The Storm Finds Her.

She saw it was Vince calling, her stomach twisted but she didn’t pick it up. Not yet. She couldn’t face her brothers, not with her head spinning and her chest aching for someone she couldn’t name.

Instead, she sank back onto the bed and curled into herself, whispering words she would never admit out loud:

“Who are you?”

The silence offered no answer. But the question burned all the same, echoing through her until it filled every part of her.

She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know his world. But she knew one thing with painful clarity

This wasn’t over.

No matter how dangerous, no matter how impossible, she had to find him.

She didn’t know that, even as she whispered to the empty room about the stranger, her brothers were tearing through the city like wolves hunting prey. She didn’t know that the one she craved was a man her family would never allow near her.

Oblivious to the storm gathering outside, Lucy sank back onto the bed, hugging the pillow that still smelled faintly of him. She told herself she would find him again, no matter what it took. Even if she had to search every club in the city. Even if it meant defying her brothers all over again.

Lucy spent her time in the hotel drifting between restless pacing and staring blankly out the hotel window, the city alive beneath her but offering no answers. Every honk of a car horn, every laugh echoing up from the streets only reminded her of how alive she’d felt with him and how empty she felt now.

Not long after, she couldn’t take it anymore.

She slipped into one of the dresses she had packed for the night out, something bold, something that screamed I’m not invisible anymore. A fitted black slip, heels that clicked against the floor with each step, and lips painted crimson like the fire burning in her chest. Her hands shook as she grabbed her purse, but her heart was steady. She knew where she was going.

Back to the club.

Her pulse raced the moment she arrived at the club. The neon lights, the throb of bass beneath her feet, the swirl of bodies moving to the music, it was all the same, yet utterly different. Last night, she had been just a girl desperate for freedom. Tonight, she was a woman hunting for something or someone that had stolen her breath away.

Lucy pushed her way to the bar, ignoring the curious stares, her eyes scanning the crowd for him. Tall frame, sharp jaw, dark eyes shadowed with secrets… but he wasn’t there. The emptiness of the realization clawed at her, but she wasn’t ready to give up.

The bartender, a grizzled man with a shaved head and knowing eyes, leaned toward her when she ordered a drink. “Back again so soon, sweetheart? Rough night?”

Lucy swallowed hard, lowering her voice, trying to sound casual. “Listen… Last night, I was here with someone. Tall, dark hair, bruised knuckles…” Her eyes flicked to the bar counter. “He helped me out of a… situation. Do you know who he is?”

The bartender studied her for a moment, then smirked knowingly. “Ah… him.”

Lucy’s heart skipped. “So you do know him.” She impatiently asked

“I might,” the bartender drawled, wiping a glass with deliberate slowness. “But that depends. Why do you wanna know? You don’t look like the type to get tangled with men like that.”

Her fingers tightened around her glass, her voice edged with frustration. “Just tell me who he is. Please.”

The bartender tilted his head, about to say something..

But that’s when the air shifted.

The kind of shift that makes the hairs on the back of your neck rise.

Lucy felt it before she even turned. The weight of piercing eyes, the heat of anger radiating behind her. Slowly, almost dreading what she’d find, she glanced over her shoulder and froze.

Vince, Matteo, Damian, Adrian.

Her brothers all stood there, a wall of fury cutting through the music and flashing lights, their presence commanding the attention of everyone nearby. The crowd seemed to instinctively part around them, whispers rippling like waves.

Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t even realized her legs were trembling until her knees brushed against the bar stool.

Vince’s voice was the first to slice through the pounding music, low and sharp as a blade. “Lucy.”

Just her name, but it carried enough weight to silence the world around her.

Matteo’s eyes flicked from her dress to her drink to the desperate way she clutched the counter. His smirk was gone, replaced with a tight, dangerous sneer. “Looking for someone, little sis?”

Damian exhaled smoke from the cigarette clenched between his lips, his dark amusement barely masking the anger simmering beneath. “She’s got a death wish, this one.”

And Adria, Adrian’s fists were already clenched, his jaw rigid, his eyes blazing with betrayal and fear. He looked like he wanted to grab her and drag her out of there then and there.

Lucy’s throat went dry. The storm she hadn’t seen coming had finally found her.

But instead of backing down, instead of crumbling under their shadows like she always had, she lifted her chin, her voice trembling but unyielding.

“I’m not going home.”

The words slipped past her lips before she could stop them, and the tension between them all stretched like a wire ready to snap.

The club’s pulse didn’t stop, but it felt muted, swallowed by the weight of the Valerio siblings facing off in the middle of the neon haze.

Lucy could feel the heat of dozens of eyes on her, curious strangers sensing trouble, dancers pausing mid-step, and the bartender polishing the same glass without looking away. It was as though the music, the laughter, the entire night held its breath.

Vince stepped closer first. Not fast, not loud, but with the same quiet force that had always made her brothers fall silent. He towered over her now, his eyes sharp as steel. “Lucy,” he said again, his voice lower this time, like thunder warning of the storm to follow. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Her pulse pounded, but she held his gaze. “I had a night out. That’s all.”

Matteo let out a short, humorless laugh. “A night out? You disappeared, you didn’t come home, and now we find you sniffing around for some stranger?” His smile was sharp, but his voice cracked like a whip. “Do you think you’re untouchable because you carry our name?”

Damian flicked ash into an empty glass, his eyes narrowed in a lazy but lethal way. “She doesn’t think, Matteo. She just runs headfirst into fire and expects us to clean up the ashes.”

Adrian, who had been quiet until now, finally snapped forward. His voice wasn’t calm or cruel, it was raw, panicked. “We thought something happened to you, Lucy! Do you know what that felt like? Not knowing where you were, not knowing if someone took you” He cut himself off, fists trembling at his sides.