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The feud among the Bianchi and Lombardi clans began with stupid choices, like all old wars: a celebration and too much wine.

It happened soon after the flotilla to Pegasi launched from Earth’s central orbital station with its passengers.

TheEterna’scontingent was the Italian Bianchi clan and its offshoots, mainly hailing from across what was once Europe, the USA, and Australia.

A brawl between hotheaded young men on each side spun out of control.

Two Bianchis died that night, blood on polished floors, glass shattered like a bad omen, and nothing was the same after.

From then on, the cycle became brutal.

Retaliation turned into a ritual.

Killings into tallies. The kind of tit-for-tat violence that soaked into family stories, becoming a legacy, then a prophecy.

For a brief moment, hope shimmered.

A few years ago, the Syndicate Commission, the governing member body of all the Houses represented in the armada, declared a truce.

Thin and trembling, it held for a few months, until a woman died.

She hadn’t been just any female.

She was the wife of a Lombardi higher-up, found shot dead on a Bianchi luxury cruiser. The scandal exploded like a minewhen a gossip holo revealed she was the mistress of Stromboli Bianchi, Savvine’s grandfather, the late mob boss.

That revelation turned the woman’s death from a tragedy to a powder keg.

The fallout was catastrophic.

The worst came not long after, in what would be infamous as theVaedra Massacre.

Stromboli Bianchi, two of his sons, and half the Bianchi elder council boarded a vessel calledVaedraen route to a Syndicate leadership meeting.

They never arrived.

Somewhere along the mid-route corridor, a cruel explosion tore the ship apart.

One so clean and calculated that it left nothing behind but vapor trails and an echo of plasma.

The brutality of the assassination forced the Syndicate Commission’s hand. The governing council, comprised of leaders from allied clans aboard the Pegasi flotilla, launched a full-scale investigation.

The result was swift and punishing: over thirty Lombardi affiliates arrested, tried, and imprisoned.

They now languished in isolation in prison, located on the Signet dreadnought.

TheSombrawas the HQ of the flotilla’s private security and mercenary company tasked with handling security by the Syndicate.

Still, the official dispute simmered beneath the surface, not quite an open war.

Until now.

It didn’t help that Eugene Bianchi, Stromboli’s youngest son, was a hopeless mob boss. Too young, too spoiled, too indulgent, too grieved, he ceded control of the clan’s business to the clan council and theEterna’sexecutive team.

So far, they’d been avoiding major conflict, and Savvine had often wondered for much longer.

It seemed not long at all.

General Aresteh’s voice broke through her reverie. ‘Where is dear Eugene during all this?’