Chapter One

THE STRANGERS IN HER HOUSE

It had been exactly ninety-three days since the car crash killed her parents.

Ninety-three days since, the Antonio household has turned from a lively and happy ground and late-night laughter to total silence and court documents.

The crash was ruled an accident. Brake failure, they said. But Mirabella hadn’t believed it. Not then. Not now. 

Before their parents died, she noticed they were no longer the free and lively parents they used to be. They were always having midnight talks in very low voices, like they were hiding something. She noticed her parents, her dad, mostly being absent-minded most times, but her mom was always there to help him, encouraging him, not knowing she wasn't any better. 

She asked on some occasions what the problem was, but they only told her not to worry, it was a company problem, nothing they couldn't handle. Even her brother was hiding something, so he probably knew what their parents were hiding.

Something didn’t add up. Her father was very particular about safety. Her mother never rode in silence, yet the GPS log record showed no phone calls, no music, no activity at all. Just a straight path into a ditch off the freeway that made no sense.

She’d asked David if he thought it was more than an accident. He told her to let it go.

So she did. Outwardly.

But inwardly, Mira was drowning in it. She was still very young, but she had strong guts.

She sat in the back of the school bus as it drove through the polished streets of their suburban neighborhood, a place that still holds too much laughter, like it hadn’t noticed her crumbling world already.

She didn’t talk to anyone anymore. She rarely has friends either. The only person she had as a close friend was Daniel. They had grown up together as neighbors and were fond of each other. The whispers at school had died down surprisingly, but the stares remained. Everyone called her “that girl.” The one with dead parents and crumbled home. The one who didn’t cry.

She sighed.

But what they didn’t understand was simple.

She had cried secretly but not much because the grief hadn’t made it through the shock yet. It still hovered over her like fog, too thick to breathe, too distant to collapse into.

“You are good?” Dan asked, shoving his face in front of her. He'd noticed she was drifting in thought.

Startled, she turned her head towards him, but gave him a slight nod.

When they aligned from the bus, she waved goodbye to Daniel and made her way towards their mansion. Today, the air felt thick and wrong.

Just outside their back gate, two flashy black cars were parked and a man in a black suit and dark shades was standing by one of the cars with both his hands behind his back.

She was more bothered because their gate was open. 

That wasn’t too strange though— David had grown careless lately, always coming and going at odd hours. But something in her stomach tightened as she walked up the path. Her bag was heavy on her shoulder, and her shoes made soft sounds on the stone.

The front door was ajar.

She pushed it open slowly and peeked inside a little.

She heard voices first, then pushed the door open and stepped in.

Dark laughter echoed from the back hallway, towards her father's study room. It was male voices, not just one or two, multiple.

Mirabella froze.

There were strangers in their house.

She pressed her back to the wall, breathing through her nose. Her legs started trembling with fear. Her body sensed what her brain refused to say out loud.

There was danger.

And then she heard it.

A sharp, deep, commanding voice. 

“Where is your sister?”

She crept forward silently and slowly, shoes off now, socks against cold tile.

“I have no sister, it's just me in the house.”

Her breath caught. That was David’s voice.

“Don’t insult me. Your parents had two children, and they left both of you.”

“She doesn’t matter please, it's just me.”

She heard her brother pleading. She had never seen her brother this way before. He was always acting like a tough guy, always protecting her but not pleading for her.

This scares her to think of the kind of person they have encountered this time to make David, her brother plead for them to leave her and that she didn't matter.

Her blood froze from fear.

***

Hunter sat on the chair behind the long polished wooden table in the Antonios study like he owned it. Because he did.

Two brown couches joined together were at the far left end of the room beside the windows, which allowed in bright light. The rug was some European blend. The walls had many portraits of a family that pretended they were kings.

He hated these types of people. Rich, stupid and very loud until they owed the wrong people money.

“I don’t look like a fool, David,” Hunter said, glancing over his shoulder.

The boy looked tired, hollow cheeks, sleepless eyes, a thin scar just beneath his jaw, maybe from a punch landed on him minutes ago.

“She’s only fifteen and concluding her final year in high school,” David muttered with a pleading eyes.

“So she does exist.”

“She’s got nothing to do with this.”

Hunter turned around slowly, the edge of his smile pure ice. “Let me make something very clear to you. Debt does not vanish with funerals. Your father borrowed nearly seven hundred million from me. He gambled with it or whatever. Lost it. They had the audacity to die before paying me back. We had an agreement that if the money was not paid on time he'd have to pay with something more valuable. And he had agreed and even signed the papers, so you see, your father offered your sister on a platter to me.”

“My father would never do such a thing to his children, talk more, his only daughter. He adores her so much,” David said, with so much doubt and disbelief in his eyes.

“But he did. He was so desperate to get the money that he didn't even go through the documents he signed. So whose fault was that?” Hunter smirked. “So you see, I don’t give a fuck how old your sister is. If she exists and breathes under this roof, then she’s mine to collect.”

Mira stepped back like the words slapped her.

She pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to silence the scream that wanted to come out.

Mine to collect? Their parents were owing someone? These are not people from the bank. So who would borrow such huge amounts to someone if not the bank?

She didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but every syllable carved itself into her bones. It was loud and dangerous. Like the kind of man who didn’t need to yell to have people die for him.

Mafia?

Everything was now making sense at once. The black cars lined up on the long street outside their gate last week, just like now, the strange man who stared at her father's picture too long at her parents' wake, the weird long and sometimes short phone calls David made every night and thought she didn’t hear and now this? Trying to take someone as payment for a loan?

