Bound by Vows and Vendetta
By silence.
She stayed silent all through dinner.
She asked no more questions. But that night, her dreams bled.
~~~~~
THE FIRST KILL
She was eight years old the first time she saw a man die.
It happened behind the reinforced glass of her father’s inner courtyard—a brutal, sterile space in the Valente estate that smelled of cigars and citrus wood, though nothing ever grew there. No one had told her to watch. No one had even acknowledged her presence. But she had slipped through the back hallways, barefoot, unnoticed in the golden shadow of the columns. Just small enough to go unseen. Just curious enough to go where she shouldn’t.