dilate, to watch her pulse jump in her throat. Close enough that she’d feel the weight of his full attention like a physical thing.
“Show me the other one.”
“It’s nothing. I fell.”
“You didn’t fall.” His voice dropped lower, intimate as a confession. “Someone grabbed you. Hard. Multiple times, judging by the colors. So let’s skip the part where you lie to me, because I’m very good at spotting lies and you’re hurting my feelings by assuming I’m not.”
A flash of something—anger, maybe—cut through her fear. That’s what he wanted. The fire she’d been smothering.
“My feelings aren’t your business, Mr. Bandi.”
“They are when they involve my waitress showing up to work looking like someone’s punching bag. They especially are when I’ve spent three weeks thinking about what you’d look like in my bed instead of my restaurant. And now I’m wondering if I need to kill someone first.”
The confession hung between them, too raw and real for the polished veneer of Belandi’s. Her eyes went wide, lips parting in shock.
“You can’t. You don’t mean—”
“I absolutely mean it.” He reached out slowly, giving her time to pull away, and brushed his thumb across her covered wrist. She trembled but didn’t retreat.
“Tell me who touched you, Ara. Give me a name.”
For one suspended heartbeat, he thought she might. Saw her weighing the cost of truth against the cost of continued silence. Saw her wanting to trust him—this dangerous man who’d just admitted to wanting her, who looked at her bruises like they were personal insults. Then fear won. She jerked back, standing so abruptly her chair scraped marble.
“I have to go. This is—”
“You can’t—”
“I can.” He stood with predatory grace, using his height, his presence, everything that made him terrifying to senators and syndicate rivals alike.
“I can do anything I want in this city, Dolce. The question is whether you’re going to tell me who hurt you or if I have to find out the hard way.”
“There’s nothing to find out.” Her voice cracked. “Please, just forget you saw anything.” She fled toward the kitchen before he could respond, moving like a woman who’d perfected the art of strategic retreat.
Luca watched her go, every protective and possessive instinct he’d spent years controlling now raging against their restraints. He’d built an empire on calculated violence and strategic patience. He’d learned when to strike and when to wait. But someone had put their hands on a woman who’d started occupying far too much space in his thoughts. Someone had marked her, hurt her, made her afraid. Someone had just made this very, very personal.
He pulled out his phone, keeping his eyes on the kitchen door where Ara had disappeared. One call. That’s all it took to set his world in motion.
“Matteo, my office. Five minutes.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
By dawn, Luca had a manila folder on his desk, heavier than it should have been. Inside: photographs, surveillance, financial records. The man who’d hurt Ara wasn’t just any bastard. He was Adrien Vale, Federal Prosecutor, DOJ Criminal Division—the golden boy leading the organized crime task force, the attorney general’s favorite success story. And he was investigating Luca.
But he was also Ara’s ex, her abuser, the monster she’d fled. The system that protected him was the same one that was supposed to stop men like Luca. The irony tasted like blood.
Luca’s decision was made. Protection first, vengeance later. He ordered surveillance on Vale, a protective detail on Ara, and a digital war led by Isabella Moretti, his hacker. Within days, the city’s power structure began to crack. Financial leaks, evidence tampering, bribes, blackmail—all orchestrated to destroy Vale from within, to use the system against its own golden boy.
Senator Patricia Reeves joined the crusade, the ethics committee convened, and women began to come forward. The city was forced to choose sides: the mobster who’d declared war for justice, or the prosecutor whose badge had become a license for abuse.
When Vale made his final move, breaking into Ara’s safe house, killing guards, hunting her through darkness, it was Ara who fought back. Years of terror compressed into one moment of defiance—paperweight to the temple, gun in hand, trigger pulled. Vale was bleeding, broken, screaming threats. But Ara wasn’t his victim anymore. She was a survivor.
Luca arrived with his army, weapons drawn, but it was Ara’s courage that ended Vale’s reign. Sirens wailed, police flooded the building, and the golden boy prosecutor was cuffed to a stretcher, his empire in ruins.
In the aftermath, Luca wrapped Ara in a blanket and carried her to safety. “You survived,” he whispered. “It’s over. You can let go now.” And for the first time in years, she did.
Washington reeled. Protests erupted, politicians resigned, the media swarmed. But for Ara, freedom was quieter—sleeping without fear, living without hiding, learning to trust the man who’d burned down a city to set her free.
When she finally looked at Luca, she saw not a criminal, but the only person who’d cared enough to fight for her. “I’m not an easy man to love,” he warned. “But what I can promise is that no one will ever hurt you again while I’m breathing.”
“That’s not love,” she observed softly. “That’s possession.”
“It’s both,” he admitted. “I want you safe. I want you happy. I want you mine. Can you live with that?”
She thought about the past three years—the fear, the isolation, the slow death of living under Vale’s control. Then she thought about the last two weeks—the protection, the justice, the man who’d risked everything for her.
“Yes,” she said finally. “I can live with that. As long as you understand I’m not something fragile you have to keep locked away. I’m done being hidden.”
Luca’s smile was fierce, proud. “Good. Because the woman I want doesn’t hide. She’s the one who survived hell and still has fight left in her. That woman doesn’t need a cage. She needs a partner who will watch her back while she takes on the world.”
Nobody’s perfect. But in a city built on pretty lies and ugly power, sometimes the most dangerous man is the one with a conscience. And sometimes, the only justice worth having is the kind you fight for yourself.
Ara’s laugh came easily, real and unforced—the first genuine one Luca had ever heard from her. It sounded like freedom.