This was more than debt. It was a deal her father wouldn't have thought he wouldn't meet up with. And her name had been offered as payment?

She stepped back too fast and her hand bumped the flower pot beside the doorway.

The voices in the study paused.

“Someone else is here, Devil,” one of the men said.

She ran or tried to, but it was too late. 

She only made it as far as the hallway before a sharp voice called, “Stop.”

She turned slowly, chest heaving, eyes burning. By now, three of his men were already surrounding her.

Hunter saw her clearly for the first time.

Mirabella Antonio. He had his eyes on her the very first day her dad came to him to help to save his drowning company. He made his findings and found out the man had two children. He picked up interest in her immediately.

She looked like a ghost out of someone’s story. Long black curls, young light brown eyes wide with fury and fear, skin like porcelain and sunshine. She was very pretty and innocent, but more than that. Very pretty and fierce.

Not afraid enough, though.

She stared at him down like she didn’t care who he was.

“I want you out of my house,” she said.

Hunter smiled.

“Your house?” he repeated. “You mean the one your father built on borrowed blood?”

David stepped into the hallway behind him, face pale from fear and hand clutching his stomach. “Mira, run away from here.”

“No,” she snapped.

Hunter raised an eyebrow. “That’s the first smart thing she’s said.”

She turned that sharp gaze on him. “I don’t know who you are, but you don’t come here and threaten me and my brother in our own home.”

“Oh, my sweetheart.” He stepped forward. “I’m not threatening you at all. I'm here for you. Just you.”

***

Mira's Pov 

There was something dead behind his eyes. I had never seen such piercing blue eyes before, his jaw tense with cold eyes.

He didn’t move like normal people. He was too still. Too calculating. Too composed and confident. His face was clean-shaven, his suit tailored, handsome with very blue eyes, but everything about him screamed violence and danger.

And David wasn’t fighting or opposing him. That terrified me more than anything else.

“Hunter Groves,” he said, as if it was a title. “Your family borrowed money from me. Now you, little one, inherit their mess.”

“You can't be here for me because I didn’t borrow a damn thing,” I said.

“No,” he replied, calm as ever. “But you were bought anyway. This is a document your father signed, willing you to me,” he said, raising a transparent envelope up in one hand.

***

He came closer and bent his head, his face now facing her directly. He raised his left hand to tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear. After that, his hand rested on her neck. He whispered to her ear, “I will come back for you, my little one, grow up nicely for me.” He said and gave her ear a little bite before he stepped back.

She cleaned her ear and gave him a fierce look dead in the eyes.

He expected tears. Screaming. Trembling feet.

But what he got was something much more dangerous. Hatred.

The way she looked at him, she wasn’t frightened or begging to be left alone. It was venomous. Pure loathing.

Good.

It would make it easier to crush her later.

Still, she was valuable. Not just as a bargaining chip. Her last name didn't hold influence, not anymore. But her face would sell loyalty if used correctly. Her fire could be bent. And her body? He knows just how to use it. He knew she was still very young for him to have such thoughts towards her, but that’s who he was. And she implanted those thoughts in his head. Ever since Tobias, his right-hand man and second in command, handed him her pictures, he had thought of so many ways to claim her, how tight she would be around his huge cock, how she would take all his shaft inside of her, how soft her skin would feel against his, and her cries or soft moan when he is on top of her body, claiming what is only his. He knew that if he should take her with him now, he was not going to have the patience to wait for her, to let her grow before having her underneath him. His plans for her were dangerous and could not be handled by a kid.

So, he wouldn’t break her just yet.

But he would.

Eventually.

***

Hunter left that afternoon with a promise to return, but the house never felt hers again.

After the front door closed, she took the first aid box from the far end top cardboard and turned to David, shaking with fury.

“You told him I didn’t exist.”

David sat on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face. “I was trying to protect you.”

“By handing yourself over like a burnt offering?”

“Mira, language. You don’t understand the kind of men we’re dealing with. Hunter is a ruthless man and can do just about anything at all and no one will question him.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But I understand betrayal.”

He looked at her, eyes burning red. “Mira, they would have killed us both.”

“They still might,” she hissed. “And now I wonder what they would make us do. And I wonder how you knew him so well.”

He didn’t argue. Because it was true.

She finished treating the little cut on his face and locked herself up in her room.

Later that night, Mira lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, fists clenched beneath her pillow. She hadn't removed her school uniform yet, and it's now wrinkled from earlier. Her school bag was on the floor close to her bed, her books lay scattered on her desk.

She didn’t cry.

Not now. Not for David. Not even for herself.

What she felt wasn’t grief anymore.

She was furious.

And beneath it was a cold resolve also.

She would not let that man take her or her brother, nor would she be someone’s payment.

And if Hunter Groves, or whatever his name was thought, he could use her as a pawn...

She would become a deadly firestorm and burn him, or them both.

***

In the other part of town, Hunter was sitting in his penthouse office at the club as he watched the video feed from the camera his men installed earlier.

Mirabella sat alone on her bed, unmoving, deep in th

ought and eyes wide open.

“Pretty little thing,” he muttered. “You’ll kneel eventually.”

Tobias stepped into the room. “Orders?”

“Leave her be for now. Let her think she has

room to breathe and later, I would go into her space and suffocate her.”

“And David?”

“Send him tomorrow. Let him see what blood tastes like.”

Hunter leaned back in his chair, eyes fixed on the screen.

"She’ll hate me,” he said softly.

And he smiled.

“She should.”