Morning sunlight crept through the sheer curtains of Mateo's bedroom, painting stripes of gold across the marble floor. Outside, birds chirped merrily, oblivious to the contents of the brown envelopes now resting on his desk.

  Three letters. Three envelopes bearing the same wax seal. The same neat handwriting—too neat, like someone trying to control something inherently uncontrollable.

  Mateo didn't even need to read them. He already knew what they contained.

  "How many so far?" he asked, without turning to face Leo standing in the doorway.

  Leo, now serving as Mateo's head of personal security after proving himself across numerous operations, stepped inside cautiously. In his hand, a thin folder stuffed with documents.

  "This is the third in two months, Master. Since the troop ship departed." Leo paused, choosing his words carefully. "The first one... was polite. News about the voyage, the soldiers' condition, mundane matters. The second had already begun to..." he swallowed.

  "Begun to what?"

  "Speaking your sister's name. Writing about... about her face, about hoping to meet again. Like a lovesick paramour pining for their beloved."

  Mateo remained silent. His fingers drummed against the desk. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  "And the third?"

  Leo placed the folder on the desk. "We didn't open it. According to protocol, only you have the authority to read personal correspondence addressed to the President's family. But from its weight and..." he trailed off again.

  "And?"

  "And from the inscription on the envelope. 'For Isabella, with all my heart that still beats for you.'" Leo clenched his jaw. "This has crossed every boundary, Master. He's a soldier. He knows protocol. He understands his position."

  Mateo picked up the folder, unfastening its clasp. Three letters. Three envelopes. Three times Diego had dared to write love letters to his elder sister inside the palace, as if they were ordinary youngsters from some village who could indulge in romance without consequences.

  Previously, he had dismissed them as ordinary correspondence from a cousin. But this... this transcended boundaries.

  He didn't read them. He didn't need to.

  "He thinks," Mateo said slowly, his voice colder than the northern ice seas, "that by going to the front lines, by offering his life on foreign battlefields, he'll gain something. Recognition. Blessing. Perhaps even a sense of indebtedness from me."

  Leo offered no response. None was needed.

  "That man has lost his sanity." Mateo placed the folder back on his desk. "Does he believe his father's tragedy—Uncle Roberto's shattered life, the confiscated home, the dark past—will be erased simply because he dies a hero? Does he think his blood spilled on Prussi soil will cleanse his ambitions?"

  "What should we do, Master?"

  Mateo rose, walking to the window. Below, in the garden, Isabella strolled with Eleanor. They were laughing. Eleanor hopped about, probably recounting stories from school. Isabella listened with that gentle smile.

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  The same smile Diego described in his letters. The smile he stole from afar, from some faded photograph he carried to the battlefield.

  Cold anger crept up Mateo's spine. Not because Diego loved Isabella—love was commonplace; even bodyguards sometimes secretly adored the palace princesses. But Diego wasn't secretive. Diego wrote. Diego sent. Diego deliberately created a trail.

  If these letters leaked—if political enemies obtained them—they could twist everything. "Soldier Diego, the exiled cousin, writes love letters to the president's daughter." Scandal. Sensation. Perfect ammunition for Dona Esperanza and her scandal-hungry newspapers.

  And if Isabella read these letters? If her tender heart was touched by Diego's sacrifice? If she began responding—just one reply—then Diego would possess something far more dangerous than love: hope.

  Hope was explosive. And Diego, in his eyes, was an unstable detonator.

  "Burn them," Mateo commanded, still facing the window.

  "Master?"

  "All the letters. The existing ones. Those yet to arrive. Block every delivery route for correspondence from Diego to Isabella." His voice remained flat, like a technical directive. "If any military courier carries envelopes bearing his handwriting, destroy them before they reach the palace. If he attempts civilian channels, monitor and confiscate. I don't want a single word from that man reaching my sister's ears."

  Leo nodded, jotting notes in his ever-present pocketbook. "And if he protests? If he asks why his letters go unanswered?"

  "He won't ask." Mateo finally turned around. His face remained composed, but his eyes—his eyes were frozen lakes in deep winter. "Because if he returns from war, and still dares to cross boundaries... he won't have the opportunity to ask anything."

  Leo swallowed hard. "Understood."

  "Any confusion?"

  "None. Perfectly clear."

  "Do it now."

  Leo retrieved the folder, turned, and departed. His steps were quick, professional, yet a faint tremor rippled across his shoulders—the tremor that appears when someone realizes they've just become part of something profoundly, terribly dark.

  ***

  Two hours later. The Blindaje barracks backyard.

  Leo poured kerosene over the stack of letters inside an old iron drum. Three brown envelopes. Diego's neat handwriting. Words of love that would never reach their destination.

  A match. Fire licked the paper's edges, then voraciously consumed everything.

  Leo watched the letters transform into ash. He remembered Diego—the young man with rage-filled eyes on his first day at the port administration office. Three years later, that rage hadn't extinguished; it had merely transmuted. From hatred toward Mateo into... what? Love for Isabella? Or merely the illusion that love could rescue him from the burning hatred within?

  He didn't know. And didn't want to know. His duty was protecting the Guerrero family from all threats—including threats arriving in brown envelopes adorned with romantic handwriting.

  The fire died. Ashes cooled.

  Leo stirred them with a stick, ensuring nothing recognizable remained. Then he left, abandoning the iron drum in the deserted backyard, alongside the remnants of a young man's hopes—hopes belonging to someone who might never come home.

  ***

  Joint High Command Headquarters, Prussi

  Cigarette smoke filled the room like mountain morning fog. Sixteen generals and high-ranking officers sat around a twelve-meter black marble table—maps unfurled, small flags marking strategic positions, and on the rear wall, a large screen displaying recent satellite imagery from Europania's Eastern Front.

  General Antonio Pérez felt his spine protesting. Black coffee, five cups already. Cigarettes, half a pack down. And before him now, seated at the head of the table, Field Marshal Friedrich von Helheim—Supreme Commander of the Prussi Army, a sixty-two-year-old man with a small dueling scar on his left cheek and a reputation as the most ruthless leader since the Reunification War.

  "Welcome to Prussi, General Pérez." Marshal Friedrich's Sepain was flawless, marred only by a thick Prussi accent rolling the 'r's. "I understand your journey was smooth despite the weather over the Mediteranian."

  "Smooth enough, Marshal." Antonio nodded respectfully. "Though the ship rocked quite violently upon entering Prussi waters. Your defense radar is remarkably... responsive."

  Marshal Friedrich smiled thinly. Not a warm smile—more like an old wolf appreciating prey that knew how to exchange pleasantries. "We can't be too careful. Not after what happened on the eastern border three months ago."

  Three months ago. Antonio knew precisely what that meant—the Eastern Coalition's surprise assault that had pierced Prussi's defenses forty kilometers deep in a single night. Thirty thousand soldiers dead. Two brigades annihilated.

  "Very well," Marshal Friedrich slapped the table, silencing all conversation. "Let's begin. General Pérez, you represent the Venezia Republic as our official alliance partner in this operation. Please sit beside me."

  "We'll commence the briefing."

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