Chapter 3

The charity gala the next evening was choked with the stench of heavy floral perfume, aged scotch, and venom wrapped in velvet.

I stood off to the side in a recessed archway, waiting for the family runner to drop off my secured clearance files.

"Well, well. If it isn't the knockoff princess."

Three syndicate daughters in shimmering silk, flutes of champagne balanced in their hands, stepped in to block my exit. Leading the pack was a low-level boss's daughter from the West Coast, currently breaking her back to suck up to Gia.

"Tucked away in the dark, sweetie?" she mocked. "Word on the street is Gia chewed you up, so Daddy's sending you off to dry up in the desert. Eighteen years playing dress-up on stolen blood, and now you're kicked to the curb like a stray. Tastes like shit, doesn't it?"

"Clear the way," I said, voice devoid of inflection.

"What’s the rush?" another sneered, stepping into my personal space to shove my shoulder. "We just wanted to give you a proper family send-off!"

I shifted my weight, slipping the shove, my gaze locking onto her throat. "Lay one more finger on me and I’ll snap your wrist backward."

They froze, sensing the sudden shift from socialite to executioner. But as I sidestepped them to leave, a manicured hand reached from behind, grabbing the thin gold chain looping around my neck.

A sharp snap tore the air.

The metal snapped, slicing into the flesh of my collarbone, drawing a thin line of bright red.

Muscle memory kicked in. I spun on my heel, ready to break her arm at the joint.

"What the hell is going on here?!"

Matteo’s sharp voice cracked across the marble corridor. He strode in, flanked by Nikolai and Julian, with Gia pinned safely against his ribs.

The three socialites transformed instantly, shrinking down into wide-eyed, fragile victims. "We were just trying to wish Sienna luck, and she totally lost it! Her necklace snagged on my cuff..."

Before I could get a word out, Julian lunged forward, his fingers clamping onto my bruised wrist like iron cuffs.

"You dumped the penthouse on the open market?!" he hissed, his face contorting behind his glasses. "You looked Matteo in the eye and agreed, and then you pull this backstabbing stunt behind our backs? I never thought you could be this petty, Sienna."

Gia’s eyes flooded with tears right on cue. She tugged at Julian’s lapel, her voice trembling like a leaf. "Julian, please, don't scream at her... I know Sienna hates my guts. She’d rather sell our home to complete strangers than see me walk through the door... It’s okay, I grew up in rat-holes anyway..."

That was all the spark they needed.

"Move," Nikolai growled, his thick hand wrapping around my bicep like a vice, digging until the bone screamed. "Back to the safehouse. We’re stripping your shit out of our lives."

They shoved me all the way to Park Avenue.

The elevator doors parted to the penthouse floor, and Julian barked at the muscle trailing behind them: "Kick it open. Gut her room."

Three armed enforcers booted the double doors off their latches, tearing through my personal quarters, hurling my tactical gear, boots, and clothing into the common hallway like landfill garbage.

Then came the heavy antique leather trunk.

Inside was over a decade’s worth of milestones: the hand-forged blade Nikolai gave me on my first kill, Julian’s custom-engraved fountain pen from our academy days, the hand-cranked music box Matteo had tracked down for me in Florence...

Artifacts I once treated like sacred relics.

Matteo stood over the trunk, his voice stripped of humanity. "Get on your knees and apologize to Gia, or this entire box gets dropped down the trash incinerator. You can go dig your precious little memories out of the city dump."

I leaned my back against the wall, crossing my arms with complete indifference. "Light the match."

What they didn't know was that three hours before I left for the gala, I took a heavy iron hammer to every single item in that box.

When the men are dead to you, who gives a damn about the junk they left behind?

Seeing me completely unbothered, the three of them visibly hesitated.

Matteo’s jaw tightened until the tendons bulged. He reached into his breast pocket and produced an antique emerald brooch.

My grandmother’s. The only item she pressed into my hands before she flatlined.

She was the only person in that cold-blooded family who ever gave me real love. I had trusted Matteo to lock it inside his family’s private subterranean vault.

"Since you don't give a damn about anything anymore," Matteo said coldly, "this belongs to Gia."

"Give it back."

The ice shattered. I surged forward, lunging straight for his throat.

Before my fingers could catch his collar, Nikolai barreled into my flank. Using his brutal weight and joint-lock training, he yanked both my arms behind my spine and slammed my chest and face straight into the cold marble floor.

"Down, stay the fuck down!" Nikolai snarled, his boot and knee crushing into my spine. "You lived off her birthright for eighteen goddamn years! It’s a piece of jewelry! Pay what you owe!"

Gia delicately took the brooch, pinning the heavy green stone against her silk chest, flashing a fragile, angelic smile. "Thank you, Matteo. I'll protect it with my life."

Matteo looked down at me pinned like a dog against the stone, his eyes dead, devoid of anything human. "When you figure out how to beg for forgiveness, Sienna, maybe I’ll think about letting you see your things again."

"We’re done here," he tossed over his shoulder.

Nikolai finally hauled his boot off my back and stepped into the elevator with the rest of them.

The hallway fell back into tomb-like quiet.

I dragged myself up from the stone, my palms flat against the cold floor. My joints burned, and the scratch on my neck had already dried into a dark crust of blood. Scraps of torn fabric floated across the floor in the draft.

I didn't shed a tear. My eyes didn't even burn.

I pulled myself onto a battered stool amidst the wreckage, wiped the dust off my cheek with the back of my hand, and pulled out my burner.

The screen lit up:

[Armored transport touches down in two hours, Sienna.]