Alessia
There's something terrifying about silence when you know a storm is coming.
The air inside the villa had changed. It no longer felt like a home—or even a prison. It felt like a war bunker, the kind that smells like steel and secrets. Nikolai had been gone most of the day, and I didn't ask where.
I already knew.
I sat by the window in his bedroom—our bedroom now, though he never called it that. My legs were tucked beneath me, a book open on my lap that I hadn't turned a page of in over an hour. I wasn't reading. I was listening.
Footsteps echoed down the hall.
The door opened.
He didn't say a word as he entered, his face unreadable, jaw tight. There was blood on the collar of his shirt.
Not his.
I closed the book and stood. "Nikolai?"
He didn't answer.
He walked to the mini-bar in the corner, poured himself a glass of vodka, and downed it in one swallow. His silence was heavier than shouting.
"Nikolai." I moved toward him, gently touching his arm. "What happened?"
His eyes flicked to mine, cold and stormy. "I warned them."
"Who?"
"The ones that followed Enzo. The ones that doubted your identity." His jaw twitched. "One of them tried to take a picture of you at the hangar yesterday. It's been handled."
I swallowed. "Handled…how?"
He met my eyes and said it like a confession and a promise. "I carved his face off."
I flinched.
Not because I didn't believe him. But because I did.
And because it made something dark in me shudder in satisfaction.
"He won't be the last," Nikolai added, softer now. "They know you're alive. We've lost the element of surprise."
My stomach tightened. "So what now?"
He moved suddenly, taking my face in his hands. "Now, we stay ahead of them. I keep you alive. And when I'm done…" His lips brushed mine. "There'll be no one left to threaten you."
I should have told him to stop. To find a way out. But all I said was—
"Promise me."
His mouth claimed mine like fire, rough and hungry, tasting of blood and devotion.
Later that night, he told me everything.
The names of Salvatore's captains. The safehouses that had been marked. The ports they were watching. The spies within Nikolai's own ranks.
It made my head spin.
"You need to be more than a ghost now," he said, seated across from me in the study. "You need to become the weapon your father raised you to be."
I stared at him. "You want me to kill him myself?"
He didn't hesitate. "Yes."
My throat dried. "I've never killed anyone."
"You've survived a massacre. You've watched your family burn. The only thing stopping you from killing is the lie that you're still innocent."
I looked down at my hands.
They were soft. Trembling. Not made for knives or guns. Not made to end lives.
But I remembered the fire. The screams. The smell of my father's cologne turning to ash.
Maybe innocence died in that fire, too.
Nikolai came to me, crouching so we were eye to eye. "The first time will haunt you. The second will feel like thunder in your chest. By the third, you won't flinch. You'll learn that blood doesn't just stain—it frees."
My eyes burned. "You sound proud of that."
"I'm not proud. I'm alive." He pressed a kiss to my knuckles. "And I want you to be, too."
Nikolai
She had no idea how dangerous she looked with that fire in her eyes.
I watched her train with Ivan in the east courtyard. The knife he handed her looked too big for her small hands, but she held it like it was born in her palm. She was a quick learner—too quick.
Part of me hated it.
The other part wanted to see her take a life and never give it back.
Ivan corrected her stance, guiding her arm. I almost interrupted.
Almost.
He was older. Married. Loyal.
But it still took everything in me not to break his hand for touching her.
"You're possessive," Viktor muttered beside me.
"She's mine."
"I thought she was a pawn."
"She's the queen now. That changes the board."
He smirked. "You're softening."
I turned to him slowly. "Say that again and I'll rip out your spine."
He raised both hands. "Just saying… I've never seen you protect anyone like this. She's under your skin."
She was deeper than that. She was under my rage. My past. My every calculated move.
And I couldn't afford to lose her.
Alessia
That night, I found Nikolai in the garden.
He was shirtless, scars on full display—some old, some fresh. He stood beneath the moonlight like a carved god of war, smoking a cigarette with one hand, gripping a gun with the other.
He didn't see me at first.
Or maybe he did and didn't care.
"You're bleeding," I said softly.
He looked down at his side. "It's nothing."
"You say that a lot."
He took another drag. "Because it's true."
I walked to him, reaching up to touch the cut near his ribs. "You need stitches."
"Later."
"You're going to die if you keep treating yourself like this."
He caught my wrist, eyes flicking to mine. "I won't die. Not until Salvatore does."
"And after that?"
He didn't answer.
I took the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it into the fountain. He didn't stop me.
Then I rose on my toes and kissed him, slow and deep, until his hand trembled against my waist.
"I don't want to lose you," I whispered.
"You already did," he replied. "The moment you looked at me like I was worth saving."
Somewhere in Sicily
Salvatore Mancini sat in the back of his armored car, smoking a cigar and staring at the grainy photo in his hand.
Alessia Rossi.
Alive.
That little bitch had clawed her way out of a grave he'd paid good money to dig. He crushed the photo in his fist.
"Where was this taken?" he growled.
"Outside a hangar," his man replied. "Volkov has her heavily guarded."
Salvatore chuckled. "Of course he does. The bastard always did like pretty things."
He leaned back in his seat. "Tell Gallo to prepare the shipment. We'll lure Volkov out."
"And Alessia?"
His smile was all teeth.
"She'll come running when I slit his throat."
Back at the villa
I couldn't sleep.
Nikolai had fallen asleep beside me, arm thrown over my waist like he was afraid I'd disappear if he let go. I watched him in the dark, heart full of things I didn't have names for.
He didn't stir when I slipped from bed.
I moved down the hall quietly, toward the study.
Toward the map of death he'd laid out like a chessboard.
Salvatore.
His name was circled in red ink. A monster I barely remembered, but one whose face haunted every nightmare.
I traced it with my finger.
One day soon, I'd stop dreaming about him.
And start hunting.