Chapter 1

The soft clink of crystal glasses and the low hum of classical music filled the grand ballroom of the Verano Estate, a fortress masquerading as elegance. Candlelight danced on the chandeliers, reflecting off the diamonds and secrets that adorned every guest. Behind every tailored tuxedo was a weapon; behind every smile, an agenda. 

Luciano De Rossi—Luca to those who dared to be familiar—stood at the edge of the crowd, glass of blood-red Chianti untouched in his hand. His tailored black suit clung to his broad frame, a silent threat. His dark eyes surveyed the room like a predator scanning for weakness. The last time he came to an event like this was the night he had to step up and fill in the big shoes his father left behind…….

blood soaked the marble floors of his family’s villa in Palermo. He had been twenty-four then—sharp-suited, sharper-minded, and already whispered about in the back alleys of Naples and Milan. But he had not yet been *Don*.

His father, Alessandro De Rossi, had ruled the southern syndicates with the iron poise of a dying breed—elegant, brutal, and anchored in a code long forgotten by newer, greedier factions. Alessandro was both mentor and myth to Luca, a man who raised his son not with bedtime stories, but with lessons about power, loyalty, and the cost of trust. Luca had learned early how love could be a weapon, and family, a blade that cut deepest when it turned.

He wasn't here to socialize. This gala was a distraction, a necessary public performance to show he was still in control after months of quiet war in the streets. But Luca was already calculating escape routes.

Then she walked in.

She didn’t belong, not in the way the others did. She wore a sleek black dress, slit high on one thigh, with diamond earrings that caught the light like a trap. Her hair was pulled back, exposing a long, graceful neck. And her eyes—green, bright, and unafraid—met his across the room.

Luca’s world paused.

He knew every face in this room. He did not know hers.

She approached with purpose, no hesitation, no fluttering lashes. “I need to do. I have to do this. It’s the only way.”

“Luciano De Rossi,” she said, offering her hand.

He took it. Her fingers were warm, confident. Her perfume—jasmine and smoke—caught him off-guard.

“You are?”

“A woman who doesn’t usually do this,” she said, her smile mysterious. “But tonight felt… different.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You came alone?”

“Not anymore.”

They danced, slowly, almost silently. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t need to. Luca found himself wanting her to speak, just to hear the way her voice dipped around syllables like secrets.

It was already midnight, they were alone on the balcony. She leaned against the stone railing, moonlight on her skin. “What would happen,” she asked, eyes never leaving his, “if someone stole from you?”

“I’d burn their world down,” Luca said.

She smiled. “Good to know.”

And then she kissed him. It was heat, silk, and danger. He didn’t stop her, they both ended up in Luca’s room by the end of the night, and every other night for the remainder of the week.

By dawn on sunday, she was gone.

And so was the key to his offshore network—the one thing that could topple his empire in the wrong hands. He always wore it around his neck, it already became a staple jewelry to everyone who saw and knew him, but only a few people, a handful of people knew what it really was. 

"You should've asked my name."

Luca stood over the note, the corners of the page crumpling beneath the tension in his grip. Around him, silence pressed in like a second skin. His lieutenants waited at the threshold, their unease palpable. They had seen him furious. They had seen him lethal. But this—this quiet, icy stillness—terrified them more.

“Wipe the guest list,” he said, voice low. “Cross-check every face, every alias, every whisper from the last forty-eight hours.”

One of them hesitated. “Boss… she never checked in. No ID, no car. It’s like she—”

“—was never here,” Luca finished for him. His jaw tensed. “I don’t care if she came in riding a ghost. Find her.”

He turned back to the note. The handwriting was elegant, deliberate. A woman who didn’t usually do this? That was the first lie. And Luca, who prided himself on never missing a tell, had believed it.

No. Not believed. Wanted to believe.

That was the danger. Not the kiss. Not even the theft. The danger was that, for a moment, he’d let his guard down. She’d seen something in him and slipped through the crack.

“Never again”

He moved to the window, eyes scanning the horizon as if she might still be out there, watching.

“She played us,” said Marco, his second-in-command.

“No,” Luca murmured. “She played me”

A silence fell between them, thick with meaning. Luca turned back, the fire reigniting in his eyes.

“She wanted me to chase her. So I will.”

He crushed the note in his fist.

“And when I find her…” He let the words hang, unfinished, because even he didn’t yet know if he wanted revenge, answers—or something far more dangerous. As he walked out of his office door something occurred to him, only a handful people knew what he really wore around his neck—he was not only looking for a thief, there was a snitch too, and now he had to find out for sure  which of his rivals planned this, even though everything in him was screaming ‘Dimitri Volkov’.

She watched the sunrise from a rented flat in Nice, one leg curled beneath her, a steaming cup of black coffee in her hand. The city woke slowly—market stalls creaking open, mopeds whining through alleyways, the sea yawning in gold and gray.

She didn’t allow herself a smile, not yet. Not until the tracker she’d embedded in Luca De Rossi’s cufflink came online.

A soft ping vibrated on her phone.

She exhaled. *There you are.*

The offshore key sat beside her laptop—a slim black drive encrypted with a rotating cipher only *she* could unlock. The kind of thing people killed for. The kind of thing *he* would kill for.

She didn’t feel guilty. Not yet.

“Target compromised,” she murmured into her phone, voice steady. “Extraction complete.”

A distorted male voice crackled back. “And the key?”

“Alive and breathing. Just like you wanted.”

There was a pause. “And De Rossi?”

She looked out the window, remembering the way his hand had closed around hers during the dance, firm but curious. The weight of his gaze, like he was trying to memorize her.

“He’ll come,” she said simply. “But not yet.”

“Make sure he doesn’t find you before we do.”

The line went dead.

She set the phone down and finally allowed herself a moment of stillness. No regrets. Only calculations. She hadn’t lied when she said she didn’t usually do this. Her work was clean, clinical. In, out, gone. But Luca had… rattled something.

There had been a moment—just one—where she almost didn’t take the key. Almost stayed. Almost got caught.

She wouldn’t make that mistake again, this was her last deal with Dimitri, after this she would be free from him. She was always in trouble after she stop being a spy for the CIA, and in one of those troubles, Dimitri Volkov was there to help her, she loved him as much as he loved her in his own twisted and disturbed way, but he was took advantage of skills and sent her out to his enemies to seduce and get information from them. 

She closed the laptop, slid the drive into the lining of her coat, and walked toward the door. Her next stop after delivering the drive was Berlin. After that, Prague. If everything went to plan, she’d disappear again by the end of the week.

But even as she walked away from the Riviera sunrise, she could still feel his eyes on her—the wolf in the suit.

And some small, traitorous part of her wondered:

*What would he do if he caught her?*

It was 6pm already, the sun was setting beautifully, as she was basking and soaking in the beauty, the thought that she could never come back here again hit her hard, four black cars pulled up and interrupted her thoughts. As she got into the car, Dimitri harshly kissed her and squeezed her ass

“Good girl.” that all he said to her as he broke off the kiss and collected the drive.