All Chapters of Hunted Heart:The Mafia's Plaything.: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The clock on the wall ticked louder than it should, each second hitting like a little hammer in the dead quiet room.Detective Alessandro Marchetti kept his eyes locked on the door, thumb rubbing slow along the worn edge of the file folder sitting in front of him. The coffee on his desk had gone stone cold an hour ago. He hadn’t touched it. His stomach had been knotted up tight ever since that call came through—We got him. We got Vincenzo.Three months. Three damn long months of chasing shadows, running into dead ends, and watching sources dry up one after another. Three months of seeing his partner get yanked off to some desk job in another division, sleeping maybe four hours a night when he was lucky, drinking his coffee black because even adding sugar felt like admitting some kind of weakness he couldn’t afford right now.And now the ghost he’d been hunting was finally inside his building.The door creaked open, way too loud in the silence.Alex didn’t stand. Didn’t reach for his g

The precinct at 7:47 in the morning felt like an entirely different animal from the quiet shell Alex had dragged himself through twelve hours earlier.Back then the place had been silent, empty halls giving a man room to actually think. Now it buzzed with the usual morning madness — phones ringing nonstop, voices overlapping, keyboards clacking and shoes shuffling everywhere. Civilians slumped in the waiting area looking exhausted, officers hunched at desks, and that heavy smell of burnt coffee mixed with old donuts hung thick like a second skin you couldn’t scrub away.Alex moved through the noise like a ghost, barely noticed.His face stayed blank, almost empty. Steps steady enough. He hadn’t slept at all, but he’d learned long ago how to fake being okay when your body screamed for rest. Quick shower, rushed shave, clean shirt without yesterday’s wrinkles. The dark circles under his eyes were impossible to hide, but he kept his gaze forward, shoulders squared, hoping no one would lo

The casino sat hidden like a secret nobody was supposed to know about.Alex had picked up bits and pieces about it over the years from other detectives — always in hushed tones, half-rumors, half-warnings. It was the kind of place that slipped between the cracks of the law, where cash changed hands fast, secrets got swapped like trading cards, and powerful men came to test how much they could lose without blinking. No one had ever nailed down exactly where it was. It shifted around. One night it might show up in an old warehouse, the next in some luxury penthouse, always one step ahead of any raid that somehow never quite landed.But tonight Vincenzo had sent him an address.The text had popped up roughly an hour after Alex left Cole’s car. After he’d stepped into his empty apartment and stood frozen in the doorway for a solid ten minutes, hoping that constant feeling of being watched would finally fade. It never did. It clung to him now like a shadow that refused to let go.8:00. Wea

The package was waiting for him right at his apartment door.Alex spotted it before he even reached his floor. Just the shape of it, sitting there against the doorframe—a box wrapped in plain brown paper. No label. No postmark. Nothing to say who left it or when.He stopped at the end of the hall, his hand automatically going toward his weapon before he remembered he’d left it locked in the safe. Seven years as a cop had taught him that unmarked packages left outside a detective’s door were never good news.The hallway was empty. The lights kept flickering like always, throwing long weird shadows across the old carpet. Mrs. Patterson’s door was shut tight. The apartment at the far end—the one that had been empty for months—was still dark and quiet.Alex moved closer slow. His eyes went from the package to his door to the windows at the end of the hall. No movement. No sounds. Just the low hum of the fluorescent lights and the far-off noise of traffic from the street below.He knelt do

The Grand Hotel rose up from the middle of the city like some kind of monument to a different time.Marble columns everywhere. Crystal chandeliers sparkling overhead. That big curved staircase leading up into shadows, taking people to ballrooms where the rich and powerful gathered to sip champagne and act like the real world outside didn’t exist. Alex had been here once before, years ago, on some case that went nowhere. He remembered feeling out of place even back then.Tonight felt worse.The suit Vincenzo sent him fit like it was made for his body. Cole had driven him to that tailor shop on 8th Avenue—the same one Alex had walked past two weeks ago without thinking much about it—and the guy behind the counter took one look at him and pulled the suit right off a back rack. Already pressed. Already waiting. Like Vincenzo had known all along that Alex would show up.Now Alex stood at the edge of the ballroom, holding a glass of champagne he hadn’t taken a single sip from, watching the