Chapter Seventeen : Blood at the Gates

The warning came just before dawn.

A single flare fired from the watchtower.

Crimson against the lavender sky.

It wasn’t a call for help.

It was a call to arms.

Serena was already dressed when Mara burst through the west hall doors.

“Movement on the ridge. Fifteen to twenty men. Armed. Black Sons.”

Matteo swore, already buckling his shoulder holster.

“How close?”

“Close enough to smell the blood they plan to spill.”

Serena tightened her gloves. “Then let’s show them what a legacy smells like.”

They moved fast.

No time for second-guessing. No time for fear.

The estate's interior guards mobilized in seconds—rifles slung, armor thrown over cotton. Every man knew what was at stake.

The Valentino name.

The De Luca stronghold.

And her.

---

By the time Serena reached the outer wall, the first wave had already descended.

Black masks. Submachine guns. Tactical vests marked with a Roman numeral: II.

She didn’t wait for orders.

She climbed the southwest turret, picked off two intruders with deadeye precision, and swung down to the inner courtyard where Mara was coordinating flanking formations.

“I want a barricade on the east gate!” Mara barked. “And someone get Pietro off that goddamn rooftop before he gets shot!”

“He’s baiting them,” Serena said, voice steady.

Mara glanced at her. “You sure you’re not the warlord in this marriage?”

A grin almost touched Serena’s lips. “Not yet.”

---

The first explosion ripped through the orchard wall just as the sun broke over the hills.

Stone and metal flew.

Men screamed.

The Black Sons surged forward—dozens of them, a well-trained militia born of Victor’s remnants.

Matteo charged into the chaos, flanked by his top lieutenants, blades and bullets singing through the early light.

“Fall back!” he yelled. “Trap them in the bottleneck!”

Serena didn’t fall back.

She sprinted straight into the clearing smoke, ducked under a flying board, and drove a dagger into a masked man’s thigh before he could lift his weapon.

He screamed.

She silenced him with a bullet to the temple.

---

“Serena!” Pietro yelled from above. “On your six!”

She spun, shot the next attacker in the knee, and slammed the butt of her pistol into his skull.

Another man lunged.

She ducked, used his momentum to flip him, and brought her heel down hard on his chest.

Gunfire raged.

But so did she.

---

Inside the main house, Isadora watched through a reinforced window.

Her eyes were hollow, but her voice calm.

“They won’t take her,” she said softly.

The medic tending to her wounds paused.

“She shouldn’t be out there.”

“She was born for it,” Isadora murmured.

And as if summoned by prophecy, Serena reappeared on the outer camera feed—blood on her cheek, smoke curling around her frame, eyes blazing with fury.

---

By midday, the courtyard was scorched.

Bodies littered the gravel path.

But the battle wasn’t over.

A second wave came from the southern tree line,more soldiers, more firepower, and a tank-like vehicle retrofitted with explosives.

“Cover fire!” Mara yelled. “Fall the hell back!”

The vehicle barreled through the gate, plowing straight toward the villa.

Matteo swore. “We need to drop it before it reaches the east wing!”

But there wasn’t time.

“I’ll go,” Serena said.

Matteo grabbed her arm. “No.”

She looked him dead in the eye. “If I don’t, we lose everything.”

“You’re not expendable—”

She pressed a quick, desperate kiss to his lips.

“I’m not asking for permission. I’m telling you: I trust you to finish this if I don’t make it.”

Then she turned, sprinted across the debris-strewn path, and climbed the southern balcony.

Bullets clipped the railing behind her.

The vehicle roared closer.

She grabbed a rope, swung onto the adjacent roof, and dropped to the ground just as the armored truck reached the central square.

A man leaned out from the hatch with his gun aimed at the house.

Serena didn’t give him a chance.

She sprinted toward the front, bullets flying past her ears, dove underneath the chassis, and pulled the pin from the grenade Matteo had slipped into her boot holster earlier.

She wedged it between the axle and the gas tank.

And ran.

Three seconds.

Two.

One—

BOOM.

The vehicle ignited in a firestorm of metal and flame.

---

Silence fell.

Cheers.

From the rooftop. From the walls. From the survivors still standing.

Serena rolled to a stop behind the stone fountain, ears ringing, blood soaking through her sleeve, heart beating like thunder.

Matteo reached her seconds later.

“Serena!” he dropped to his knees, grabbing her shoulders. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” she said hoarsely. “That was a terrible plan.”

He stared at her.

Then kissed her like she was life itself.

And for one breathless moment, the war fell away.

---

They lost eight men that day.

Four critically wounded.

The villa was scorched and broken in places. But standing.

Like them.

Later, in the war room, Pietro placed a captured Black Sons insignia on the table.

“Aureliano wasn’t with them,” he said. “This was only a probing force.”

Serena’s jaw tightened. “Then the real assault hasn’t started.”

“No,” Mara said grimly. “This was a message.”

Matteo nodded. “Aureliano’s saying, ‘I know where you are. I can reach you. Next time, I won’t miss.’”

Serena stared at the cracked map on the wall.

“Then we don’t wait for next time.”

Mara raised a brow. “What are you thinking?”

Serena stepped closer, voice cold and clear.

“We take the fight to him.”

---

That night, Serena walked the corridors of the quiet villa, haunted by what she’d seen.

Blood.

Burning bodies.

The raw scream of a boy no older than Pietro as he fell in the garden.

She’d survived. But at what cost?

She stood at the edge of the balcony, the wind cold against her face.

Matteo joined her, silent as always.

“You could have died,” he said softly.

“I didn’t.”

“But you could have. And if you had—”

She turned to him.

“I know.”

A long beat passed.

Then she whispered, “I didn’t want to be a weapon, Matteo. I just wanted to be enough.”

“You are,” he said, voice hoarse. “You were never a weapon. You were always the war.”

---

As the night deepened, a new message arrived—delivered in the talon of a drone that landed on the estate’s western wall.

Inside, a simple note:

“You want your crown, Princess?

Come take it.

—A”

Serena crushed the paper in her fist.

And smiled.