Chapter 3

The weekend arrived quickly. I woke at seven. The sky outside was overcast, dark as ink-soaked cotton.

Capitano had texted at four in the morning.

"Principessa, warehouse coordinates locked in. A shipment is coming in this afternoon. The Milovich underboss will be there personally."

I changed into a black bodysuit, pulled on a bulletproof vest, tied my hair into a tight ponytail, tucked a modified Glock into my boot, and clipped a flare and a miniature communicator to my belt.

Before heading out, I checked the mirror.

The person staring back had sharp, hard features, nothing like the girl who rode a Rolls-Royce to school every day.

This was the real principessa of the Stascia family.

We set up in a tower near the warehouse. At two in the afternoon, three black Hummers rolled in.

The first to step out was a bald man with an old scar across his face. Kovac, the Milovich family's underboss. I'd seen his photo in my father's files. He and his men carried six metal crates inside.

I steadied my breathing and spoke into the communicator. "Capitano, target confirmed. I'm going in."

"Principessa, it's too dangerous. Let our people handle it."

"No. They know all of you. My face is the only one that's clean."

I put away the binoculars, slid down the tower's fire escape, hugged the shadowed wall of the warehouse, and slipped in through a gap in a ventilation duct.

I hid behind a stack of wooden crates and watched Kovac inspecting the shipment, a document in his hand.

I quickly snapped a few photos and zoomed in on the document's corner. It bore the Milovich family crest, and beside it, an old-style watermark from the Stascia family's trade council.

My father had a partnership with the Milovich family?

I edged two steps forward, trying to get a better look.

A crate beneath my feet let out a faint creak.

Kovac's head snapped up, his gaze sweeping toward me like a hawk's.

"Who's there?!"

I'd been spotted. Before his men could close in, I twisted sideways and threw myself out through the ventilation opening.

The instant I hit the ground, Kovac's roar echoed behind me. "Get her!"

Bullets whizzed past my ear. I broke into a sprint, diving into the windbreak along the coast. Branches lashed my face and arms, stinging like fire.

I gritted my teeth and kept running. Then a sudden heat flared at my side.

I looked down. A bullet had grazed my waist at some point. The wound wasn't deep, but it was bleeding heavily, soaking a large patch of my clothes.

I fumbled for my phone. My fingertips were slick with blood, and it took three tries to unlock the fingerprint scanner.

Damian was the first name in my contacts. I called him.

"Miss?" Damian's voice was confused. "Aren't you with your friends..."

"Damian..." I was panting, my voice trembling, half genuine, half performance. "I'm on the coastal highway. Someone's chasing me... Can you come get me? Please?"

Silence on the other end.

I heard Tina's impatient voice. "Who is it? Bothering you on a weekend again?"

Damian lowered his voice. "It's that student..."

"Her again?!" Tina's voice exploded. "Damian, are you out of your mind? Taking someone else's call when you're supposed to be spending the weekend with me?"

I gripped the phone tighter, my nails digging into my palm.

"Damian, please... They're almost here..."

Arguing on the other end. Then the line went dead.

I hid in the windbreak. The coastal highway stretched empty before me. About ten minutes later, the familiar Rolls-Royce pulled up.

I rushed to it and pounded on the rear window.

The glass slid down slowly, revealing Tina's heavily made-up face.

She took in the sight of me, drenched in blood. First came a look of shock. Then she smiled, a cruel, satisfied smile.

"Well, well, if it isn't our little princess. How'd you end up such a mess?"

"Open the door, let me in!"

Tina slowly pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped imaginary dust off her fingers.

"This is my boyfriend's car. What makes you think you can ride in it? Look at you, you're a mess. What if you stain my car? Get lost!"

Then she hit the window button. The glass slid shut, inch by inch, sealing me out.

I looked at the driver's seat. Damian sat there, hands on the wheel. His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something.

But Tina beat him to it. "Damian, if you let her in, I swear I'll break up with you tomorrow."

Damian's Adam's apple bobbed. He turned his face away and stopped looking at me.

"Miss... call yourself a ride."

The words barely left his mouth before he stepped on the gas.

The engine roared. The Rolls-Royce's taillights, like two red teardrops, shrank smaller and smaller down the rainy highway until the darkness swallowed them whole.

I staggered back two steps, my back hitting a lamppost, and slid down to the ground.

Blood seeped from the wound at my side, pooling on the concrete, blurring in the rain like a dark crimson flower slowly blooming.

The pursuers were getting closer. I lowered my head, my tangled hair falling across my face, hiding my expression from the world.

I reached into my boot, found the miniature flare, and fired it into the sky.

Then I laughed, laughed until my shoulders shook.

I pressed the communicator. My voice was calm.

"Capitano."

"We've intercepted the remaining pursuers. The extraction team will be there any moment."

"I know. Pull the surveillance footage from the coastal highway and save the clip of that Rolls-Royce."

"And one more thing." I paused, wiping the blood and rain from my face with the back of my hand.

"Get all the call records from Tina's phone. Focus on numbers from a year ago. She wasn't with Damian yet back then, but the Milovich family would have already been in contact with her."

"Understood, principessa. Are you hurt?"

"It's nothing."

After I boarded the helicopter, I could hear my people cleaning up the scene in the distance.

Those two had no idea that while I was clinging to the car window, I'd planted a listening device and a tracker on it.

I listened in as Tina took a phone call, then told Damian to hand over the car. She drove it straight to the warehouse I'd just escaped from.

I glanced down at the highway below. The rain had eased. The halos of the streetlights illuminated nothing but empty road.

The Rolls-Royce was long gone. But soon enough, Damian and Tina would come back.

On their knees.