Blood On White Roses

The villa was a warzone.

Smoke curled through the broken windows, and the smell of gunpowder burned my nose. Guests lay sprawled across the marble floor. some were screaming, while others frozen in shock. Blood soaked the white roses that had lined the aisle, petals clinging to the crimson like some cruel work of art.

I pulled Isabella close, my hands gripping her shoulders as she trembled against me.

“Stay down! Keep your head low!” I shouted, voice raw from smoke and fear.

My mind raced, scanning the chaos for the attackers, trying to make sense of it. But all I could see was the man I’d loved like a king. My father, falling to the floor, his chest riddled with bullets.

Luca crouched beside me, gun raised, eyes sharp as glass. “Adrian, we need to move! Now!”

I shook my head hard. “Not without him!”

“Your father’s gone!” he snapped. “We can’t save him. Move!”

The words hit harder than the gunfire. Panic and disbelief twisted in my chest. “No… not him. I can’t…”

But it was already too late. Vittorio Moretti’s last breath came out in a broken whisper, his eyes wide with warning.

“Someone close. It ISA”

Then he was still.

Gunfire still cracked through the hall, but all I could hear were those words. Someone close. Close enough to know our time, our place and our people. Close enough to betray us.

I didn’t have time to think. Isabella’s trembling grew worse. Her voice cut through the ringing in my ears.

“Adrian, we need to get out of here.”

Her fear felt real. wide eyes, trembling lips, her little hands clutched my sleeve. I tightened my hold on her. “No. Not yet. Not until I see” she cut me off with a,

“Please,” she whispered, her voice breaking just enough to pull me back. “We’ll find safety. You can’t do anything here.”

She was right. As much as it tore at me, she was right. I forced myself to move, dragging her behind a shattered table for cover. My suit was soaked in blood. Maybe hers, maybe mine, maybe someone else’s.honestly I don't know But one thing I know is, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

The shooters were professionals. They shot was clean, precise, efficient. The way they’d moved looked planned. This wasn’t random.

“Who would do this?” I muttered under my breath.

Luca ducked beside me again, his tone low and urgent. “Someone close enough. Think, Adrian! Whoever did this knows exactly how to hurt you.”

The fury came fast and hot, burning through the shock. “They’ll pay,” I said, voice rough with rage. “Every last one of them.”

Isabella stayed close, her hand gripping mine as we crouched there, waiting for another volley. Her breathing was uneven, shallow—the kind that came from pure terror. I felt the need to protect her rise stronger than sense itself.

Then silence.

The gunfire stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The stillness that followed was worse, filled with the sound of pain was real. There were low cries, broken sobs, and the creak of ceiling fans still turning above the smoke.

I rose, half-stumbling toward where my father had fallen. Vittorio Moretti lay motionless, his once-commanding face pale and cold. My chest caved in at the sight. The urge to scream clawed up my throat, but I swallowed it. There would be time for that later. For now, there had to be control.

“Luca,” I said, forcing my voice steady. “Get the survivors out. Protect them.”

He nodded and started herding people toward the exits. I stayed behind with Isabella. She clung to me, trembling, whispering small reassurances neither of us believed.

I still thought she needed protection.

I still thought she was mine.

By the time the police arrived, the attackers were long gone. Vanished like ghosts. No trace of where they’d come from or how they’d disappeared so fast. Professionals—every movement deliberate, every shot precise.

My heart pounded with fury. They had taken my father—my protector, my teacher, the man whose shadow I had lived in all my life.

The police moved through the wreckage, speaking in hushed tones. One of them glanced at the bodies, then at me, whispering something about the Moretti family and fear. He was right to be afraid. Even the law knew better than to test us now.

I clenched my fists until my knuckles cracked. “They killed my father. They think they can get away with this.”

“They won’t,” Luca said beside me, his expression carved from stone. “Not if we find them first.”

I nodded, my gaze shifting toward Isabella. She stood close, her face pale, her eyes wide and shining with tears. She looked terrified—fragile—and I felt another surge of protectiveness rise in me. I brushed my hand against her hair. She flinched slightly, shock I thought but maybe it's was more then that. Though she didn’t pull away.

Something flickered in her eyes, something unreadable. I told myself it was grief. What else could it be? She’d loved my father too—or so I believed. I pushed the thought aside and focused on what mattered.

Revenge.

By evening, the villa was quiet again, if silence could still exist in a place that had seen so much blood. The survivors moved like ghosts through the hallways, whispering, avoiding the crimson stains that refused to wash away. Guards patrolled every corridor. No one entered or left without my command.

I sat alone in the study, staring at the marble floors where the blood had dried, the ruined white roses still scattered like fallen ghosts. My father’s voice echoed in my head, the final rasp of his life clinging to me like smoke.

Someone close.

The words would not leave me. They lived beneath my skin now, whispering every time I blinked.

I pressed my hands against my face, the weight of it all crushing my chest. Vittorio Moretti was gone—and with him, the man I had been. The boy who had believed in loyalty, in honor, in family… he had died with my father.

All that remained was a hollow, burning thing inside me.

“They killed my father,” I whispered into the empty room. “Now they will taste hell.”

I didn’t care who it was—family, friend, enemy—it didn’t matter. Justice would come. And it would be brutal.

Isabella entered quietly, her footsteps soft against the marble. She hovered near the door at first, hesitant, eyes red from crying. I looked up at her and felt a mix of sorrow and need I didn’t know how to separate.

She crossed the room slowly and sat beside me. I could feel her trembling, her breath catching in her throat. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, letting her lean against me. She whispered something I couldn’t quite catch—maybe a prayer, maybe my name.

For a moment, her presence eased the storm. She was the one thing left that still felt real, alive, human. I needed that.

Outside, the villa creaked in the night wind. The guards murmured, their footsteps heavy on the gravel. Inside, the world I’d known was already unraveling.

Tomorrow would bring the funeral. Tomorrow the whispers would start. People would come with condolences, with questions, with eyes that watched too closely.

But tonight, it was just me and the silence.

I tightened my hold on Isabella, staring at the dying light spilling across the floor. My father’s world had ended today and so had mine.

Now, all that was left was vengeance