LOGINLilith POV I did not go back to sleep after the balcony. I went back inside because there was nowhere else to go, because standing out there any longer would have made it obvious that Matteo had unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. He had introduced himself as Matteo. He had joked about Leo, I could tell they were friends. He was older than me by a few years, maybe early thirties, with sharp features and dark hair combed back from his forehead. Nothing about him was loud. He did not need loud. Men who grew up inside power rarely did. His accent had been thick enough to remind me this was not New York. Matteo had looked at me as though he already knew where I had come from, what I had lost, and how little of it I trusted. That was what stayed with me. I crossed the hallway quietly, arms folded around myself, still wearing the night on my skin, and nearly walked into Leo. He
Damien POV The door closed behind Lucian, but the damage he left behind stayed in the room. For a few seconds, we were rooted to the same position. The house was quiet again, though not in the way it had been before he walked in. Rafe still had his gun raised. Maleek did too, both of them angled toward the doorway as if Lucian might decide halfway down the path that restraint no longer suited him and come back shooting. I stood where I was, tasting blood in the back of my mouth that was not mine, my hand still warm from the strike. My knuckles stung. Lucian’s blood had dried in a dark smear across my skin. Maleek lowered his weapon first. Rafe followed a second later, slower about it, his eyes still on me rather than the door. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. I did not answer him. I walked to the sideboard, picked up a clean cloth, and wiped my knuckles carefully, workin
Lucian POV My office had not been quiet for hours. The calls kept coming, one after the other, all of them carrying some version of the same message. Something had gone wrong. A shipment had gone missing. A warehouse had been hit. Two men were dead. Another route had stalled because someone higher up suddenly wanted reassurance I had no patience to provide. I stood behind the desk, phone pressed to my ear, listening to a man in New Jersey explain why a delay that should never have happened had somehow become unavoidable. “I am not interested in the story,” I said. “Correct it immediately.” He started apologizing. I ended the call before he could finish. Another one came in immediately. Then another. Then Sophie. Her name flashed across the screen, disappeared, and came back again less than a minute later. I watched it long enough to feel annoyed, then turned the phone face down on the desk and reached for the other line. There was no room for her tonight. Not for questions, no
Lilith POVThe air was the first thing that was different.I stepped off the jet and it hit me, warmer than New York, carrying something I didn't have a word for immediately. Old, maybe. The light was different too, even at this hour, a softness to the dark that New York didn't do.I stood on the tarmac and waited for something to resolve inside me. Relief, maybe. Or the specific exhale of someone who had finally gotten far enough away from the thing that had been pressing on them.What I felt instead was disoriented in a way that had nothing to do with the flight.Leo was already moving ahead, speaking quietly to the men who had materialized at the base of the stairs. They were not like Lucian's men. Lucian's men watched everything; you, the exits, each other, the room's potential for violence at any given moment. These men acknowledged. Brief eye contact, a slight incline of the head. One of them looked at me and nodded once.I didn't know what to do with that, so I walked towar
Lilith POV The documents were still spread across the table where I'd left them at three in the morning, and I had read every page twice. The massacre. The orphanage records. The falsified death certificate with the date eleven years wrong. The memo in Vittorio Verona's handwriting, not a suggestion, not a proposal, a directive, with my name in it before I was old enough to have a name anyone outside that world would recognize. "The girl is the last heir. Secure her. Her blood is the final key." I had been trying to find the Rosetti family online for the past hour. Vague references to a Florence dynasty, some historical mentions in Italian archives, one academic paper about a powerful syndicate that had effectively ceased to exist after a period of internal conflict in the early nineties. No faces. No current data. No indication that anyone had survived. Like someone had gone through the record and removed the proof of life from every entry. I already knew who would do some
General POVThe jet touched down at LaGuardia airport. He had chosen here for a reason. No ground crew beyond the essential, no terminal lighting directed at the restricted lane, no record in the public system that would survive a casual inquiry. The aircraft rolled to a stop and the door opened and the men who came out first moved with the particular efficiency of people who had done this in enough cities that the city itself had stopped mattering as a variable.Then Leo Rosetti appeared at the top of the stairs.He stood there for a moment, not pausing for effect, just looking. The skyline in the middle distance, the grid of lights, the specific density of New York at this hour. His expression held nothing readable. His eyes moved across the view the way hands moved across a map, not admiring, assessing.The convoy was already waiting. His men lowered their heads slightly as he descended.His underboss fell into step beside him."Capo… la città è pronta." (Boss… the city is ready.”
Lilith's POV I sat in the backseat as the car moved through the Verona estate, smoothly. My hands were resting in my lap, fingers loosely intertwined, though I hadn’t realized I had folded them that tight. As we began to pass the last bend, I turned my head. Damien’s mansion was standing behind
Lilth’s POV Isabella moved around the boutique like she had already memorized every corner. Her manicured fingers skimmed the fabrics, not rushing anything. She didn’t even bother to ask questions, she just kept touching things the way people do when they expect the world to open for them. It w
LILITH POV Saturday afternoon arrived without much fanfare. I was standing by one of the large square windows when Isabella called again, her voice bright and insistent, already busy with movement and noise. “It’s starting at four,” she informed me. “I’ll pick you up.” “Okay,” I replied, and
Damien POV Morning came quietly in the Verona estate. Light slipped through the tall windows in thin bands. I woke slowly, aware of the space before I opened my eyes. The bed was too wide, the sheets pressed flat where no one lay beside me anymore, except for Lilith’s strand of hairs and the sme







