Chapter One

York City — December 2025

“Marcus—”

“Stay down.” The warmth left his voice.  He reached for his phone without looking my way, not once. I understood the way you understand things when it’s already too late. Marcus had known this was possible. He just hadn’t believed they’d be bold enough. Not in the open. Not against a Castello.

The first shot took out the rear window.

I screamed. Glass rained across my shoulders and I dropped low as the car swerved violently. Marcus shouted into his phone in rapid Italian, his free hand pressing my head further down. More shots. The car lurched. The driver made a sound I would never forget — not a scream. Just a soft, surprised exhale, like someone interrupted mid-thought.

The car made a swift turn and ran straight into a fire hydrant. The impact threw me forward hard enough that my vision whitened at the edges. The driver’s head was against the wheel. He wasn’t moving.

Silence for exactly one second.

Then the doors opened.

Men in dark clothing moved with terrifying efficiency. This wasn’t random. This was a message, and Marcus Castello was the paper it was written on. He was dragged out of the car and wasn’t hurling threats at them, then I heard his voice cut off mid-word. I didn’t look. I couldn’t.

The pain came next,  sharp, radiating from my side where the door had crumpled inward. I tried to move and couldn’t. The world tilted wrong and I realized, distantly, that I was on the ground. That the cold pavement was seeping through the black dress Sadie had told me not to save.

A voice above me. Commanding. Bored, almost.

“Finish it. All of them.”

Footsteps.

I forced my eyes open.

A figure crouched in front of me — close enough that I could see his face clearly, despite everything. I knew that face. Not from where, not from when. Only that something in me recognized it the way you recognize a song you can’t name.

Cassius Moretti.

His expression was unreadable. A gun, held loosely at his side. His father’s order, still rang in the cold air between us.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

The world went black.

New York City — September 2025

Three months earlier.

My mother looked smaller every time I saw her, like the bed was slowly winning. She was due to be released today. 

I adjusted the blanket she didn’t need and kissed her forehead in the dark. Sam was folded into the corner chair, mouth slightly open, long legs going everywhere. Fifteen, and he still managed to look eight when he slept. I pulled his jacket over his shoulders and stood there a moment longer than necessary — the part I never let myself rush. The moment before I had to become someone who had it together.

Sadie was in the doorway.

“You’re going to be late, Sienna.”

“I’m right on schedule,  don’t worry.”

She smiled. She always did. Quick hug — grounding, the kind that said “I know” without saying anything. “You earned this, Ms. Sienna Sinclair.” Said like a joke. Eyes are completely serious.

I nodded, because if I spoke, I’d crack.

The doctors understood visiting hours didn’t apply to us. Our mother meant everything to us and we were prepared to go to great lengths to keep her safe. 

Before I left, I stopped at the nurses’ station down the hall. “Excuse me — Patricia?”

The nurse looked up, surprised to be called by name.

“Thank you,” I said. “For last night. My sister told me you stayed with her an extra hour after your shift ended.” I paused. “It meant a lot.” Patricia’s expression softened into something genuine. “She’s a sweet woman. You just focus on your day.” I nodded and walked away before she could see my eyes water. 

In the elevator down I caught my reflection in the steel doors. I looked like my mother. Sadie always said so though I never saw the resemblance. Sam had our father’s eyes apparently, though none of us really remembered well enough to confirm it. Thirteen years was a long time. Long enough that his absence had stopped feeling like a wound and started feeling like a missing limb — something you learned to live around without ever quite getting used to. I pressed the lobby button and watched my reflection disappear as the doors opened. Some days I was angry. Today I was just tired.

I arrived at my new workplace. My stomach was doing something I refused to call nerves. The building rose out of the city like a dare.

Verizon Industries. 

All glass and steel. I stood across the street longer than I should have, adjusted my bag, and walked in.

My badge worked on the first try. Small victory. It counted.

The fifteenth floor hummed with quiet precision — glass walls, glowing screens, the particular efficiency of a place where everything ran on an unspoken system. I found my desk in Research and Finance and pulled up the quarterly projections my manager had sent over the weekend so I could blend in. 

“That’s yours?”

The woman at the next desk had sharp eyes and a knowing smile. “I’m Andrea. You look like you’re pretending not to panic.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only to people who’ve already survived it.”

We both laughed. That helped. 

Andrea had been at Verizon for three years. She delivered that information the way she delivered everything — casually, without emphasis, like it was yours to do something with or not. 

“The coffee on this floor is terrible,” she said, not looking up. “There’s a place two blocks east. I go at ten-fifteen before the lunch rush.”

“Noted.”

“The Henderson account meetings always run forty minutes over. Block your calendar accordingly.” She turned a page. “And don’t use the printer by the south window. It jams and Davies will somehow make it your fault.”

I laughed despite myself. “How do you know all of this?”

“I paid attention.” She glanced over. “You will too. You have that look.”

“What look?”

“The one that misses nothing and pretends to.”

I didn’t have a response for that so I went back to my screen.

The morning earned its time. Numbers, projections, the particular satisfaction of a system revealing its own logic. Andrea and I talked the way people did when they were deciding if they liked each other — through what they found funny, what they didn’t, what they let pass without comment. By eleven I knew she was from Seattle, hated performative urgency, and had strong feelings about people who scheduled unnecessary meetings. I found all three of these things reassuring.

At noon exactly, the room grew quiet

I noticed the chairs before I noticed him. Mathilda Armstrong stepped out of her office and that was what made me actually look, because Mathilda Armstrong did not step out for anyone or so Andrea said. 

He was already in conversation with someone senior, unhurried, a slight curve at his mouth. Tall. Dark-haired. Handsome in a way that was almost inconvenient, structured and certain, like everything else about him.

“Cassius Moretti,” Andrea said quietly, eyes back on her screen.

“Who?”

Andrea glanced over like I’d said something mildly surprising. “Moretti. As in the Moretti family.” She left it there, like the name was supposed to finish the sentence itself.

I laughed at how dramatically she said it.

He didn’t look our way once. He left a big impression however. 

Around us, the floor had gone back to its screens but his name was moving desk to desk. 

At the end of the day, Andrea and I rode the elevator down together, still talking. Her car was already at the curb when we pushed through the lobby doors. We said goodbye easily since we were heading in opposite directions. I waited at the bus stop to catch a cab and head home. 

A black car idled.

Cassius came through the doors behind me. I knew because the doorman straightened. He moved past close enough that I caught it briefly — something expensive and understated, cold air underneath it. He didn’t look at me. 

The car door opened from the inside.

A woman. Polished, unhurried, beautiful. Her eyes found mine through the open door — brief, deliberate, completely unreadable. Not hostile. Something more considered than hostile.

Then the door closed and the car pulled away.

I didn’t know who she was. I wasn’t sure why I was still thinking about the way she’d looked at me by the time I got home.