Chapter 1

Several factions’ gazes paused briefly on me.

“Who is that? I didn’t see her name on the list.”

“The Moretti family’s newly risen Rose. I hear she’s ruthless.”

“A woman? Don Rossi seems to know her. Their relationship doesn’t look ordinary.”

Holding my wine glass, I looked calmly across at Lucca Rossi.

“Lucca. It’s been a while.”

His brows tightened slightly, a trace of emotion passing through his deep-set eyes.

He walked straight toward me, his voice carrying the same commanding tone.

“Come with me.”

I didn’t move.

Behind him, his consigliere produced a family ring.

“Eliana, I only want to catch up.”

My gaze settled on the ring. Once, it had been something I was willing to risk my life to protect, because the craftsman who forged it had been my father.

Seeing no reaction from me, Lucca’s expression darkened.

He reached out to touch the tattoo exposed on my back, only for a gun barrel to be immediately pressed against his wrist.

Leo, Don Matteo Moretti's underboss, stood beside me. For the past three years, he had remained constantly at my side.

The scene stirred an old memory. Back then, Lucca had appeared just as suddenly, ending my fear with the sound of gunfire.

I was seventeen when members of the Balsamo family forced open my father’s workshop late one night.

Amid the chaos, I watched my father collapse into a pool of blood, while I hid trembling inside a storage room until Lucca’s men cleared the scene.

He was wearing a perfectly tailored black coat, his polished shoes spotless, as though he had stepped through hell untouched.

“I can let you live. But from today on, your life belongs to me.”

I tightened my grip around the cross in my hand.

I wanted to tell him that I wanted to go to school, fulfill my father’s wish of becoming a designer, and live an ordinary life under the sun.

However, faced with the guns aimed in my direction, I swallowed every unrealistic hope before it could be spoken.

That fall, people my age were looking forward to college life.

My identity, meanwhile, was erased, and I became a ghost who officially did not exist within the Rossi family estate.

On my first day there, I attempted to escape, only to be captured and locked in confinement for three days.

The second time, I shattered one of Lucca’s antique vases, believing punishment would follow.

Lucca simply stood there, quietly observing the broken fragments.

I expected anger, exile, or for him to remove the inconvenience entirely. Instead, he lifted my chin and examined me for a long moment.

“Eliana, you have beautiful eyes.”

I stood frozen, unable to tell whether it was praise or a warning.

“Starting today, you’ll train with old Tom. If you fail to learn, you don’t eat.”

Fear and the instinct to survive tightened around me.

“Learn… what?”

“How to survive, and how to become useful.”

From that moment on, I was no longer the girl who only knew how to draw. I learned to shoot, combat, intelligence analysis, and how to take a life with composure.

All that mattered was becoming the most satisfactory creation Lucca could shape.

He brought me to countless private gatherings but never explained my origins.

“Eliana, someone without a past survives the longest.”

“Who is she?”

“Lucca’s toy. Supposedly his favorite.”

The whispers never stopped after I began appearing at his side, and Lucca neither denied them nor confirmed them.

I simply remained in my place, playing whatever role he required of me.

That was until a surveillance mission exposed my identity, and members of the Balsamo family cornered me at an abandoned dock.