Luca:I reloaded the clip into my pistol, raised my arm, and took another shot. The bullet hit the target dead center.Muiccia stood beside me with her arms crossed, watching the paper target sway. “Your aim’s gotten better.”I lowered the gun. “It was always good.”She raised a brow. “Good doesn’t win a war.”I looked at her. “We’re not at war .”Muicca put her earmuffs back on and stepped up to the line. She fired three rounds in quick succession, each one loud and clean. Her posture never wavered. When she was done, she handed the pistol off to one of the guards and looked at me again.“We’re close to one,” she said. “The Castellanis are getting bold.”“They’ve always been bold. Now they’re just getting stupid.” I took a towel from the bench and wiped the sweat from my hands.She glanced at the guards behind us. “ Do you trust the men that were on the Southside dock?”“Of course not.” I folded the towel and set it down. “The fact that the D’Angelos flagged the fake IDs before we di
Luca:The warehouse near the Southside dock smelled like oil and steel, familiar and unchanged. My men stood quietly surrounding a table where the latest shipment list was laid out. Guns. Ammunition. Modified tech. All packaged under fake export codes and tucked into crates labeled as medical supplies.This wasn’t new. It’s how it always worked.“Two crates short,” Marco said, pointing at the list. “One’s marked as rerouted. The other’s missing.”Missing. That word again.I kept my arms crossed, studying the columns. “When did they go off-grid?”“Somewhere between loading in and arrival. We tracked GPS until checkpoint twelve.”“Who signed off?”“D’Angelo’s guy. Matteo confirmed it this morning.”I nodded once. “Pull the checkpoint logs. Every face. Every ID. I want them cross-checked by the hour.”He nodded and stepped back.The Castellanis were getting bold. First, they let our product pass through their territory without protest. Now, parts were going missing. This wasn’t random.
Cassie:The car pulled up in front of an estate, and the driver opened the door without a word. I stepped out, adjusting the neckline of my dress and smoothing my palms down the front. My hands were sweating, but everything else about me looked calm.The estate was huge. White stone, tall columns, clean-cut hedges, it was like something out of a magazine. I wasn’t really surprised. Luca never did anything halfway. This was just the rehearsal, but it looked like the real thing. Armed men stood near the entrance, earplugs in, eyes sweeping everything. I didn’t recognize most of them. Probably extra security brought in for the wedding rehearsal.I walked toward the front doors, my heels clicking against the polished stone steps. A staff member guided me through the entrance and down a hallway that smelled like fresh flowers and expensive cologne. When I stepped into the main room, I stopped.Luca was already there, talking to one of the organizers. He wore a fitted black suit, no tie. Th
Luca:The morning started with a knock on the door and Matteo stepping in, with a folder in his hand. He didn’t waste time. “The Moretti’s are shifting their weight again. South port. Unmarked cargo. Castellanis saw it and let it pass.”I pushed the papers on my desk aside and took the folder. Photos, timestamps, movements, it was all too clean. “They want a reaction.”“They expect us to take the bait,” Matteo said. “Or they think we’re too distracted to respond.”I knew which one it was. The wedding. The temporary peace. The idea that maybe I was going soft.“They’re pushing Castellani territory now,” he added.I closed the folder. “They want to provoke a response we can’t afford to give publicly. Not yet.”“Gianni Castellani called this morning. He’s waiting to see how we handle it. I don’t think he wants war. But he won’t stop it if it comes.”Of course he wouldn’t. The Castellanis never get their hands dirty unless they’re sure they can walk away clean. They were watching. So were
Cassie:The moment I stepped foot back on campus, I knew almost everything had changed.People didn’t look at me the same. I caught the lingering stares, the quick glances when they thought I wasn’t looking. Some people didn’t even bother pretending. Whispers curled around the courtyard like smoke, low and sharp.“That’s her,” “She was there when the attack happened,” “Is she really getting married?”I kept my head high, pretending I didn’t hear any of it. Pretending like I hadn’t spent the last week locked away in a mansion, protected, monitored, and ultimately pressured into signing a marriage contract with a man who terrified me.The attack on the college had been all over the news,brief, violent, and unexplained. We didn't know the names. We didn't have leads. No answers. But somehow everyone knew I’d been involved. Maybe not the details, but just enough to feed the rumors.My friend Sydney was waiting for me by the library steps. Her arms crossed, eyes narrowed, mouth set in a str
Cassie:My breath fogged the inside of the car window as I stared out at the university campus gate. I was happy to be out of Luca's penthouse and I needed the space to think about what he just dumped on me.It was supposed to be a normal college day, and I was good at pretending things were okay, I just needed to pretend a little longer. Just another fake smile to convince my friends I was okay mentally. Given that I was just kidnapped by a Mafia Don who proposed to me out of the blue. But asides that, something was off.I couldn’t explain it, not exactly. Just this weird pressure in my chest. It really felt Like I was being watched, and I couldn't shake the feeling.The driver Luca assigned, a man who never said a word to me and barely blinked—nodded toward the sidewalk. “Miss Reed.”I didn’t respond. Just pushed open the door, hoisted my Tote bag over my shoulder, and stepped out. My shoes clicked against the pavement, loud in the quiet.The second I crossed the gate, the weird fe